AIPAC Spent $5 Million Against Dave Min, Which Doesn't Make Min Any Better
Katie Porter— like Barbara Lee in Oakland and like Adam Schiff in my L.A. district— is leaving an empty House seat that we be decided today. Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff have overwhelmingly Democratic districts— Barbara’s has a D+77 partisan lean and Adam’s a D+45 lean and there is no doubt they will be replaced by fellow Democrats, Barbara by BART board member Lateefah Simon and Adam by… well, two Democrats will emerge today from the 15-candidate clusterfuck, 12 of whom are Democrats. The progressive in the race is Maebe Pudlo, but conservative state Sen Anthony Portantino, charter school/Likud shill Laura Friedman and others are presenting themselves as progressives as well. Washed up actor and self-funder Ben Savage, the other conservative Democrat in the race, has spent at least $1.3 million of his own money in the race. There’s no way to know which two candidates will emerge tonight to fight it out in November.
And that brings is to CA-47, Katie Porter’s district… although it’s a different district than the old CA-47 that originally elected Katie. That one was an inland south Orange County district. The new CA-47— which has a shaky partisan lean of D+6— is a coastal OC district that stretches from Seal Beach through MAGAty Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach past Laguna Beach and swings inland to Irvine and Los Olivos and Portola Springs. Biden beat Trump under these new boundaries by over 11 points… but it is still a far more competitive district than Adam’s or Barbara’s. Although there are 3 Republicans in today’s primary, it is a foregone conclusion that the one who will make it into the November runoff will be former Assemblyman Scott Baugh, who battled Katie last cycle and only lost by 3.4 points.
Three candidates have raised over a million dollars, Joanna Weiss ($2,138,303 of which $1,525,702 has been spent), Baugh ($1,987,585, of which just $293,164 has been spent) and controversial conservative state Sen. Dave Min ($1,723,365, of which $1,499,286 has been spent). Nearly $5 million has already been spent by outside groups trying to derail Min, while just over a million has been spent boosting Weiss.
I’ve never spoken to Weiss and don’t have a clear fix about what kind of a congressmember she would make. Her website issues page is standard Democratic Party fare and her congressional endorsements are from middle of the road Democrats... no progressives. She’s heavily backed by EMILY’s list, almost always a bad sign.
On the other hand, I do know Min from an earlier race and he’s BAD NEWS— a conservative Wall Street Democrat who would absolutely be a shitty member of Congress. After losing to Katie when she first ran for Congress, he became a state Senator and has been a shitty legislator, reflected in his overall “D” Courage score. (That “D” doesn't stand for Democrat; it stands for voting like a Republican and taking corrupt money to do their bidding.)
The fact that he was endorsed— transactionally— by Katie Porter, didn’t make me more likely to support him; it made me less likely to support her. But after that, who’s supporting who gets tangled. He’s being attacked by the most venal players of the cycle, AIPAC and its allies, who launder Republican (and Israeli) money into Democratic primaries, generally to destroy progressives. (Fight back against AIPAC here.) But Min is no progressive… not on anything. This morning HuffPo reported that AIPAC’s “decision to make California state Sen. Dave Min its first target of the cycle has puzzled observers across the spectrum. Min… has not called for a cease-fire in Israel or for restricting U.S. aid to Israel. But AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has still spent $4.7 million on ads blasting Min. The TV, digital and direct-mail campaign has cast Min as a general-election liability against a likely Republican opponent due to his arrest in May for driving under the influence of alcohol. Min maintains that AIPAC is trying to beat him because he, like Biden, has been critical of Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank. ‘Maybe AIPAC wants a rubber stamp. I’m not going to be a rubber stamp,’ Min told Semafor.”
Over the weekend, Elena Schneider and Melanie Mason had reported that when the negative ads started flooding Orange County, Min contacted Andy Levin— the Michigan progressive who AIPAC defeated last cycle— for advice. He told Min to reach out to progressive Jewish groups for help, which is what Levin had done. “But, he acknowledged, ‘we were simply swamped’ by outside spending in his own primary, and Dave Min might face a similar fate. ‘Most’ candidates won’t be able to survive that spending barrage, Levin said in an interview with Politico, and ‘I’m afraid that they can be quite successful in wiping them out.’”
This cycle, they are going even bigger. AIPAC is expected to spend $100 million across its political entities in 2024, taking aim at candidates they deem insufficiently supportive of Israel, according to three people with direct knowledge of the figure, who were granted anonymity to discuss private meetings.
The strategy has taken on new urgency this election season from donors animated by the Israel-Hamas war. AIPAC’s biggest targets are members of the so-called Squad of progressive House Democrats who have been openly pressuring the administration to call for a cease-fire. But AIPAC’s ambitions are broader. United Democracy Project, the group’s super PAC, is monitoring 15 to 20 House races and polling in many of those districts, according to a person directly familiar with UDP’s strategy and granted anonymity to discuss the approach.
“They’ll have so much money, wherever there’s an opportunity, they will take it,” said one Democratic donor adviser who is involved in the effort and was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the organization’s plans.
…[O]thers are rethinking their primary strategy altogether. J Street, a progressive pro-Israel group that defended candidates against AIPAC in primaries in 2022, won’t reprise that role in 2024, arguing that it’s “generally not a fruitful use of our resources to spend in intra-party feuds,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said. Instead, they’ll focus their $10 million program on only general election campaigns.
J Street’s decision is part of a broader recognition from progressives that they will not be able to “match [AIPAC] dollar-for-dollar,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), a vocal critic of AIPAC.
“Most people are extremely turned off by where that money comes from,” Pocan said. “When you take money from Donald Trump donors, Nikki Haley donors, Ron DeSantis donors and then you put it to use in Democratic primaries, clearly, it’s a disingenuous use of money.”
…“AIPAC and their Republican mega donors are targeting Black and brown Democratic incumbents with the same right-wing playbook across the country,” [Rep. Cori] Bush said in a statement.
So far, aside from Min’s race in California, AIPAC has only waded into one other open Democratic primary race, endorsing New York state Sen. Tim Kennedy, who’s running in an April special election to replace former Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY). Kennedy faces nominal challenges from other Democratic candidates for the June primary. They’ve also endorsed in a pair of GOP primaries in North Carolina and Texas.
But Democratic Majority for Israel, a group that’s often aligned with AIPAC’s endorsed candidates, offers some clues for where the AIPAC endorsements go next. DMFI weighed in on Democratic candidates in messy, open primaries in Oregon and Virginia. Like AIPAC, DMFI is also backing Joanna Weiss, Min’s opponent.
Some candidates are even hoping to lure AIPAC— and the rush of cash it brings— into their races. In the newly drawn, deep-blue Alabama House race, Anthony Daniels, the minority leader in the Alabama House of Representatives, touted an AIPAC endorsement on his website, but the group said it hadn’t backed him, according to Jewish Insider.
The expansiveness of AIPAC’s battlefield primarily comes from its roster of mega-donors. They’re backed by Democrats, like media executive Haim Saban, and Republicans, like former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus and billionaire financier Paul Singer. But those GOP donors give progressives, they believe, an opening to attack AIPAC, aiming to turn their endorsement toxic in primaries. They also often point to AIPAC’s support of congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election.
“A handful of Republican billionaire mega-donors are using AIPAC to spend in Democratic primaries against Black and brown progressives, funding primary campaigns against the most popular and progressive members, so this should be a scandal,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that’s positioned against AIPAC. “The whole of the Democratic Party should be united in opposition to this.”
Min, the California state senator who has been pummeled by AIPAC-funded attack ads in the lead-up to his March 5 primary, has also tried to turn the group’s conservative financiers into a political foil. His campaign blasted Weiss, his Democratic opponent, as having a “cozy relationship with dark Republican money.”
In recent weeks, AIPAC’s super PAC has spent at least $4.6 million on anti-Min television ads and mailers. The ads make no mention of his position on Israel— the same strategy they deployed in 2022 primaries. Instead, they largely focus on Min’s arrest last May for drunk driving— a central plank in Weiss’ argument that Min is too risky a choice for Democrats fighting to keep the toss-up Orange County district that Rep. Katie Porter held by less than four points last cycle.
AIPAC donors have showered Weiss with cash, donating nearly $400,000 via the group in February, making her one of the top beneficiaries of AIPAC bundling so far this cycle.
The reasons for AIPAC’s anti-Min barrage are somewhat inscrutable. While the Israel-Hamas war has exposed deep rifts in the Democratic party as a whole, neither Min nor Weiss had been especially vocal about their positions on the war. In particular, Min never publicly called for a cease-fire— a litmus test for many on the left— and he was endorsed by the majority of California’s Legislative Jewish Caucus.
Min’s campaign attributed the dust-up with AIPAC to criticism he made of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in private conversations with members, as well as him being endorsed by J Street in the past.
…AIPAC is becoming an existential threat for progressives, who are bracing to be hit hardest. Progressives acknowledge they won’t be able to keep pace financially, but they plan to lean on their candidates’ organizing strength and connections to their districts.
“If AIPAC opens up their checkbook, we’re going to be there again to play the role we’ve played before, [so] we are prepared, this cycle, to defend our incumbents,” said Maurice Mitchell, political director for the Working Families Party. “We can never go dollar for dollar, but our goal is to be competitive and we’re going to do that.”
One blueprint is Rep. Summer Lee’s 2022 victory, when she narrowly won an expensive battle against AIPAC-endorsed attorney, Steve Irwin. Lee tapped into a deep network of organizing muscle, built when she ousted a Democratic incumbent for her state house seat in 2018. Lee started 2024 with nearly $1.2 million in the bank, largely raised from grassroots donors who have also been activated by the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“These candidates have a really good ground game and strong community ties, so it takes even more special interest money to overcome that,” said Abbas Alawieh, a Democratic strategist who previously served as Bush’s chief-of-staff. “It’s clear that AIPAC money does have an impact, but it does not erase the trust these candidates can build with communities.”
They also see it as a long-term public relations battle they can win with Democratic voters, as long as they “[understand] that AIPAC is the arm of the Republican Party,” said Ben-Ami.
“[AIPAC] is doing the dirty work of the [Republican National Committee] when it drives a wedge in the Democratic Party,” he continued. “The strategy is to ensure that the mainstream of the Democratic Party understands exactly how extreme and toxic AIPAC has become.”
AIPAC certainly is doing the GOP’s dirty work but it has also contributed massively to Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar and Ritchie Torres, who are seen as part of the pro-genocide wing of the Democratic Party. Jen Perelman, the civil liberties candidate taking on Debbie Wasserman Schultz this cycle just told me that “AIPAC has nothing to do with Judaism or the safety and security of the Jewish people. AIPAC is nothing more than a well-funded foreign hate group that we allow to control our country. Imagine if something called the American Russian Political Action Committee was spending $100 million to defeat Democrats. Do you think that our political misleadership class would be ok with THAT?” This mailer gives you an idea who AIPAC loves the most:
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