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Bernie Sanders Leads Senators in Demand to End Super PACs in Democratic Primaries
“We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people."
Apr 27, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading a coalition of Democratic senators pushing for the party's leaders to require candidates to swear off billionaire- and corporate-backed super PACs, or political action committees, in this year's primary elections.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) joined the independent senator from Vermont to send a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Sunday.
Five of the senators are members of a group of Senate Democrats known as the "Fight Club" that has formed to oppose Schumer's preferred candidates in contested Democratic primaries, many of whom are closely aligned with the party's traditional corporate backers.
While the senators applauded the DNC's resolution last month broadly condemning the influence of dark money in party elections, calling it an "important first step," they said Democratic leaders needed to take more "concrete steps to curb the influence of dark money," particularly the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
"Corporate-funded super PACs are shaping the 2026 elections as we speak, and the scale of their resources is unprecedented," the senators said. "Crypto-aligned groups are preparing to spend $200 million, and AIPAC-affiliated groups already control more than $90 million. The AI industry has already spent over $185 million this year alone. These sums are being deployed to influence Democratic primaries and overwhelm candidates who rely on grassroots support."
April's broad anti-dark money resolution was passed by the DNC in lieu of one that directly singled out “the growing influence” of AIPAC, specifically over its more than $100 million spending blitz in 2024 to oust progressive candidates. Despite a dramatic shift toward opposition to Israel among Democratic voters over the past three years, that resolution was voted down by a DNC panel.
AIPAC continues to dump massive amounts of money behind its preferred candidates. The senators' letter notes that "in Illinois alone, outside groups spent over $50 million in recent Democratic primaries." Nearly half of that money was spent by AIPAC, which secretly funneled money to support its candidates using shell groups that appeared to be unaffiliated.
The group has used similar tactics in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Ala Stanford, a candidate for Pennsylvania's 3rd District in Philadelphia, was recently revealed to have received $500,000 worth of backing from AIPAC through a super PAC despite claiming to have received no support from the Israel lobby.
Meanwhile, in Maine, a clique of Republican billionaires who back Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)—including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Palantir CEO Alex Karp—also recently dropped $2 million to fund an ad campaign seeking to hamper the chances of the Democratic Senate primary front-runner Graham Platner.
"We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people," the senators said in Sunday's letter.
The senators noted Schumer's past statement that overturning the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the door for the flood of corporate money into elections by allowing individuals to independently spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, was "probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy.”
They said that while reversing the ruling remained a "critical long-term goal," the party "has the authority—and the responsibility—to act now with clear, enforceable rules."
"National and state parties should require all Democratic candidates to sign a pledge opposing billionaire- and corporate-backed super PAC spending on their behalf in Democratic primaries," they said. "The DNC, state parties, and committees working to elect Democrats to the House and Senate have many potential tools at their disposal to enforce that pledge, including withholding endorsements for those who make endorsements in the primary, and they should use whatever tools necessary to do so."
Sanders has said that simply requiring candidates to take a pledge is not enough and that party leaders need to be diligent about holding them to it.
“If the Democrats are going to be honest and consistent in terms of their concerns about money and politics, they’ve got to clean up, in my view, their own house immediately,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “That means getting super PACs out of Democratic primaries, congressional as well as presidential.”
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Dem Candidate for Philly House Seat Caught Hiding Over $500K in Secret AIPAC Funds
Ala Stanford, who's running for Pennsylvania's 3rd district, has repeatedly claimed that using the term genocide to describe Israel's actions in Gaza is "hurtful" to those accused, even tantamount to using the "N-word."
Apr 24, 2026
As the Israel lobby's influence grows overwhelmingly toxic among Democratic voters, the current frontrunner for one of America's bluest congressional districts has been caught trying to hide financial backing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The Philadelphia pediatric surgeon, Dr. Ala Stanford, who is running for the open seat in Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district, has denied receiving any funds from AIPAC.
"That's not me... I did not accept money from AIPAC," Stanford said at an event in late March when confronted about previous reporting that the super political action committee (PAC) supporting her, the 314 Action Fund, had acted as a secret pass-through for AIPAC in previous elections.
But following a new report published by Drop Site News on Thursday, co-founder Ryan Grim said, "We now know this is a flat-out lie."
Using federal campaign filings, Grim and Capitol Hill correspondent Julian Andreone reported that AIPAC has been secretly directing money to back Stanford's campaign using the 314 Action Fund, which has spent more than $2.6 million supporting the candidate.
The PAC is billed as a fund to support “pro-science” candidates and recruits doctors to run for federal office. But its most recent monthly report revealed a $500,000 donation from the Kimbark Foundation, whose only other donation was another $500,000 to the EDW Action Fund, which has also been used as an AIPAC shell organization.
In 2024, AIPAC used EDW—which describes itself as an organization to elect pro-choice candidates—to secretly give money to a another pediatrician, Dr. Maxine Dexter, who is now a US representative for Oregon's 3rd district, helping her oust her rival, Susheela Jayapal, the older sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who has a similar record for supporting Palestinian rights amid Israel's genocide in Gaza.
In the first quarter of 2026, Stanford also received more than $27,000 from major AIPAC donors via the group Democracy Engine, which The Guardian has described as "a donation platform that allows unpopular PACs to obscure their donations" and which has been used by AIPAC to fundraise against incumbents like former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamal Bowman (D-NY).
That AIPAC would drop big money to back Stanford becomes less surprising given her opponent, Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb (D-200), who has called for an arms embargo against Israel and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
According to a recent poll commissioned by the 314 Action Fund, Stanford leads the race with about 28% support compared with 23% for Rabb.
However, Rabb netted a major endorsement on Thursday from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the nation's most prominent progressive politicians and a potential 2028 presidential contender. He has racked up others from Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America, and other Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Ro Khanna (Calif.).
While Rabb has condemned politicians who refuse to refer to Israel's destruction of Gaza and killing of more than 75,000 Palestinians as a "genocide"—a position shared by the vast majority of Democratic voters—Stanford has suggested that belief is tantamount to hate speech.
“I know when you use the G-word how hurtful it is to a group of people,” she said in a March interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s like someone saying the N-word around me. I don’t want to hear that. And every time you shout that from the rooftops, how many people are you hurting?”
After those comments were met with backlash, she has struggled to respond when asked to clarify her beliefs on the topic. When voters pressed her to use the word "genocide" during a candidate forum earlier this week, her answer appeared to leave many dissatisfied.
A voter asked if Israel's actions in Gaza constituted genocide. Stanford stood in silence for around 30 seconds before deflecting to an anecdote about her work during the Covid-19 pandemic. "I don't owe anybody anything," she said.
She then responded, "I can say genocide if you'd like me to say it," not naming Israel specifically. When the voter asked her if Israel's actions constituted one, he was told to "be quiet" by another attendee. When the voter responded, Stanford asked him, “Can you please be respectful for her?”
“I am someone who took an oath to do no harm, so when I made the statement, I made it because for those who have been a victim of genocide, whose families are still suffering, it’s hurtful to them,” Stanford said, seeming to mean victims other than those in Gaza. “For Israelis who have been accused of committing it, it’s hurtful for them,” she continued.
After the comments prompted angry reactions from the crowd, Stanford shouted, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" before saying, "All I have ever done is to give. It's selfless." She then said she apologized if she "hurt" the voters who confronted her.
Erik Polyak, the executive director of 314 Action, did not answer specific questions about its support from AIPAC when asked by Drop Site, instead generally emphasizing its general mission to "elect doctors and scientists."
Polyak noted that the group had opposed AIPAC's preferred candidate, Laura Fine, in last month's race for Illinois' 9th congressional district in Chicago, instead backing the somewhat more Israel-critical Daniel Biss, who narrowly defeated the Palestinian-American Kat Abughazaleh for the Democratic nomination.
In that race and others in Chicago, AIPAC used nearly identical tactics to those deployed in Philadelphia. It funneled $1.5 million through the group Elect Chicago Women to fund attack ads against Biss, and used another shadow group, the Chicago Progressive Partnership, to fund ads boosting another marginal left-wing candidate, Bushra Amiwala, which helped splinter the progressive bloc supporting Abughazaleh.
Similar tactics were less successful last week in New Jersey, where Analilia Mejía, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), clinched the Democratic nomination despite her primary opponent pulling in $350,000 from an AIPAC donor who had also bankrolled the effort to oust Jayapal.
As both Democratic and Republican candidates increasingly seek to prove their anti-establishment credibility by swearing off donations from AIPAC and other lobbying groups, Grim said that it'll be difficult for voters to take them seriously unless the parties adopt rules requiring greater transparency.
"One thing Democrats and Republicans, through the [Democratic National Committee] and [Republican National Committee], could actually do, if they don't want to ban AIPAC spending in primaries altogether, is say, fine: AIPAC can spend just like anybody else, but like everybody else, they have to do it through their regular super PAC and be transparent about it," he said. "Then let voters decide."
He called on party leaders to “stop making voters play forensic detective and chase money from some dark money foundation to a PAC to another PAC with all of them using names that have nothing to do with AIPAC or Israel, only to learn after the election that it was actually AIPAC money.”
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AIPAC Is Wasting Its Money on Democrats (And That's a Good Thing)
Let’s do the math on congressional votes this week and AIPAC’s return on investment with Democratic lawmakers.
Apr 17, 2026
The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies have long been considered one of the strongest lobbies in Washington, exercising outsized influence, especially on US policies toward Israel and the Middle East. Recently, its purported muscle has come under question, and votes in Congress the last two days show why, or at least that there is a stark partisan divide.
For all the hundreds of millions of dollars AIPAC and its allies have given to Democrats, they got exactly 14 votes from Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate over the last two days on four key votes regarding the war on Iran and US weapons transfers to Israel, which computes to a paltry bang for the buck.
The votes were on Iran War Powers Resolutions in both Houses of Congress to oppose the Trump Administration’s deeply unpopular, reckless participation in the war on Iran, and on two resolutions to stop US Caterpillar bulldozers, used to demolish Palestinian homes, and 12,000 half-ton bombs, used by Israel against Palestinians, Iranians and Lebanese. All these votes (three in the Senate, one in the House) failed along closely divided, nearly total partisan lines, so one might consider the votes a win for AIPAC, Netanyahu, and President Trump.
But let’s do the math on these votes and AIPAC’s return on investment with Democratic Members of Congress. AIPAC had a possible total of 355 Congressional votes cast it could have gotten—47 Senate Democrats, times the three Senate votes, for a total of 141 possible votes, on War Powers, bulldozers and bombs, and 214 Democrats in the House on the Iran War Powers Resolution vote, for a grand total of 355 possible Democratic votes. It got 14 votes, for a batting average of 0.039, or just under 4% of possible votes if you prefer. Here are the Democratic members who voted AIPAC’s way, to allow Trump to continue the war, and to ship weapons to Israel:
Senate War Powers Resolution—one vote, Sen. John Fetterman (PA)
House War Powers Resolution—one vote, Rep. Jared Golden (ME)
Senate Joint Resolutions of Disapproval—12 votes (seven on bulldozers, four on bombs)—Sens. Chuck Schumer (NY), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Chris Coons (DE), Richard Blumenthal (CT), Fetterman again (twice), Katherine Cortez Masto (NV), Jacky Rosen (NV), Gary Peters (MI), Jack Reed (RI), Mark Warner (VA), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).
That’s it, 14 votes, cast by eleven senators (with Fetterman three times) and one member of the House. Schumer, in particular, once again showed how out of touch he is as Minority Leader, prompting this video from US Rep. Ro Khanna, a leader of pro-peace forces in Congress, calling on Schumer to step down.
For Americans seeking a more peaceful foreign policy, and to avoid domestic and global economic shocks caused by senseless wars, AIPAC and the “pro-Israel lobby” becoming more or less isolated in one party would be a welcome development.
The poster child for AIPAC’s lousy votes per dollar spent, and he is easy to pick on, is US Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO). AIPAC and co. bought him his seat (according to the websiteTrack AIPAC, for about $17 million) to oust Cori Bush because she dared to author the House Gaza ceasefire resolution. Yet Bell voted right the correct way on the War Powers Resolution. AIPAC must be very disappointed in him. And, it should be noted, Cori Bush may well get her seat back from Bell in the upcoming midterm election.
None of this is to say AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby should be considered a toothless paper tiger. Its grip on the Republican Party, which voted almost entirely to continue the war and keep sending weapons to Israel, is vice-like. Only two Republicans, US Rep Thomas Massie and Senator Rand Paul, both from Kentucky, voted in favor of the Iran War Powers Resolutions, and no Republican senator, including Paul, voted to stop the bombs and bulldozers to Israel.
According to Federal Election Commission records, AIPAC and its Super PAC, the United Democracy Project, spent nearly $127 million in the 2023-2024 election cycle, a good chunk of it in Democratic primaries to oust progressives critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza (former Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s primary in New York was another high profile race, in addition to Cori Bush’s, with AIPAC spending $9 million to defeat Bowman).
Looking ahead to 2028, all of the Democratic Senators who are allegedly thinking of running for president (Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, Mark Kelly, Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen) voted for the Iran War Powers Resolution and the resolutions to prohibit the weapons transfers to Israel. Booker, Gallego, and Kelly had voted against prior Joint Resolutions of Disapproval on weapons transfers to Israel brought forward by Sanders, so it certainly could be asserted they want to get right with the Democratic voter base. And they should. Exit polls showed a key reason Kamala Harris lost in battleground states in 2024 was her refusal to break from former President Biden’s embrace of Israel, either as Vice President or as the Democratic standard bearer.
Unquestioned support for Israel used to be axiomatic in Washington, but it no longer is. AIPAC and its allies may soon find themselves limited to the work of swaying Republicans, as polls indicate even core conservative demographics shifting away from their unwavering support for Israel by double digits. And nobody should expect AIPAC to taper their financial interference over Democrats either. A recent brag video asserts AIPAC is the top donor to African American, Latino and Asian American Members of Congress, mostly Democrats.
For Americans seeking a more peaceful foreign policy, and to avoid domestic and global economic shocks caused by senseless wars, AIPAC and the “pro-Israel lobby” becoming more or less isolated in one party would be a welcome development. The upcoming mid-term elections should tell us a lot about who has more power, AIPAC or the American voters.
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