'AIPAC Getting Desperate’: Pro-Israel Super PAC Tries to Splinter Left Vote in Illinois House Primary

With just days until the Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, Chicago voters found their social media feeds blanketed with an ad praising a candidate considered well out of the running in Tuesday’s race.

"Bushra Amiwala is the real deal, fighting for real economic justice," concludes the 30-second commercial, which touts the 28-year-old activist's backing of Medicare for All, student loan forgiveness, and other policies aimed at economic justice.

As it came to light that a political action committee associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was behind the ad, Amiwala said she "could not be more disgusted" by the campaign.

“Let me be clear,” she said. “We don’t want it, we didn’t ask for it, and we’re demanding they stop.”

The ad boosting Amiwala was part of a $100,000 spending blitz by the Chicago Progressive Partnership, which The New York Times describes as "a super PAC that has disclosed few details about its backers but shares vendors with groups linked to [AIPAC]."

The pro-Israel lobbying group is not throwing resources behind Amiwala, a fierce defender of Palestinian rights, to boost her campaign, but to sap the momentum of Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive candidate who has surged to within arm's length of leading the race in the weeks ahead of the March 17 primary.

AIPAC has spent more than $1 million trying to stop Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian-American journalist and media analyst, from taking the seat held by the retiring incumbent Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat.

Abughazaleh, whose grandparents fled Jerusalem during the 1948 Nakba, has called Israel's US-backed military campaign in Gaza a "genocide," and has called for the conditioning of military aid to Israel—including funds for its Iron Dome defense system—on an end to its human rights violations.

She has also opposed laws criminalizing participation in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to pressure Israel to change its conduct using economic means.

The most recent poll, from March 9-10, shows Abughazaleh trailing just four points behind frontrunner Daniel Biss, the Democratic mayor of Evanston, Illinois.

Though he recently has described AIPAC as "toxic" and has called for the conditioning of some "offensive" aid to Israel, Biss described BDS as a tactic "used to advance antisemitic ideology" and said he supports the "special relationship" between the US and Israel in a January blog post.

He has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of creating a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza, but has stopped short of using the word "genocide."

AIPAC, meanwhile, has thrown more than $4.6 million behind an even more pro-Israel candidate, state Sen. Laura Fine (D-9), who during the race has firmly supported full military funding for the country "without additional conditions," even after its military campaign has killed at least 72,000 people in Gaza and independent estimates show even higher death tolls.

Biss has also become a target of $1.5 million in spending from another AIPAC-aligned group, Elect Chicago Women, which has run ads attacking him over a vote to cut Medicaid and for having broken his pledge to serve a full term as mayor before seeking higher office.

The 9th District is one of four Democratic primaries across Illinois where AIPAC and aligned groups have spent more than $15.8 million combined to support pro-Israel candidates, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings analyzed by the group AIPAC Tracker.

Like in Illinois-9, these groups have shied away from making their connections with AIPAC known—as Democratic voters overwhelmingly distrust its branding—and have attacked their opponents on issues not related to Israel and often from the left.

AIPAC has already attempted this tactic in New Jersey's 11th district, where it backfired tremendously last month: Rather than helping a right-wing candidate, the group's attack ads claiming that the liberal Zionist former Rep. Tom Malinowsky supported US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) led votes to flow to Analilia Mejía, a progressive endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who ultimately emerged victorious.

"Massive outside spending from corporate PACs and groups like AIPAC has long been used to overwhelm grassroots candidates and distort the democratic process, reflecting the priorities of wealthy donors rather than everyday voters," Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution, told Common Dreams. "But recent races show that strategy does not always deliver the results these interests expect. From New Jersey’s 11th district to North Carolina, where Nida Allam came within a fraction of a percent of victory, voters are increasingly questioning the flood of outside money in their elections."

Nevertheless, AIPAC is using the same playbook in Illinois.

Axios noted that last week, the Chicago Progressive Partnership began targeting tech entrepreneur Junaid Ahmed, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Justice Democrat-backed candidate in Illinois' 8th district, not for his outspoken criticisms of Israel but for his large personal fortune and his investments in Tesla, which it used to tie him to its CEO Elon Musk, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump.

Abughazaleh has been hit with similar attacks claiming she'd received funds from "right-wing donors" and criticizing her support for Republican Marco Rubio in the 2016 presidential election, when she was in high school.

In the final days of the campaign, Abughazaleh has described AIPAC's tactics against her as a sign of "desperation" in the face of growing "Abughamania."

With Fine largely out of the running, she said the group has pivoted toward "the only horse left they could have in this race: Mayor Daniel Biss."

Abughazaleh described the group's sudden launch of ads supporting Amiwala "to try to split the vote" as something that "has never been seen before."

On Sunday, Abughazaleh won a key endorsement, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American in Congress. She also has the backing of another leading progressive figure in Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), as well as the Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement.

“AIPAC’s guiding principle when buying elections: Just lie,” said Justice Democrats in response to a report on AIPAC’s tactics to divide left-wing voters. “Spend millions to lie about who you are, lie about who you’re supporting, lie about your agenda. They know that they are so toxic and their policies are so unpopular that being truthful would lose them every election.”