As the politics around Israel shift, many Democrats are seeking distance from AIPAC

(CNN) — First Daniel Biss wants to win his primary for an open US House seat in the north Chicago suburbs on Tuesday. Then he has the makings of a plan: Tell as many other Democratic candidates as he can that they could beat AIPAC too.

The grandson of Holocaust survivors who moved to Israel, who grew up with dual citizenship and briefly studied there while an undergraduate, who has a cousin who was called up to the reserves after the October 7, 2023, attacks, Biss is running on a wide array of progressive stances. But the Evanston mayor said he believes the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, other PACs it is funding and connected donors together are dumping millions into his race because of the specific threat he presents.

“It’s obvious that I care about the well-being of the Jewish people and the problem of antisemitism,” Biss told CNN. “They can’t dismiss my positions that are for justice, for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people as somehow illegitimate or being pushed forward by someone who doesn’t know.”

“This,” Biss argued, “is a very important race for that reason.”

Several people familiar with AIPAC’s decision-making disputed that, arguing that Biss wouldn’t be the threat to them he imagines. But Biss is making such a big issue of AIPAC that he is running an ad about how much connected money has gone to support one of his opponents — Laura Fine — the favored AIPAC candidate who has publicly distanced herself from the group. Through at least three shell PACs including the United Democracy Project, AIPAC is set to top $20 million just in the Chicago-area House races ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.

A growing issue

What’s happening in the Chicago area has been playing out all over the country.

At a Latino voter-focused forum at a Mexican restaurant called El Ranchito on the outskirts of Dallas last month, the first question to the candidates was about taking AIPAC donations. From Minnesota to Mississippi, operatives involved in races tolf CNN candidates are constantly facing questions about the group on the trail. Incumbents tell CNN they expect it to come up regularly at town halls. And online, detractors constantly pounce on politicians’ comments they perceive as sympathetic to Israel as evidence of being coopted by AIPAC.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in Gaza repels more Americans on the left, even many Democrats who consider themselves strong supporters of Israel have felt out of sync and uncomfortable. But they and other Israel backers also worry that support for the country is becoming more partisan — and that, especially as prospective candidates start to speak out, anti-Israel rhetoric could become a defining issue in the next presidential primary race.

AIPAC has become a stand-in for all of that.

And that was before the war in Iran — in which critics argue the US is hurting its own interests by following Israel’s lead — criticism the Trump administration has rejected.

Calling out Democrats whose policy positions they don’t like has become a tactic on the left, including by entities like the “AIPAC Tracker” account on X, which lists past donations from pro-Israel groups and donors next to photos of political candidates. Several incumbents across the country are facing primary challenges explicitly based on their connections to AIPAC, often backed by new, specifically anti-AIPAC PACs popping up.

David Hogg, the March for Our Lives co-founder now running an organization to promote a new generation of leaders, sent a fundraising email last weekend with a one-word subject line: “AIPAC.” A video AIPAC posted last week of Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens praising Israel and thanking her for standing with the country — what once would have been a pretty standard statement — was greeted by Abdul El-Sayed, one of her opponents in the state’s open Senate primary race, with a post that read: “Good to know. I stand with Michigan.”

A sense of whiplash

Even as AIPAC has also become a target among far-right Republicans making similar claims about it and Israeli influence, an array of Democratic lawmakers told CNN they feel a sense of whiplash by being cast as right-wingers for support that was for so long a mainstream position. Some say they are distraught by feeling like the government in Jerusalem is forcing them to choose between loving Israel and their other values.

Prominent AIPAC allies among Democrats in Congress and beyond told CNN they believe AIPAC has made navigating this harder by pushing them into maximalist positions in favor of the Netanyahu government and treating anyone who doesn’t as unacceptable. Those tactics, the allies argue, have gotten politically perilous for the group, and more importantly, for the relationship with Israel that the group is supposed to be reinforcing.

“AIPAC historically had a position that there were friends and future friends,” said Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, a longtime ally and endorsee of the group who is himself facing a primary challenge in part based on positions about the war in Gaza. “It appears that they got away from that thinking.”

The idea that the group is trying to control American policy through its spending echoes antisemitic conspiracy tropes of Jewish money being used to puppeteer governments, with several Democratic officials who are Jewish telling CNN that they are disturbed how often they’re finding phrases like “Dirty Zionist” in their social media replies. Even to some who’ve taken issue with AIPAC, the outsize focus on that spending, when AI and cryptocurrency PACs are spending heavily in Illinois races and beyond, demonstrates part of the problem.

“The folks who are using AIPAC as the wedge issue — for way too many of them, it’s a perfect storm to advance their own antisemitic agendas, whether that’s delegitimizing the state of Israel or making it harder for the Jewish community to express their beliefs,” Schneider said.

The consequences can go beyond who wins and loses primaries.

“Whether you’re talking about Republicans and Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes, whether you’re talking about people on the left who openly have just sort of replaced the word ‘Jew’ with ‘AIPAC’ or ‘Zionist’ and then as long as you do that, you’re free to say virtually anything that you want,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told CNN’s Jake Tapper shortly after the synagogue attack in her state on Thursday. “It’s time that leaders of both parties stand up and strongly condemn antisemitism and say, ‘It will not be accepted in either major political party in the United States.’ Because Jews feel like they have no place to go.”

AIPAC officials dispute accusations that the group has tilted Republican in recent years, or that it is too deferential to Netanyahu. Endorsements are guided, they say, by looking at who is the most supportive of the broader goals of a positive US-Israel relationship, backing security aid to Israel without new added conditions and being committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“AIPAC’s been supporting the US-Israel relationship for decades, regardless of who was in power in the United States or in Israel,” said Deryn Sousa, an AIPAC spokesperson. “Our members will not be deterred by efforts to drive them out of the political process or to silence pro-Israel voices within either party.”

In numbers that referred both to Democrats and Republicans they supported, Sousa added, “It is important to separate the noise from anti-Israel extremists of the right and left and actual impact. Ninety-seven percent of AIPAC endorsed candidates won their election last cycle and we are proud to have endorsed nearly 330 candidates so far this cycle.”

But top Democratic leaders have started to shift: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries broke ranks with AIPAC last year to also accept the endorsement of its rival organization, J Street. And according to people familiar with the conversations, he has repeatedly expressed concerns to AIPAC leaders about their involvement in Democratic primaries, and repeatedly been rebuffed.

Then, there are those who get caught in the swirl: North Carolina Rep. Valerie Foushee was written off completely by AIPAC out of anger for positions she took, yet her connections to the group were still a main line of attack from her opponent. She narrowly won her March 3 primary challenge, and as she did, she said one of her top priorities would be “passing legislation to block arms sales to Israel.”

Shifting politics and strategies

Last month in New Jersey, an AIPAC-aligned super PAC spent about $2 million in the final days of a special election House primary on ads that, in a deliberate attempt to damage former Rep. Tom Malinowski as he attempted to return to Congress. Like the AIPAC ads in Illinois, those ads didn’t mention Israel, but instead tried to tie Malinowski to President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

Malinowski said this was prompted by comments he made about conditioning American aid to Israel. Others who’ve spoken to AIPAC officials told CNN the group was concerned that given Malinowski’s background in international work, he would influence other members toward his thinking.

Malinowski lost by fewer than 1,200 votes to Analilia Mejìa — a sharp critic of Israel — which led him to charge, “The implication was that AIPAC considered a small challenge to its hard line of unconditional support for the current Israeli government from someone like me to be scarier than electing a person hostile to the very concept of Zionism, but to whom Democrats might not listen.”

The results prompted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to post, “I hope Dems begin to see that moderate or progressive, AIPAC is not our friend.” She added that they “endorse January 6th insurrectionists” and against those “who find the genocide in Gaza an appalling affront to American values” and that “they are a right-wing organization that undermines democracy.”

A half-dozen Democrats in Congress who don’t agree with Ocasio-Cortez’s politics and have worked with AIPAC in the past told CNN privately that they were also frustrated by what the Malinowski example signaled to them about how much they were expected to toe the line even as the politics has been shifting.

AIPAC leaders believe, according to four operatives and officials who spoke to them, that the race worked out just as the group wanted: They see Mejìa as a clearer enemy who could be defeated in a future race, while Malinowski would have been a longer-term problem.

But in a strategic rejiggering in the weeks since the New Jersey primary, AIPAC pulled down its negative ads against Biss in the Illinois race, and in the final days has been focused on blasting Kat Abughazaleh, who is more anti-Israel.

For years, some groups on the left — including the Democratic Socialists of America — have been working to make anything short of calling for the end of a Jewish state to be disqualifying for support. Another example: The Sunrise Movement, founded to try to force action on climate change, has made the Palestinian cause central and is among those singling out AIPAC as the opposition.

Greg Casar, the Texas congressman and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CNN that AIPAC’s unwillingness to shift and the amount of money pouring in have combined to make it an easy and deserving target, especially with Democratic voters on edge about being flooded with outside money.

“That connection is not one that any of us have made as a connection, it’s just exactly as it’s played out: The AIPAC position is to spend gobs of money against any candidate who voices support for any policies that support the American people and the American national security interest and against anyone who has spoken out against Netanyahu and his policies,” Casar said. “When you see on your phone innocent kids being killed using our money, when you’re nervous that your friends and family that are enlisted could be sent to Iran, voters are rightfully upset.”

Rebuffing calls for changes

Multiple Democratic allies in Congress told CNN they’ve been frustrated not just by how AIPAC has been conducting itself, but by how they’ve been rebuffed when suggesting changes.

“They still have a lot of resources, but reputationally it’s amazing how far they’ve fallen in how short a time,” said one Democratic House member, who, in a reflection of AIPAC’s continued strength, would only criticize the group anonymously. “Because it supports the relationship, it’s become a very good punching bag, and they haven’t done a very good job of protecting the brand.”

Find a way to more openly criticize Netanyahu, some allies have urged. At least shut down the online donor portal — which was conceived of to track how much money was coming into candidates from donors friendly to AIPAC but has instead become a tool for opponents to magnify its supposed influence and make out more donors as disqualified.

Those tactical suggestions, they say, haven’t been met with much interest from the group. AIPAC has also opposed policy shifts, whether that is any further conditioning of military aid or a bill introduced in January by longtime AIPAC ally Sen. Ron Wyden that would institute more monitoring for humanitarian aid into Gaza and sanctions against anyone — Netanyahu included — found to have blocked it from getting to Palestinians in need.

“The best politics is good policy, and I thought a lot about this. I love Israel … I feel strongly about our relationship with Israel, but that doesn’t mean that I support everything Benjamin Netanyahu does,” Wyden said, noting that in his conversations, AIPAC “made it clear they’re not for this.”

The Oregon lawmaker said he wouldn’t comment on many Democrats’ turn against AIPAC.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of J Street, the AIPAC alternative that’s much more critical of the Israeli government, acknowledged at his group’s recent conference —in recent weeks — where several prominent Democratic officials, including potential future leader Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, spoke — that his group’s spending will be a fraction of AIPAC’s. But the changing political dynamics have evened that out some.

“At the end of the day,” Ben-Ami argued, “the idea that AIPAC is behind you is going to hurt more in a Democratic primary than the $96 million is going to help.”

Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for United Democracy Project, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC, said he expects that number will go up over the year, as will its involvement in House and perhaps Senate elections.

“We are still looking hard at dozens of races,” he said, “Our primary goal is to make sure that detractors of the US-Israel relationship don’t serve in Congress.”

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