Last Thursday, at a U.S. Senate debate in Michigan, Republican Mike Rogers was asked if he would take public support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in his election against Abdul El-Sayed. “Anybody that wants to help my campaign … I’ll take all of that help,” he responded.
It was a reversal from a little over a month ago, when Rogers reportedly appealed to the board chair of AIPAC Michael Tuchin not to intervene in the race, warning that it could hurt more than it helped. (This didn’t stop Rogers from appearing at three fundraisers hosted by AIPAC the day after that meeting.) But with El-Sayed ahead in 21 of the last 22 polls taken in the race dating back to Labor Day, it may have been time for a gamble. And Rogers’s answer in the debate certainly looks to have been calculated. Because less than 24 hours later, AIPAC’s super PAC United Democracy Project was spending against El-Sayed in the general election.
That suggests that AIPAC had this spending teed up and was waiting for a go-ahead from Rogers. But far from a political earthquake, this activity barely registered on the Richter scale: UDP spent $94,620 on direct mail. For context, there has been $135.7 million in outside spending in the contest between Rogers and El-Sayed thus far; adding in the candidates and companion ads with party committees, and The Detroit News puts the number at $243 million, the most expensive election in state history, with $300 million in all expected by November 3. One projection is that the state writ large could see $1 billion in ad spending this year. UDP’s mailer expenditure isn’t even big enough to be a drop in the bucket.
According to NBC News, the mailer is targeted at 130,000 Jewish voters, out of the roughly eight million voters in the state. The mailer accuses El-Sayed of antisemitism over a remark he made after a synagogue attack in Michigan this March that has been designated a terrorist attack inspired by Hezbollah. El-Sayed said that “Hurt people hurt people,” something that he later apologized for.
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The token amount of spending could be designed more to make a statement and draw a response than show real influence. El-Sayed’s comments on the AIPAC spending have been limited, saying on social media, “You know @MikeRogersforMI is in trouble when he begs @AIPAC to start spending against me. Why do they hate me? Because I want to keep your tax money here to spend on your kids rather than spend it to kill kids somewhere else.” El-Sayed barnstormed dark-red areas and appeared with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) this weekend.
But there could be another reason for going this route. AIPAC obviously has the money to go much bigger than this: As of the end of August, United Democracy Project had nearly $55 million in the bank, and the Federal Election Commission shows no spending in general-election races since then. And the will to stop El-Sayed, against whom UDP spent upwards of $30 million in the Democratic primary, is surely there. Maybe a mailer campaign is sufficiently under-the-radar to prevent the potential for blowback that we’ve seen in other races where AIPAC has been active in the primary cycle, but even a $94,620 mailer expenditure is logged and made publicly available. There’s not really anywhere to hide.
One possibility is that Rogers’s implicit endorsement of AIPAC support came too late. The airwaves in Michigan are clogged; as far back as August, there were $45 million in ad reservations, and by October 1, after well over $100 million spent, ad reservations were at $65 million. Even if UDP could find any airtime at all to broadcast a spot, it would be prohibitively expensive relative to the locked-in reservations. UDP would have to spend fantastical amounts to get the same relative reach as the $94,620 mailer.
UDP did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s hard to know at this point what kind of ad inventory is available in Michigan and what it would cost. But it’s just a fact that earlier ad reservations would be more plentiful and cheaper. In this sense, AIPAC’s reputation could account for the relatively puny expenditure thus far in the race: The group may have had to wait so long to get the tacit all-clear from their preferred candidate for their influence campaign that they got shut out of television.
