Maryland GovPics/Creative Commons
Congressional candidate Sarah Kelly Elfreth attends a Chesapeake Executive Council Meeting at EPA Headquarters in Washington, October 11, 2022.
Maryland congressional candidate Harry Dunn would seem to have the perfect background and message to represent the current coalition of the Democratic Party in a safe blue seat. He’s a Black former Capitol Police officer who defended the building on January 6th as a mob descended on him. He later wrote a book about his experience that became a best-seller. Now he’s running for an open seat in Maryland’s Third District, vacated by retiring Rep. John Sarbanes (D), on a democracy reform platform that reflects the most commonly held values and aspirations of the party this election cycle.
But to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Dunn looks like a threat, apparently. In April, the lobby’s affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, slotted a $600,000 ad buy in support of Dunn’s leading opponent, Sarah Kelly Elfreth, an experienced state legislator who was elected with the backing of EMILYs List. The contents of those ad buys have so far lauded Elfreth’s credentials as a skilled, pragmatic legislator with accomplishments on issues from reproductive rights to climate. Those points directly mirror the “redbox” information put on her website, a work-around for campaigns to indirectly communicate with independent expenditure PACs without violating campaign finance laws.
AIPAC and its affiliated PACs have directly contributed $170,000 to Elfreth’s campaign, and UDP has spent close to $4.2 million in support of Elfreth overall, the PAC’s second-largest expenditure thus far in the 2024 election cycle, according to the watchdog Open Secrets.
The lobby’s efforts to get Elfreth elected have also significantly ramped up in recent weeks before Election Day on May 14th. In the final pre-primary reporting period, AIPAC and UDP’s network of donors accounted for over half of Elfreth’s maxed-out individual contributions, totaling nearly $150,000. A number of those top contributors to her campaign are GOP donors who have given to Trump and other Republicans in the past.
UDP’s level of investment in the race goes beyond fundraising though. The Prospect has learned that the PAC is actually embedded in Elfreth’s organizing infrastructure and helping run her ground game. UDP put out a job listing in early April for a team of paid field organizers to do outreach and work on getting out the vote for the primary. The posting does not specifically name Elfreth, but according to campaign sources it is evident she’s the recipient since that race is the only contested Democratic primary in the state where AIPAC is significantly invested. The payment is $4,000 per month for each organizer.
In recent filings, UDP also disclosed that it has spent $50,000 on paid phone-bankers directly on behalf of the Elfreth campaign.
UDP’s choice to double down on the spending in MD-03 casts doubt on the claims they made back in early April regarding why they were getting involved in the race in the first place. “The way they’re spending and giving attention to this race, it’s like they’re treating [Dunn] as if he’s Jamaal Bowman,” a Democratic strategist close to the Dunn campaign told me, referring to the New York–area Squad member who is facing up to $20 million in attacks from AIPAC in his re-election campaign.
Back in April, reports of UDP’s ads for Elfreth caught many political observers by surprise and seemingly came out of the blue. It flummoxed Dunn’s campaign too. Disagreement over U.S. policy toward Israel has not been a major flashpoint in the primary, and there’s hardly any daylight between the two candidates’ positions on the issue. Nor, for that matter, is there a clean progressive versus moderate split in the race; that division has more recently motivated AIPAC to get involved in races to root out current or future members of the Squad flank of the Democratic Party, which it perceives as enemies of Israel.
Dunn does not approve of conditioning aid to Israel (at least he didn’t before the invasion of Rafah) and supports a two-state solution, according to the campaign, which are mainstream positions for the party. He was recently endorsed by the pro-Israel, pro-peace organization J Street, but that was well after UDP already endorsed Elfreth.
When asked about its endorsement of Elfreth, UDP spokesperson Patrick Dorton claimed back in April to HuffPost that Dunn was not the intended target.
“There are some serious anti-Israel candidates in this race, who are not Harry Dunn, and we need to make sure that they don’t make it to Congress,” Dorton said. He was presumably referring to labor lawyer John Morse, endorsed by Bernie Sanders, who’s been critical of Israel’s current war in Gaza.
But there’s no polling indicating Morse is a major contender in the 13-candidate field. His meager fundraising numbers—he’s raised just $122,000 in total for the race, while Dunn has raised over $4.5 million—would not seem to justify such an expensive ad blitz.
As of late, however, UDP has dropped the pretense that Morse is the real source of their concern.
“We see Sara Elfreth as the strongest candidate who most reflects the views of the district,” Dorton told the Prospect. “It is disappointing that Dunn has decided to run negative ads instead of focusing on the issues that will help Marylanders.”
Dunn has speculated that AIPAC actually objects to his disavowal of taking super PAC money and his pledge to pass campaign finance reforms if elected, in line with the retiring representative of the district, John Sarbanes, who made that issue his mission.
“Right after I announced my plan to protect our democracy from outside special interests who try to influence elections, dark money was solicited into this race,” Dunn told HuffPost.
Over the past month since those remarks, AIPAC has considerably expanded its project to get Elfreth elected, which casts doubt on its assertion that Dunn isn’t the target. Morse by all accounts has not gained ground.
IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THIS YEAR’S ELECTION FILING PERIOD, one-third of Elfreth’s campaign contributors were longtime donors to AIPAC and UDP, contributing nearly $300,000.
But now in the most recent pre-primary filing, covering just April, the lobby’s donor network escalated its spending to Elfreth. The nearly $150,000 she brought in last month from AIPAC donors, mostly in the form of maxed-out contributions, accounted for over half of her overall fundraising. Overall in the campaign, Elfreth has assembled a war chest of $1.5 million.
Most of AIPAC’s own fundraising comes from heavyweight donors aligned with Republican candidates, and that’s reflected in Elfreth’s fundraising haul as well. Among them are the billionaire and Trump ally Robert Kraft’s son, Daniel Kraft, who has his own history of giving to Republican candidates and party leadership, though not the former president. There’s also the former president of AIPAC Edward Levy, the disgraced former owner of the Phoenix Suns Robert Sarver, one of Trump’s top bundlers in Colorado, Larry Mizel, and another longtime GOP donor, Robert Kargman.
Dunn, for his part, is trying to use the outside spending to his advantage. He’s going on the attack against Elfreth in the final stretch of the campaign for these contributions from right-wing donors and specifically naming UDP. An ad that will be running in the final days states: “Sarah Elfreth is getting millions of dollars in ads paid for by a right-wing super PAC funded by Trump donors … Why would Trump donors support a Democrat? Maybe because Elfreth voted 44 times with Republicans.”
Dunn was also endorsed last week by a pro-science group called 314 Action, which has become a much more proactive player in this year’s election cycle, with boatloads of money. They’re spending $1.7 million on a Democratic congressional primary race in Oregon against the sister of Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). According to reporting from Ryan Grim at The Intercept, that money is mostly coming from AIPAC, which is providing financial support to 314 Action to essentially launder its money through a more neutral, innocuous-sounding front group.
Though 314 Action endorsed Dunn, it is not spending on the MD-03 race. Meanwhile, Elfreth donors Kraft, Levy, and Mizel all showed up on a list of high-dollar donors to Maxine Dexter, the Oregon congressional candidate who has benefited from 314 Action’s flurry of spending, reportedly fueled by AIPAC.
Despite vastly outraising Elfreth overall by several million dollars, Dunn is still considered an underdog going into Election Day. Some internal polling has him leading, but the outcome is unclear.
