How Israel Lost The Us Midterms

Just one day after Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayorship, some of the self-described democratic socialist’s big-money backers gathered in Lower Manhattan to celebrate and discuss how they could build on his victory. During Mamdani’s race against former Governor Andrew Cuomo, they had spent more than $3.4 million on his behalf through a super PAC called New Yorkers for Lower Costs.

But the conversation that unfolded in the snug SoHo event space did not focus on affordability. The key seven donors gathered there saw Mamdani’s victory — after a campaign in which he vocally condemned Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war and declined to affirm its right to exist as a Jewish state — as proof that the public was with them on the issue. And they wanted to replicate their efforts across the map in congressional primaries, according to Greg Krieg, a spokesperson for the group.

Those gathered included first-time Mamdani donors and wealthy Muslim businessmen newly active in pro-Palestinian causes, who knew one another mainly from coding apps and drinking Yemeni chai together. They went around the room, each attendee pledging an amount: One person committed $250,000; someone else $50,000 with more to come later; another promised $500,000. The pledges ultimately totaled $4.5 million that day alone, enough to jump-start a new political organization aiming to reshape the way the U.S. government interacted with Israel.

Though other groups had attempted to push that policy leftward — J Street starting in the 2000s and Justice Democrats in the 2010s — the new group brought more super PAC cash to the effort than ever before. At the outset, it was a handful of donors on a text chain trying to figure out where their money should go. Dubbing themselves American Priorities, to reflect their opposition to military aid to Israel and their argument that the money would be better spent at home, they explicitly set themselves the goal of taking on one of the most powerful and well-funded groups in American politics. 

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee was both the primary adversary and in some sense a model for the new group. In late 2021, AIPAC had formed its own super PAC, United Democracy Project, which spent $64 million in the following two cycles. American Priorities set a goal of raising $10 million for the midterms, and came up short of that in its spending of around $8 million. Campaign-finance disclosures show UDP alone spending over $50 million this cycle through mid-October, not accounting for other AIPAC-affiliated groups. “We never thought we could outspend them,” said Mohammed Waqas Javed, a former director of engineering at the tech company AppLovin, whose $1 million in donations made him one of American Priorities’ early backers. “We wanted to be smart about where we spent, and surgically deploying $10 million was enough to run a serious operation across the country.”

But the financial mismatch was less important than the environment in which American Priorities arrived. A longstanding, bipartisan pro-Israel consensus that AIPAC had helped establish — and, more recently, enforce — was already fracturing over the war in Gaza, and AIPAC’s own role in Democratic primary politics had become controversial. American Priorities formed in part to capitalize on the shift, but its emergence was far more an effect than a cause of the public’s changing views on Israel. Indeed, candidates attacked AIPAC in races where neither its own super PAC nor American Priorities even spent.

By the end of the cycle AIPAC, previously a rare bipartisan group allied with Democrats and Republicans in a highly polarized country, was forced into retreat. Weeks before the election, in a year when more than 30 of the candidates the group supported ultimately lost, AIPAC announced a strategic shift that acknowledged “one of the most challenging environments in recent memory” in explaining why it would stop issuing candidate endorsements. “We change our approach every cycle, constantly innovating to be as effective as possible,” AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa wrote in an email. (POLITICO Magazine also contacted UDP, and Sousa fielded questions on its behalf.)

The group will face a very different Capitol Hill in January. Thirteen members of the Democratic majority will arrive with American Priorities having backed their elections. And Rep. Valerie Foushee, one candidate American Priorities opposed for AIPAC’s role helping bring her to Congress in the first place, turned on her former backers before the primary even started — the anti-AIPAC group now considers her an ally.

“AIPAC chose to make themselves the main character in this election, and I don’t think it went well for them,” said Daniel Biss, who won his congressional race in a suburban Chicago district after AIPAC-affiliated groups spent $5.8 million in ads to boost a rival’s campaign or attack him in the Democratic primary. (American Priorities was not involved in that race.) “AIPAC spent incredible amounts of money in districts where they lost, and I think everyone sees that.”

The most dramatic direct matchup may have been in Michigan, where tensions over Israel unspooled with soap-opera drama between Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, his AIPAC-backed primary opponent who dramatically rescinded her endorsement to back his Republican opponent in the final days of the race. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, El-Sayed thanked the group for spending $42 million against him between the primary and the general, and giving him “the opportunity to beat you twice,” continuing a pattern of candidates campaigning not just in opposition to U.S. aid to Israel, but against AIPAC itself.

But that line of attack had picked up months before, when the Mamdani donors decided to get involved in North Carolina.

For decades after its founding in the 1950s, AIPAC endeavored to stay out of the headlines. Despite its confusing name — the “PAC” stands for “public affairs committee,” not “political action committee” — the group did not spend directly on electoral politics. Instead it worked behind the scenes to lobby federal lawmakers from both parties to advance the U.S.-Israel relationship, earning its Capitol Hill clout through assiduous relationship-building on both sides of the aisle. AIPAC employees trained members in how to fundraise for candidates, but only as individuals in the pro-Israel community. AIPAC employees themselves had to keep their hands off the process of actually raising or distributing money.

“It was strictly prohibited for us to go to a fundraiser, be in a fundraiser, write a $15 check to a candidate for anything,” recalled a former AIPAC regional political director granted anonymity to discuss the group’s inner workings. “We didn’t rate candidates. We didn’t endorse candidates.” That structure reflected AIPAC’s broader strategy to keep questions of Israel outside the scrum of electoral politics, to maintain a bipartisan consensus around issues such as military aid. “The prime directive,” recalled the former AIPAC staffer, “was that if the relationship between the U.S. and Israel ever became a partisan issue, that would be an existential threat to the state of Israel.”

They weren’t always successful in avoiding controversy; Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum banned the group from her congressional office in 2006 after she said an AIPAC representative accused her of “support for terrorist organizations” when she voted against an AIPAC-backed bill called the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, partly on the grounds that it would hinder the distribution of humanitarian aid. (AIPAC denied those remarks at the time. McCollum’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.) Generally, though, the bipartisan consensus held; that law, for instance, passed the House with 361 votes from both parties, and the Senate version passed by unanimous consent.

But the consensus began to erode just as Donald Trump came onto the scene and changes in campaign-finance law freed outside groups to spend unlimited money in campaigns. Democrats split over the nuclear deal that Barack Obama’s government struck with Iran in 2015, which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and virtually the entire Republican conference opposed. Dozens of Democrats boycotted an address Netanyahu gave to Congress that year.

Progressive lawmakers first elected in 2018 questioned, or even condemned, the U.S.-Israel partnership. Polling that year showed a growing partisan divide in support for the Jewish state: Pew found that 27% of Democrats had greater sympathy for Israel than the Palestinians, the lowest number since 1978. (Pew found 79% of Republicans in 2018 sympathized with the Israeli side.)

Facing this environment, AIPAC’s leadership decided to change its tactics in late 2021. Citing “hyper-partisanship, high congressional turnover, and the exponential growth in the cost of campaigns," AIPAC’s then-president Betsy Kerns Korn announced the creation of AIPAC PAC (which was indeed a political action committee) and an affiliated super PAC, later named the United Democracy Project. “We made the changes to help our members have an organized voice and role in the political process,” Sousa wrote.

Across the 2022 congressional map, the group plunged into nine contentious Democratic primaries where Israel policy marked a meaningful dividing line between candidates, including ousting then Rep. Andy Levin in favor of Rep. Haley Stevens in a redistricting-driven matchup. United Democracy Project’s preferred candidate won in seven out of the nine, at a cost of $26 million, including $4 million on Stevens’ behalf.

In North Carolina, AIPAC strategists saw the type of challenger that they had created a super PAC to defeat: a young progressive who had worked for Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and harshly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Nida Allam, then 27, was the first Muslim woman to hold public office in North Carolina, and if elected would be one of only three Muslims in Congress at the time. “I’ve always been an advocate for Palestine and speaking up for Palestinian rights,” said Allam, who is Pakistani-American. She also felt there may have been another reason for AIPAC’s opposition: “To be honest, I’m a hijabi Muslim woman… We are one of their prime targets when we run for office.” Sousa did not specify why the AIPAC-affiliated super PAC opted to spend for Allam’s opponent, nor did she respond to this claim.

United Democracy Project spent $2.1 million in favor of Valerie Foushee, a longtime local politician. While Foushee’s embrace of AIPAC antagonized some on her left — the Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party rescinded its endorsement of her, citing AIPAC’s backing of numerous Republicans who had voted against certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020 — the support was essential to her 10-point victory. AIPAC had spent nearly twice as much sending Foushee to Congress as her own campaign did. Foushee did not respond to requests for comment.

AIPAC’s own assessment of this first direct foray into elections was positive, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It has become crystal clear that being anti-Israel will have a negative effect on a candidacy,” United Democracy Project spokesperson Patrick Dorton told the outlet.

After the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship appeared all the more existential to the fate of the Jewish state. But the attacks also mobilized Israel’s critics in Congress; Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, for instance, posted on social media the day after the attack that she condemned the targeting of civilians on both sides, and called for an end to “U.S. government support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid.” In the campaign cycle that followed, United Democracy Project increased its spending to $37.9 million, much of it aimed at punishing Bush and a handful of other incumbents who opposed Israel’s military offensive in Gaza following the attacks. Just $3 million went to defeat Republicans; $14.6 million went into a single Democratic primary in New York City and its northern suburbs.

By 2025, AIPAC strategists no longer had to work as hard to find candidates to spend against, as opposition to Israel’s military operation in Gaza became a litmus test in the Democratic party. A cohort of activists and candidates were entering Democratic politics with a worldview shaped by the post-October 7 backlash to Israel, while many longtime officeholders who had defaulted to accepting the pro-Israel consensus that was both a cause and effect of AIPAC’s power began to question its assumptions.

Foushee was among them. In her first term representing North Carolina’s Research Triangle, she had joined a March 2024 congressional delegation to Israel organized and sponsored by an AIPAC-affiliated nonprofit, the type of anodyne trip AIPAC had organized for lawmakers for decades to little notice except approving coverage in home-district synagogue newsletters. This time pictures of the local congressmember standing alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who greeted the nine visiting members of Congress as “longtime friends of Israel” and “great supporters” — was greeted in her college-town district as a scandal.

Foushee’s office responded to the controversy with a statement that a decade earlier would have read as tough on Israel but after October 7 was notable for its attempts at evenhandedness. “While the United States and the global community must continue to condemn the abhorrent actions of Hamas, Israel must uphold their promises to abide by international humanitarian law and defend herself without targeting innocent civilians as a part of any military campaign,” it said.

It would not be enough to placate left-wing critics of Israel. Foushee coasted to reelection without primary opposition in 2024, and with token support from AIPAC. The following year, Allam announced she would mount another challenge, putting Israel back on the local agenda. At a town hall meeting in Carrboro that summer, a constituent asked Foushee if she “regrets” the past AIPAC support or meeting with Netanyahu.

“You all know that I took the money from AIPAC, but check to see how much I’ve taken since that time, and check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted for as it relates to the people of Gaza,” Foushee said.

The day after a Raleigh-Durham alternative weekly reported on the encounter, Foushee signed on to the so-called “Block the Bombs Act,” which would stop certain arms sales to Israel, as a co-sponsor. That week, she formally detached herself from AIPAC: A Foushee spokesperson told the paper that “if offered the Congresswoman would decline. She will not accept AIPAC contributions during the 2026 campaign.” By then, AIPAC had stopped supporting her anyway. “We were not involved in the race,” Sousa wrote. “She has become hostile toward our community and on our issue, and AIPAC members no longer supported her.”

When the Mamdani donors emerged from their SoHo meeting looking for a place to take a stand against AIPAC, the deep-blue North Carolina district shimmered on the horizon. They saw Foushee as a vulnerable incumbent, and Allam as a champion on their issue; a poll they commissioned in January showed Allam trailing, but it looked like new resources might close the gap. At that point, the Foushee-Allam contest had received relatively little attention from donors compared to Democratic primaries shaping up in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City, and its timing was optimal to leave a mark on the year: North Carolina would vote on March 3, the first regular primary day of 2026.

American Priorities made Foushee its first target, for AIPAC’s role getting her to Congress in the first place. The new group spent over $1 million on Allam’s behalf even as AIPAC stayed out. The Trump administration’s decision to join Israel in an attack on Iran over the campaign’s final weekend helped keep the Middle East in the news. “Trump’s illegal and reckless war will inevitably be on voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box on Tuesday,” Allam said then in a statement to POLITICO. “They are ready to hold every leader who co-signed a blank check to the Israeli war hawks accountable — including my opponent.”

Foushee won the 2026 primary by less than a percentage point — against the same candidate she’d beaten by 10 points a few years before — with the aid of an AI-industry-backed super PAC. (Allam had been critical of data centers.) The challenger came within about 1,000 votes.

It was a loss for American Priorities, but an encouraging one. A much smaller investment paid off the same day in Texas’s 30th District, where they put $100,000 in digital advertising behind the pastor Frederick Haynes III, who won his primary; AIPAC’s super PAC did not play in that race either. The lesson American Priorities took from those races was to get in early and spend where it could be decisive — and the group would not find itself on the losing side of a 2026 primary again.

Like AIPAC or any other single-issue PAC, American Priorities hoped to get members in place they saw as aligned with their mission, and devote enough money to their success to ensure access down the line. Their other goal, according to Krieg, the spokesperson, was to facilitate an environment that made it less politically risky for a candidate to get crosswise with AIPAC. “We wanted to make it so that people wouldn’t have to fear being toppled in a primary for criticizing Israel,” he said. “They’d know there was money on their side.”

After Allam’s narrow loss in North Carolina, American Priorities faced pressure from its allies to spend in Illinois, which would vote two weeks later. AIPAC had already been spending heavily in the state, the start of a $22 million binge across four Democratic congressional primaries. Most of the money was being routed through pop-up super PACs with names like “Elect Chicago Women,” and did not mention Israel in communication with voters, sticking instead to defending or attacking candidates on topics like opposition to ICE. If the concealment of explicit AIPAC ties was a response to the rise of anti-AIPAC rhetoric in Democratic primaries, Sousa didn’t say so. “Every race is different,” she wrote, “and we take the most effective approach. That strategy was used because local Chicago members wanted to lead a unique effort in city to help elect pro-Israel Democrats.”

But American Priorities opted to stay out of the state’s crowded, open-seat races, where millions in crypto and AI money were also flooding in to influence voters. American Priorities’ donors weren’t confident that spreading out limited resources across those races would actually change the outcome anywhere. Instead the upstart group invested where it was more likely to make a statement, identifying candidates they viewed as credible contenders against opponents who had been “propped up by” or allied with AIPAC on issues such as weapons sales, Krieg said. American Priorities spent over $1.5 million on behalf of Adam Hamawy, running in an open primary in central New Jersey, and $1.3 million to replace New York City incumbent Adriano Espaillat with Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated challenger Daria Avila Chevalier. It found like-minded candidates in Center City Philadelphia and California’s Central Valley, downtown Denver and the Minneapolis exurbs. In every instance, the American Priorities-backed candidate won.

“The Illinois decision was angsty,” Krieg said, “but basically funded the wins elsewhere.”

Many Democratic primaries around the country became a referendum on AIPAC. In some places, AIPAC and American Priorities went head-to head; in others, AIPAC did not spend any money but found itself nonetheless a campaign bogeyman, a stand-in for the influence of big donors even as other super PACs — crypto, AI, et al. — pumped in unlimited sums of their own. The increasingly AIPAC-centric primary season culminated in Michigan, where before the August race for an open U.S. Senate seat, more than $30 million was spent by groups motivated primarily by Israel policy. American Priorities spent $678,000 to help El-Sayed narrowly defeat Stevens there.

Well before Election Day, AIPAC decided to reconsider its entire approach to electoral politics. With its endorsements having become a matter of controversy, the group launched a strategic review that led to its decision to abandon the practice altogether, while continuing to operate its super PAC and encouraging donors to give directly to preferred candidates.

“I think it’s a recognition that their new strategy, which is only five years old, was costing them both reputationally and with influence with members,” said Joel Rubin, a State Department official on the Middle East for legislative affairs during the Obama administration now active in pro-Israel Democratic politics. “It’s really been a snowball rolling down a hill all this year.” Sousa did not respond to this claim.

“There’s a crisis in AIPAC-world,” Rubin said, “and everybody knows it.”

Meanwhile, new Democratic majorities are poised to reconsider some fundamental aspects of the American relationship with Israel, even as Donald Trump faces heightened pressure within his own party to back out of its military engagement with Iran. On Election Day itself, Trump said $4 billion in U.S. military assistance to Israel would end at the conclusion of this year, telling “Fox & Friends” that such aid was “a bad talking point” and “they don’t need it.” And a day later, processing the shocking scale of Republican midterm losses, Vice President JD Vance blamed the Iran war and the U.S. relationship with Israel for the result. A new government in Jerusalem could even further rescramble Washington’s partisan alliances around Israel policy.

“The traditional form of military assistance is coming to an end,” said Dan Shapiro, a former congressional staffer who served as Obama’s ambassador to Israel. “There are going to be demands for other changes too, related to settlements, West Bank violence, how to move toward reconstruction in Gaza, and not wanting to participate in new wars in the region.”

There are now 11 new members of the House and two senators who are about to arrive on Capitol Hill owing some part of their victory to American Priorities, and others like Foushee who are returning with a different perspective than they had when the last session of Congress began. Still, large Democratic majorities are also padded with new members from more conservative areas, including with large evangelical Christian communities, which could marginalize the hardline voices like El-Sayed. AIPAC told members in a letter obtained by POLITICO that it “helped 290 pro-Israel candidates win their elections and helped defeat 29 detractors” this year.

“What I hope that shows every member of Congress and every candidate is not that they have to agree with me on the issue, but that they can stand up for what they believe and what they think is right and not feel intimidated or bullied by AIPAC or any other big-money special interest that's trying to throw its weight around,” said Biss, the Illinois congressmember-elect.

When Foushee first headed to Congress in 2023, as a politician rarely forced to consider issues beyond North Carolina, AIPAC presented some of her earliest connections in Washington. Now as she returns for her third term, people with very different ideas about the proper shape of the U.S.-Israel relationship are likely to be in her ear.

Krieg said American Priorities now considers her an ally.

Andrew Howard and Shia Kapos contributed to this report.