Progressive Groups Form Counterweight to AIPAC’s Electoral Push

Twenty-four organizations will launch a ‘seven-figure’ campaign to defend progressive Democrats. The Israel lobby’s first foray into primaries this year fell flat.

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Twenty-four progressive groups have formed an alliance, promising to commit at least $1 million to defend incumbent members of Congress being targeted by AIPAC and its pro-Israel allies in primary elections this year.

The coalition is calling itself Reject AIPAC, and it includes several organizations experienced in campaign organizing, like Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Sunrise Movement, Our Revolution, and Gen-Z for Change. Other groups in the coalition have raised their voices and led protests during Israel’s war on Gaza, like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, Peace Action, Democratic Socialists of America, and many more.

“The fight against AIPAC is one of the fights for the soul of our democracy,” the coalition said in a statement. “Now is the time for the whole of the Democratic Party to Reject AIPAC once and for all.”

The strategy includes paid advertising and field organizing in campaigns, and continued lobbying in Congress for a cease-fire in the war in Gaza. The coalition will ask members to reject AIPAC endorsements and sign a pledge to no longer accept funds from them. This is similar to no-oil-money and anti-NRA pledges that have been signed in the past. Already, an unnamed number of Democratic lawmakers have signed the anti-AIPAC pledge.

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The news comes as J Street, the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace PAC that spent millions as a counterweight to AIPAC in 2022, bowed out of doing the same in 2024. This coalition will attempt to fill that gap, and it won’t be easy. The promise to launch a “seven-figure electoral defense campaign” is limited compared to AIPAC’s stated pledge of $100 million in spending this cycle.

But the pro-Israel lobby’s first attempt this cycle at knocking out a Democrat performed so miserably that the material impact of all its spending may end up being more muted. Subsequently, a pushback from progressive organizing groups may yield better results than expected given the disproportionate funding. You may not have to match AIPAC dollar for dollar to get results.

AIPAC’S SUPER PAC, UNITED DEMOCRACY PROJECT (UDP), was created in 2022 to spend money almost exclusively in Democratic primaries, dropping $26 million that cycle in nine primaries. Combined with Democratic Majority for Israel, an allied PAC that at one point had donations to them count as donors’ AIPAC contributions, pro-Israel funding was the biggest outside spender in 2022 Democratic primaries. None of the advertising or public communications these groups produced mentioned Israel policy at all, and the candidates attacked were almost uniformly progressives and mostly people of color.

In its first cycle of direct involvement in electoral politics, AIPAC was largely successful. Seven of the nine candidates UDP backed won their primary elections. Only two targeted candidates, Reps. Summer Lee (D-PA) and Shri Thanedar (D-MI), survived the onslaught, and Thanedar had a large self-funded war chest to fall back on. UDP also gave $700,000 to other super PACs that boosted moderate candidates over progressives.

All of those races involved open-seat primaries (one was a post-redistricting race against two Democratic incumbents, Reps. Haley Stevens and Andy Levin, who ran for the same seat; over $4 million in spending boosted Stevens to victory). This year, AIPAC and its allies have signaled an interest in deposing sitting Democratic incumbents, like Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

A pushback from progressive organizing groups may yield better results than expected given the disproportionate funding.

The stakes of the challenges have been raised by the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians so far. The coalition is also highlighting AIPAC’s political track record. Nine of the top ten funders to AIPAC this year have in the past regularly given to Republican candidates and causes. In that sense, Republican mega-donors are meddling in Democratic primaries to choose favored candidates. AIPAC has also endorsed over 200 Republicans for office in 2024, including 109 congressional Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election. Democratic primary voters are not likely to look kindly on such spending, if they can be told about it.

“AIPAC has exposed itself as the right-wing organization it is,” said Waleed Shahid, former spokesperson for Justice Democrats, who is not involved with the Reject AIPAC effort. “The task ahead for progressives is to raise name recognition and awareness of AIPAC to the vast majority of Democrats who have no idea who AIPAC or its financiers are.”

UDP’S FIRST MAJOR EFFORT IN THE 2024 CYCLE may offer a glimmer of hope. In Orange County, California, state Sen. Dave Min faced $4.6 million in negative ads in his bid to replace Katie Porter in the 47th Congressional District. Once again, none of the ads had to do with Israel; they were an amalgam of opposition research, focused heavily on an arrest of Min for a DUI last year.

Min’s record and public statements on Israel barely differed from his Democratic opponent Joanna Weiss; he mildly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and settler expansion in the West Bank, but he has not called for a cease-fire or sought to condition U.S. aid to Israel on compliance with international human rights laws.

The show of force signaled that even minor dissent on Israel would be met with a thunderous response. But in the end, Min advanced to the general election with a lead over Weiss that is growing as votes continue to be counted. After the election, AIPAC claimed that all of their endorsed candidates won primaries. But the only race they made a known financial investment in led to them losing.

It could be that AIPAC was just softening up Min for the general election, where he’ll face stalwart pro-Israel Republican Scott Baugh. But if the goal was to elect down-the-line Democrats on Israel, it failed utterly. After the election, UDP casually noted that it contributed $5 million to the super PAC for Rep. Adam Schiff, who advanced to the general election for U.S. Senate in California, but that was a fraction of Schiff’s dominant total fundraising advantage, and it was hidden from public view.

Given this result, the power of AIPAC in electoral politics may not be as fearsome as expected. So a coalition dedicated to counteracting their influence, if done in a smart and targeted way, could have a greater effect.

Since Super Tuesday, UDP has made a token investment in Illinois’s Seventh Congressional District, where Kina Collins is among four candidates challenging Democratic Rep. Danny Davis in a March 19 primary. Collins, a progressive, came within six points of defeating Davis in 2022, though she has raised the least amount of money among Davis’s primary challengers. UDP has spent close to $200,000 in negative ads against Collins so far this year.

And there will certainly be much more spending to come. But there is at least going to be some counterweight.

Here is the full list of groups in the coalition:

Justice Democrats, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, IfNotNow Movement, the Working Families Party, Sunrise Movement, Showing Up for Racial Justice, MPower Change Action Fund, the Democratic Socialists of America, Common Defense.us, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Center for Popular Democracy Action, Our Revolution, Dream Defenders, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction, Grassroot Global Justice Action, Justice Is Global Action, Future Coalition, Peace Action, National Iranian American Council Action, and Gen-Z for Change.

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