Two Progressives Fight AIPAC (and Each Other) in IL-09

With just days left before the primary election in Illinois’s Ninth Congressional District on March 17, super PACs are shoveling money toward one candidate, Laura Fine, while the two progressive front-runners, Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, vie for votes from the left.

The Ninth District is an oddly shaped mix of urban and suburban areas, mostly liberal, starting in the northernmost neighborhoods of Chicago, stretching to the city of Evanston, and continuing west to include a wide swath of suburbs and small towns.

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The district has drawn national attention because of its two leading candidates: Biss is the mayor of Evanston, and Abughazaleh is a political newcomer with a background in progressive media. Both of them were outspoken critics of ICE’s presence in Chicago last fall, and became familiar faces at the weekly protests outside of ICE’s Broadview detention facility in the city’s suburbs.

A clip of Abughazaleh being violently grabbed and thrown onto the pavement by an ICE agent during one of those protests went viral, and now anchors her latest television ad.

“We don’t need talkers in D.C., we need fighters,” she says in a voice-over as the ad shows her protesting ICE at Broadview.

“And it doesn’t matter how many times they knock me down. To protect my community, I’ll get back up and fight with you,” she says, as the clip of the agent shoving her to the ground plays over guitar riffs in the background.

Abughazaleh and her supporters are betting that her background as a political outsider—before running for Congress, she was a political journalist and content creator—and her image as a grassroots activist will resonate with voters who are tired of legacy Democrats in Congress and their inability to take on the Trump administration.

Biss and Abughazaleh were outspoken critics of ICE’s presence in Chicago last fall, and became familiar faces at the weekly protests.

“She embodies exactly what so many Democratic voters are looking for in this moment right now, which is someone who has the record of fighting back against Republican extremism and the courage to take on the Democratic establishment,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, which endorsed Abughazaleh in early February.

There are some indications that Abughazaleh’s message is resonating in the final weeks of the race. A March 10 poll commissioned by the Evanston RoundTable has Biss in first place, with 24 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him. Abughazaleh is close behind, with 20 percent support. Crucially, though, Biss’s numbers hadn’t changed since the previous poll on February 21—but Abughazaleh gained three percentage points. Her campaign celebrated, saying, “The Abughamentum is Ours” in a press release.

Biss and Abughazaleh have something they can both cheer on though: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)–backed candidate Laura Fine is in third place, and continues to fall behind. In the February 21 poll, she was just behind Abughazaleh with 16 percent of respondents backing her. But on March 10, she had fallen to 14 percent, leaving a six-point margin.

Pollsters also measured candidate favorability, and Fine saw a massive 23-point decline in just over two weeks. In late February, her net favorable was +1. Now, it’s -22. That steep decline is likely due to the media coverage of her ties to AIPAC, which has so far spent over $4 million on her campaign. That money is funneled through a shadow PAC called Elect Chicago Women, which the Prospect and Drop Site News exposed as an AIPAC affiliate in February. In the highly educated, affluent, and news-rich Ninth District, Fine hasn’t been able to quietly get away with taking AIPAC money.

“When [voters] see a negative ad trashing me, they know this is coming from right-wing, out-of-state donors who are trying to buy the seat to assure a far-right militaristic point of view on Israel and Palestine, and that’s not what the voters here want,” Biss said about AIPAC’s influence in the race.

Now that the election seems to be a two-way race between Biss and Abughazaleh, the two candidates are trying to distinguish themselves from each other. With similar views on domestic policy—both candidates support action on climate change, single-payer health care, and tackling corporate power—the two have instead focused on their approaches to fighting Trump and their views on Israel.

Both candidates have called for the abolition of ICE. But where Abughazaleh emphasizes her willingness to protest and fight dirty, Biss has leaned into his mayoral experience.

“I’ve spent many hours on the phone with dozens of municipal officials from across the country since the fall, kind of walking them through what we’ve done, helping them draft ordinances and bouncing ideas with them,” Biss told me about his approach to resisting ICE.

In a March 10 YouTube video, Abughazaleh played up this divide, showing footage from a September protest at Broadview attended by both candidates. “Kat notices Daniel, who had just shown up, hours after the protest began,” one clip reads.

Abughazaleh has also taken aim at Biss’s relationship to AIPAC. Early in the campaign, Biss met with the group, a move that has since drawn criticism from Abughazaleh and even Fine, who said that AIPAC didn’t trust Biss.

Now, Abughazaleh is signaling to donors that they should attack Biss on these grounds through “red-boxing,” a technique that allows campaigns to communicate their advertising needs with political action committees without breaking campaign finance laws. On her campaign website, Abughazaleh tacitly suggests, in a message that is not actually surrounded by a red box, that donors should focus on TV, internet, and mailers that elevate her over Fine and Biss. Thus are campaign finance regulations honored, though somewhat in the breach.

“Her opponents, including Daniel Biss and Laura Fine, have had meetings where they have sought support from MAGA-funded PACs such as AIPAC,” the message reads.

In a press conference about outside spending on February 17, Biss addressed his correspondence with AIPAC.

“I think it’s very important for a candidate and for a member of Congress to communicate with people they don’t agree with, to have conversations across difference,” he said. “I would never have accepted AIPAC support and never asked for their support.”

At campaign events and online, Biss has been adamant that he rejects AIPAC’s money and positions. Through Elect Chicago Women, AIPAC has spent nearly $1.5 million attacking him. Another AIPAC affiliate, Chicago Progressive Partnership, recently spent $1.1 million in ads targeting Abughazaleh.

First AIPAC, Now AI PACs

Last month, Drop Site News’s reporting on Abughazaleh’s foreign-policy positions raised eyebrows among some on the left. In a leaked email between her foreign-policy adviser, Ben Mermel, and an anonymous foreign-policy activist, Mermel describes Abughazaleh as “firmly an interventionist” who believes that “the world is better off when America takes a leading role in it, but that role must be ethical and lawful, and it must place human rights first.”

Mermel also wrote that Abughazaleh believes “we have an obligation to support pro-democracy movements around the world, from Iran to Venezuela” and is in favor of using “sanctions [and] NGO support” before kinetic force to achieve those goals.

As Mermel describes them, Abughazaleh’s views on Ukraine and Taiwan would put her in opposition to many other progressives, who oppose American intervention in foreign conflicts.

According to Drop Site News, Abughazaleh’s campaign didn’t respond directly to their inquiry, but a source close to the campaign rebutted Mermel’s characterization of Abughazaleh’s positions.

“Kat is committed to taking on authoritarianism but is vehemently against the military industrial complex and the continuation of failed US intervention approaches,” that source said.

Abughazaleh herself responded in videos and interviews downplaying Mermel’s remarks but also essentially confirming that America should militarily support Ukraine and defend Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Biss has worked to distinguish himself by his policy record and endorsements. When I asked him why voters should support him over Abughazaleh, he pointed to his supporters.

“I think the validators really matter here. Not only has [retiring incumbent Rep.] Jan Schakowsky endorsed me, but also Elizabeth Warren and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, Greg Casar, Chuy Garcia, and more, together with the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club,” he said. They “have looked at the candidates, readily acknowledged there are multiple candidates who are progressive, and said, ‘Hey, Daniel’s the one that we trust to fight and win, not just to take the right positions, not just to check the right boxes, but to be in the fight and win.’”

Though polling is positive for both Biss and Abughazaleh, neither candidate is growing complacent.

“I’m not acting as if Laura Fine is out of this,” said Biss. “It’s absolutely essential that we not allow AIPAC to buy the seat, that we not allow out-of-state Republicans to decide who Democrats nominate in this progressive district.”