With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement.
The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good.
AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC. The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.
The main super PAC in question (named 314 Action) explicitly denied that any funding came from AIPAC—a claim revealed as a flagrant lie once disclosure records finally became public. But by then, Dexter had triumphed and was on her way to Congress.
Campaign staffers expect AIPAC to continue using the tactic in this year’s primaries. “In these districts where we have a progressive primary fight, you’re going to see AIPAC put out a network of shell PACs, putting money into races without putting their name on it,” said Usamah Andrabi of the progressive campaign group Justice Democrats.
And indeed, the same pattern is emerging in three competitive House primaries in Illinois. The pieces of the puzzle can be found in the campaign disclosures of House candidates Laura Fine, a state legislator running in Illinois’s Ninth Congressional District for the open seat vacated by Rep. Jan Schakowsky on the North Side of Chicago and its northern suburbs; Donna Miller, a Cook County commissioner running in Illinois’s Second District to replace Rep. Robin Kelly on Chicago’s South Side and southern suburbs; and Melissa Bean, a banker and former member of Congress making a comeback in Illinois’s Eighth District in the western suburbs of Chicago. Bean is also running for an open seat to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who like Kelly is running for Senate.
Putting the pieces together, it is clear that AIPAC is again funding super PACs in order to secretly funnel money to its preferred candidates, while also coordinating donors to give to those candidates directly.
Miller is running in a race that features an attempted political comeback by Jesse Jackson Jr., and Fine is squaring off against progressive Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, who became a national figure after she was indicted by the Trump Justice Department for her role in anti-ICE protests. Bean is facing Junaid Ahmed, who supports ending all military aid to Israel.
A look at Miller, Fine, and Bean’s filings betrays an impressively coordinated operation at work. Sixty-five donors who previously gave to AIPAC or its affiliated super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP) have given to both Miller and Fine. These donors delivered $88,066.66 to the Fine campaign. They also contributed $119,746.33 to Miller. A whopping 237 former AIPAC/UDP donors have given to both Miller and Bean, contributing $396,288.01 to Bean and $429,083.00 to Miller. Forty-four of these donors have given to all three candidates, sending a total of $208,753.33 to them.
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