A group tied to the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting a progressive House candidate in Pennsylvania, marking the first time the super PAC of the self-proclaimed bipartisan group has directly intervened in a Democrat vs. Republican matchup.
United Democracy Project (UDP), affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is spending at least $75,000 on mailers and more than $900,000 on television ads attacking Summer Lee, a left-wing Pennsylvania state representative who is the Democratic nominee for the state’s 12th Congressional District.
AIPAC’s intervention on behalf of Republicans is especially significant because Lee is in a surprisingly tight race. A GOP victory could help Republicans win the House or pad their margin of victory. The group says it is not taking sides in which party controls Congress.
By intervening in Lee’s race, however, progressives argue the group is aiding the GOP’s push to win the House. This stance would mark a departure from years of pronounced bipartisanship from AIPAC, which has long successfully courted congressional leaders in both parties.
“Shamefully, AIPAC is working for Republican control of Congress and further destabilization of US democracy,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter on Monday, encouraging people to donate to Lee’s campaign.
Justice Democrats, a progressive group aligned with Lee, demanded that Democratic leaders call for AIPAC to halt its spending in the race.
“It’s time for Democratic Party leadership to finally denounce AIPAC’s active role in campaigning for and funding a Republican majority in Congress,” Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, said in a statement.
AIPAC’s opposition to Lee, a left-wing state representative, is well established. UDP spent $2.7 million unsuccessfully trying to defeat her in a Democratic primary in May. A spokesman for the group scoffed at the idea it was picking sides in the battle for the House and said Lee’s views on Israel and other issues were “outside the mainstream of Democrats in her district.”
“All we’re doing is opposing a future anti-Israel squad member,” the spokesperson, Patrick Dorton, told HuffPost. “One race in a Democratic district in Pittsburgh is not going to determine control of the House.”
Elections in the 12th should be sleepy: President Joe Biden would have won the district, which includes parts of Pittsburgh and its suburbs, by roughly 20 percentage points in 2020. But the Republican nominee in the seat happens to be named Mike Doyle — the name of the retiring Democratic congressman who represented much of the area for over two decades.
The possibility of voter confusion over Doyle’s identity, along with the post-redistricting inclusion of some deeply conservative areas in the district and the generally sour political environment, has led some Democrats to fret about the seat, only adding to House Democrats’ problems in a midterm election year when they are heavily favored to lose control of the chamber. United Democracy Project said their polling of the race found the contest to be competitive.
As a super PAC, United Democracy Project can raise and spend unlimited sums provided it does not directly coordinate with candidates. It’s received multimillion-dollar donations from Republicans, including Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and hedge fund manager Paul Elliott, but also has the backing of Democratic media executive Haim Saban.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is set to campaign for Lee on Sunday, criticized “the billionaires who fund AIPAC” in a tweet and said they oppose Lee because “she stands with working people and against corporate greed.” He called for Democrats to condemn the super PAC.
Dorton shot back, contending Sanders was simply bitter about losing two of his progressive allies, both of whom lost primaries in which UDP spent heavily against them. “Bernie and others on the fringe left are running a smear campaign against us because they’re mad Andy Levin and Donna Edwards lost,” he said.
National Democrats still consider a GOP win in the district unlikely but are concerned enough that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee plans to spend six figures on a coordinated advertising buy to help lock up the race.
On Tuesday night, the DCCC threw some cold water on worries about Lee’s standing, releasing an internal poll showing Lee leading Doyle 54% to 40% among likely voters. The survey, which was conducted on Sunday and Monday by the committee’s analytics department, found little difference between Lee’s standing and the generic congressional ballot, which clocked in at 57% Democrat to 38% Republican.
Lee’s campaign first became concerned about GOP attacks when the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC controlled by allies of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, began airing an ad attacking Democrat Chris DeLuzio for contributing to one of Lee’s state legislative campaigns. DeLuzio, who is in a tight race in a neighboring district, is the nominal target of the ad, which features a video clip of Lee declaring, “policing as we know it is no longer necessary.” But the spot is airing in the Pittsburgh media market, which includes both Lee and DeLuzio’s districts.
The mailer that UDP is sending voters in Pennsylvania’s 12th District highlights her radical stances on criminal justice reform, including calls to “abolish” prisons and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It also revives an argument UDP highlighted in the primary: Lee once tweeted that she wanted to “totally dismantle” the Democratic Party in its current form.
The television ad the group is airing hits similar notes.
From hitting Lee as disloyal to aiding GOP attempts to defeat her, the turnaround was not lost on national progressives, many of whom have long hoped to distance the party from AIPAC’s hardline, unquestioning support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
“It’s crazy that AIPAC spent money in the primary calling Summer Lee a bad Democrat and is now spending money against her and helping election deniers,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leadership need to speak out against this. This can’t be the new normal.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office did not respond to e-mails requesting comment. She declined to condemn UDP’s massive spending during the primary season directly. However, she defended Edwards, a former Maryland congresswoman, when UDP attacked her during her comeback bid. Edwards ultimately lost to Glenn Ivey, a former prosecutor.
The investment is UDP’s second spending program of the general election, but the first instance in which it is siding with a Democrat against a Republican. In California’s solidly Democratic 15th Congressional District, UDP has spent more than $500,000 supporting Democrat Kevin Mullin. Thanks to California’s nonpartisan, top-two primary system, Mullin is competing against Democrat David Canepa to succeed retiring Rep. Jackie Speier.
UDP is open about supporting candidates in both parties who share its view that the United States should grant Israel discretion regarding how to approach its security concerns. By that logic, attacking Lee as a disloyal Democrat in a primary — and later working to sink her against a Republican — is a legitimate way to dispatch with a political adversary.
“We’re a single-issue organization,” Dorton said. “We support Democrats and Republicans that are pro-Israel.”
Lee has said little about U.S. policy in Israel and the Palestinian territories. She does not support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Still, she supports leveraging U.S. aid to pressure the Israeli government to end its occupation of Palestinian lands conquered in 1967.
However, her greatest offense in the eyes of right-leaning pro-Israel groups is being affiliated with the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Ahead of the midterm elections, AIPAC unveiled its first-ever list of official endorsements and created UDP, its first-ever super PAC. By escalating its involvement in elections, AIPAC hopes to beat back the small but growing influence of a handful of left-wing Democratic lawmakers in the House who have embraced aggressively pro-Palestinian policies.
If elected, Lee is expected to make common cause with the “Squad” of left-wing House Democrats whose ranks include Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib are the only two BDS supporters in Congress. Sure enough, Reps. Omar and Tlaib — as well as fellow “Squad” Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Cori Bush (Mo.) — co-hosted an online fundraiser for Lee on Sunday evening.
“She is being warmly embraced by some of the most vehement, anti-Israel members of Congress,” Dorton said. “She is looking forward to being part of the anti-Israel ‘Squad’ group of Democrats in the House.”
AIPAC had already raised cries of outrage on the left for its endorsement of more than 100 congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election.
J Street, a more liberal pro-Israel group, reiterated criticism of that decision on Monday.
“At a critical moment for American democracy, with election denial, antisemitism and far-right extremism on the rise, AIPAC continues to make clear that its top political priority is to target and defeat progressive Democrats,” Laura Birnbaum, J Street’s national political director, said in a statement.
AIPAC notes that it has also endorsed 148 Democratic House candidates. That list of endorsees includes Democrats locked in competitive general elections, including Reps. Elaine Luria (Va.), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Susie Lee (Nev.), Steven Horsford (Nev.), and North Carolina state Sen. Don Davis, who is running for an open House seat. Those endorsements come with donations from AIPAC’s political action committee and bundled individual contributions from AIPAC activists.
“We are proud of our political involvement in supporting pro-Israel candidates — both Democrats and Republicans — and opposing detractors of America’s alliance with the Jewish state such as Sumner Lee,” Marshall Wittmann, spokesperson for AIPAC, said. “An important aspect of our political involvement has shown that being pro-Israel is completely consistent with progressive values.”
Wittmann added: “We will continue to work to build broad bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
What makes UDP’s intervention in the race new and notable, however, is that unlike AIPAC’s formal endorsements of Republicans, this spending could determine control of the House. While bundling donations can help members win reelection, super PAC spending on attack ads — not subject to standard contribution limits — is a far more direct intervention.
That raises the question of whether top Democrats like Pelosi — and the many Democratic incumbents and candidates on the receiving end of UDP’s largesse — will speak up against UDP’s opposition to Lee.
“I hope that the Democrats who received millions of dollars from AIPAC this cycle will speak out in support of their future colleague, Summer Lee, and use their influence to defend the Democratic majority,” said Maya Handa, who managed the campaign of North Carolina congressional candidate Nida Allam, against whom UDP spent more than $2 million.
When asked whether UDP is concerned about how its spending choices could affect its relationship with Pelosi and other top Democrats, Dorton declined to comment.
UDP may feel confident that top Democrats have more to lose by burning AIPAC than to gain by expressing frustration with its actions in this district. In the past, when confronted with the vast sums of money that UDP was spending in Democratic primaries, Pelosi, who maintains close ties to AIPAC, remained silent.
Senior Democrats’ refusal to speak up now about UDP is especially galling to progressives whom the Democratic establishment has admonished for mounting primary campaigns against sitting Democrats and otherwise failing to demonstrate adequate party loyalty.
“I never want to hear another word about progressives not being team players,” Handa said.