Let’s Check In on AIPAC’s Assault on the Squad

In the weeks after October 7, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee took aim at members of Congress who expressed vocal opposition to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Focusing on the so-called Squad, the Israel lobby is spending millions to push out members of Congress they view as a threat to the U.S.–Israel relationship. But Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., among the Squad members who called for an early ceasefire and whom AIPAC had been hoping to take out, cruised to victory in April. Now the lobby group’s sights are set on Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th Congressional District and Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. 

This week on Deconstructed, Justice Democrats Usamah Andrabi and Alexandra Rojas join Ryan Grim to discuss their organizing efforts to counter campaigns taking aim at progressive members of Congress. 

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

In the weeks after October 7, AIPAC declared that it was going to launch an assault on the so-called Squad, planning to wipe out what they said was a growing threat to the U.S.-Israel relationship inside Congress. After spending millions in a failed effort to stop Summer Lee from winning her seat in 2022, they set their sights on her for removal in 2024. Yet, last week, she won in a landslide.

The group’s next targets are Jamal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in St. Louis, both of whom they’ve managed to recruit challengers against. To talk about those races, and also how they managed to fend off the threat against Summer Lee, we’re joined by Alexandra Rojas — a founder of Justice Democrats and now it’s executive director — and Usamah Andrabi, who was working very closely with the Summer Lee campaign throughout the race.

Usamah and Alexandra, welcome to Deconstructed.

Alexandra Rojas: Thanks so much for having us.

RG: Alexandra, let’s start with you. I want to start with the specific race that got us talking about Justice Democrats pushback against AIPAC, and that’s Summer Lee’s recent victory. Tell us who Summer Lee is, and how you guys first met Summer.

AR: Yeah. Summer Lee has been a transformational leader in Western Pennsylvania over the past five years. We ended up recruiting her to run for Congress but, for years before that, she — alongside so many organizations and fellow leaders in western Pennsylvania — have been building a movement that has been preparing to overcome not just AIPAC, but Republican billionaires. Like Jeffrey Yass, who spent in this race — but has historically spent lots of money — fighting against public education and a number of other causes in western Pennsylvania.

So, when we met Summer, it was after she had helped elect — alongside a huge local movement — the city of Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor. Before that, she had started a pretty transformational movement to the school board and Woodland Hills school. And then, after all of that, she ended up defeating a 20-year incumbent to become western Pennsylvania’s first Black state senator. So, she is a history making powerhouse organizer.

And once we started talking back in 2021, it became clear that, regardless if incumbent Mike Doyle — who was the incumbent at the time — were to retire or not, she was going to be someone that this district could not only believe in, but ultimately elect as one of the people that has been just doing the work in the community, showing up year after year for all parts of the community.

So, that’s how we came into connection with her back in 2021, before she even decided to run for Congress. And we helped push her over the edge, talking about the level of resources that we were prepared to get behind her.

RG: In 2020, you helped add two Squad members — Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush — and I’m curious what the conversation was like with Summer Lee in 2021. You know, A, there’s an incumbent Democrat who’d been there for many years. That didn’t stop her from running in 2018, nor did it stop her from winning the legislative seat in 2018, but it’s a tall order. Like you said, she was doing so well at the local level, her movement really kind of taking over the power structure in Pittsburgh.

What was the argument that you made that she ought to now jump to the federal level? And what was the reticence, and what do you think pushed her over the top?

AR: Well, just to take a step back, our mission at Justice Democrats, just to reiterate, is to recruit and run progressive Candidates from working class backgrounds to grow the block of Squad members in Congress, this cycle and beyond. And so, like in some of the previous races you mentioned, whether it was Summer’s, Jamal’s, or Cori’s, Justice Democrats plays a really unique role in the way that we closely and directly interact with the candidates, from candidate recruitment all the way to when AIPAC decides to throw a punch at the very, very end.

And so, I think, for us, really looking at places like St. Louis, or places like Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania where, despite huge local establishment infrastructure and people that have been in office for decades, they had been able to overcome that. And it was also a situation where the communities that Summer had been representing have been largely left behind.

The other reason for us, too, is that there’s often a big national narrative about Pennsylvania. It’s a swing state, it’s very important to Democrats across the board, obviously in a moment like we’re heading in now in a presidential year, but also just in general for the progressive movement that we’re fighting for. This is a heavy union town, this is a big place of environmental racism, and the fight for a Green New Deal or what it looks like, to make sure that we protect everybody.

And so, in this particular race, it was, I think, a match of the infrastructure that the local movement had been building, that had been ready to overcome establishment structures, with also a big national need to get more champions in Congress that are going to fight for all of our communities, not just if it’s a blue district or not. We know that, unfortunately, incumbents get — especially in the Democratic Party — very relaxed after being in Congress for Decades, and not really feeling a real sense of urgency. And that’s what Summer and the whole movement in Pittsburgh was doing. They were bringing urgency.

They had elected the first state senator Black woman in Western Pennsylvania in the statehouse. They then elected the first Black mayor to represent the city of Pittsburgh through Ed Gainey. It was a natural succession, I think, to then make history by electing the first Black congresswoman to western Pennsylvania.

RG: And Usamah, in order to understand the ferocity of this 2024 race, I think we’ve got to go back to the 2022 race.

So, Doyle does end up stepping down, Lee runs. And, of course, whenever there’s an open seat in a blue district, it’s going to be a crowded field. But she was winning — running away. With a month-plus left in the campaign polls had her up, what? 25, 30 points? And then, kind of out of nowhere, AIPAC jumps into the race with millions of dollars in spending.

What was that like? How did that shape the race, and how did you guys respond?

Usamah Andrabi: Yeah, it was overwhelming, to say the least. And it was kind of a — really, not only in Summer’s Race, but for Democratic primaries writ large — moment-changing time where you all of a sudden won AIPAC — which had, prior to that cycle, never been involved directly in electoral politics, not have its own PAC and super PAC — came out, had a PAC, came out with a super PAC, and decided that they were going to spend $5 million in a race. And Democratic primaries are usually not that expensive, especially not open-seat, blue Democratic primaries.

And so, we saw just airwaves and mailboxes flooded with disinformation attack ads, from the vaguely named “United Democracy Project” that no one had any idea what this was about. And it kind of took us all— Not by surprise, because we had a feeling that AIPAC warned us, they started this super PAC, they were going to come in. But I don’t think any of us understood the sheer quantity of attacks that were going to come in.

And what we saw was kind of the GOP billionaire-funded super PAC playbook, which is: don’t talk about the issue you care about, just talk about how these people are not good enough Democrats. And so, you had a primary with five people in it and one Democratic state representative and, somehow, she’s the one who wasn’t a good enough Democrat, and would not be a good enough ally to President Biden. And that was what the attacks were.

There was no mention of Israel, there was no mention of Palestine. None of that. Just recycling old attacks against Summer that were, obviously, often dog whistles that we kind of see throughout AIPAC’s attacks against Black and brown politicians across the district.

And so, we were not the same well-funded campaign that we were this cycle. We were desperate to raise a lot more money to get on TV, to get more on mail, and to also talk to the press to expose to them in the nascent stages of who is actually funding these attacks. Because western Pennsylvania, if you had asked them two years ago who AIPAC is, they would have been like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

And so, we had a concerted effort to talk to local press and say, hey, look, the people who are funding this super PAC is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Their ads don’t mention Israel, and their donors are often Republican billionaires, and that’s what we saw. If you looked at the FEC filings last cycle, you could see Bernie Marcus, a Trump mega donor, giving $1 million to UDP, and then, two days later, UDP [spends] $1 million in PA 12. And so, it was a pretty clear through line.

That’s kind of what we started doing there, just trying to expose where these attacks were coming from to the best of our ability, while staying true to the values, and not letting millions of dollars in attacks allow us to — and allow Summer — to compromise on the value she was running on. There was no hiding from supporting Palestinian rights, or Medicare for all, or a Green New Deal.

RG: And it set up this interesting dynamic — and, maybe, Alexandra, you can take this — because, as you said, your organization is all about pushing the Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment in a more populist, progressive direction, to truly represent the working-class values that it claims that it ought to be representing.

But the interesting dynamic came — and Summer Lee talked about this with me in an interview she did, I think, maybe in 2022 — where, because she was getting hit with not being a good enough Democrat, the response that turned out to be effective was to put up an ad with her on stage with Joe Biden. And, with enough money behind that — and there was an independent expenditure coalition that came in toward the very end, and was able to kind of boost the message as well — that seemed to do the trick for enough voters who had gone wobbly under this barrage of AIPAC spending saying that Summer is radical, who can’t be trusted, and is going to, I don’t know. What is she going to do? Impeach Joe Biden or something? Or not support his agenda in Washington? Or something along those lines.

So, how long did it take for you guys to pick up on what is sort of an ironic dynamic for an insurgent organization that is often challenging the power structure of the Democratic Party?

AR: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And Usamah, who worked closely with the campaign on responding to a lot of these — I mean, we all did — can speak more to this, but I think we were pushing back against flat-out lies, right? Summer was the only democratically elected official in the race in 2022, and they were darkening her skin, and telling her she wasn’t a sufficient enough Democrat.

And, as you’ve talked to Summer, we, as elected officials, as progressives, we have to be holding our leaders accountable, even when they are within our own party, while also working with them to deliver real results right now for poor and working people that need their lives changed. And so, during that race, that’s what we did. And I think we learned a lot coming out of that race in particular about the types of attacks that we can expect from AIPAC super PAC United Democracy Project, which, Usamah will know, did not mention Israel once, even though that is where all of their funding, the motivation of their supporters goes to.

And so, we ended up right after this primary really taking a concerted effort to study how these ads performed, like the ones that Summer did, the ones that United Democracy Project did, to answer some of the questions that you’re bringing up. Which is, how Democratic voters feel, not just about AIPAC, but also these types of messages that are coming from them. That way, we can understand, one, we can meet Democratic voters where they’re at around answering lies, basically, that are being put out with how Summer, despite also being critical of President Biden, has worked very, very closely with him — that’s progress, that’s a good thing when our elected officials do that — while also studying what were the messages that that turned people off.

But yeah, Usamah, I don’t know if you want to share a little bit more on that.

RG: What did you find when you studied what worked in 2022, and what didn’t work? And how did that inform your approach in ’24?

UA: Yeah. I think what we found more than anything was that AIPAC pedals in disinformation, and the greatest resolve and response to that is to just speak the truth and expose the truth of what’s going on. Not only by saying, all right, you guys want to spend millions of dollars talking about who’s a good Democrat? Let’s talk about that nine of the top ten mega donors to your super PAC are Republican billionaires and Donald Trump mega donors. Let’s talk about that you guys endorse 109 insurrectionists and 200-plus antiabortion extremists. And, also, let’s name that Summer Lee is running in a Democratic primary. She’s a Democrat, she’s a democratically elected representative, and she’s running to be the Democratic representative in Congress.

And it might sound like to outside viewers who know Summer and see it, it’s like, obviously she’s a Democrat. But when you are a voter in PA 12, average voters do not care about everything that’s going on in Washington, D.C., and they see three-and-a-half million dollars of ads that say, this woman’s face next to Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, you are going to start believing what you see from a super PAC called United Democracy Project.

And so, really, that was the approach there, to just clarify the truth here. It’s just saying, look, this is a Democrat. She obviously supports this president who’s our current president. And, also, that doesn’t mean that she’s going to compromise on any values. She’s going to push this party further to where they need to be, and she’s going to push for things that maybe the president disagrees with, but that’s the point of a Summer Lee in Congress, and that’s the point of the power that they built in western Pennsylvania. The work that they’ve done over the last few years has not been, let’s figure out how we can just build the most lukewarm blue wall. It’s, how can we transform western Pennsylvania to be the model for progressives across the country?

And now you have a congresswoman Summer Lee, a mayor Ed Gainey, a county executive Sara Innamorato, who have all replaced what used to be a far more establishment, right wing sort of government. And that doesn’t happen overnight; it takes years and years of building, that I think Summer’s led on.

RG: Yeah, I thought the ads that you guys ran — or that Summer Lee’s campaign ran — were kind of instructive on that point. They do hit some populist themes like not [being] beholden to lobbyists and corporate PACs. But, in general, they feel like fairly standard populist Democratic ads, [saying] you’re going to get the job done.

Summer Lee Supporter, Campaign Ad: I’ve known Summer Lee since 2017. I know that Republican-funded super PACs are lying about her again.

Summer Lee: Because, in Washington, I’ve been on the front lines standing up to GOP extremism, fighting to restore our abortion rights, taking on MAGA extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and saving Social Security and Medicare from GOP budget cuts.

Summer Lee Supporter, Campaign Ad: In just one year, Summer’s brought over a billion dollars back to western Pennsylvania.

Summer Lee Supporter, Campaign Ad: Money for housing, money for schools, money for clean air and water.

RG: But nowhere in those ads do you hear Green New Deal, Medicare for All. It’s not a kind of Bernie Sanders 2016 or 2020 campaign ad. So, what is the thinking behind that messaging?

UA: Yeah. I think it is that kind of combination of messaging, and it’s talking about— What we saw so often in the last cycle was that the big establishments say, you won’t be able to get anything done, you won’t have seniority on these committees, you won’t be able to actually deliver for this district. And that was the biggest criticism going into Summer going into Congress.

And so, to combat that, one, not only did, from the beginning on the official side, that office churned out work, had amazing constituent services and casework, opened a ton of satellite offices in parts of the district that no one used to give a shit about. But, also, they delivered legitimately a billion dollars in just one year to that district, and she had one of the most productive freshman years out of any freshman member of Congress this Congress.

And It was not just, here’s a check to some organization you don’t know about. It was delivering money on the priorities she ran on. So, it was delivering money for clean air and water. It was creating thousands of green jobs and investing in green manufacturing. It was expanding affordable housing.

And so, I think the vision that Summer proved to everyone was that progressives do fight for a Green New Deal, they do fight for a Medicare For All, and those are things we must deliver on. And, in the path to delivering on that, we have to deliver results every day right now. We have to create green jobs today, we have to clean air and water in the Mon Valley, where it has the worst pollution in the country right now. And so, it’s looking like results every day, but still staying true to those values by saying, we’re still fighting for a Green New Deal, we’re still fighting for a future where no one has health care debt. And we’re going to do that on a day-by-day basis by delivering this money right now. And we’re still not beholden to corporations or CEOs.

And so, I think Summer has shown you a model for how progressives can build that vision across the country. If it can happen in western PA, it can happen anywhere.

AR: I’ll also just come in to say, last year, as we’ve talked about, was AIPAC’s first way into elections ever, right? And it was something like 26 million across nine different races. Summer’s was the only working class candidate that was able to put the coalition together to overcome a lot of that.

But a big part of the election — separate from the ads, but something that was really big — at the end of last year, AIPAC threatened that they were going to spend about a hundred million to unseat the entire Squad and named Summer as one of their top targets. Republican billionaires ended up jumping in and spending at the end of the race, and it was very, very important — I think for Summer, but also for progressives in general — to talk about how much they’ve delivered right now, while we also have the foresight and vision to fight for the future that we want.

But that was a big part of how we had to prepare this year. We know that we’re not going to be able to match them, necessarily, and the campaigns, dollar for dollar, but what we can do, and what we did a lot in this race in addition to paid media was a lot of earned media. And it was a lot of earned media that was informed by a lot of research that we at Justice Democrats led well over a year ago, after basically studying the ads that we just talked about that happened in the 2022 race, to be able to inform and understand how Democratic voters think about AIPAC, think about some of these attacks.

And what we learned through that process is that there is very little anybody that is outside of the beltway in Washington — particularly Democratic voters in all of these primaries — knows about AIPAC. And once they know about AIPAC, they see where the funding is coming from, particularly how much alignment there is with Donald Trump’s mega donors, when pretty much every terrible GOP that you can think of, those types of donors.

And so, in addition to the paid media effort, there was a ton of Summer’s own time, her campaign, Justice Democrats, and a whole coalition that ultimately ended up launching a reject-AIPAC campaign earlier this year, but it was informed by over a year’s worth of research. Really trying to obviously balance what we all know to be true about the popularity of our ideas and, also, gathering as much intel and data as we can — because we know we’re going to get outspent — about what messages are going to actually be the most effective when pushing it back against this massive right-wing network.

And I think that piece is really important, because we’ve seen stories coming out of this race that all the politics are changing, right? All of that. Which I think is very true, and is a huge credit to all of the students on the front lines right now, the activists and organizers that are out in the streets. But it also takes a lot of work in advance to prepare for the onslaught that comes.

In 2022, it was recruiting a candidate like Summer. And I think this year it was really making intentional investments into gathering data, messaging, everything that we needed to supply our candidates, our allies in the movement, and media and everybody behind the scenes, to make sure they knew who AIPAC was, and what is resonating amongst Democratic voters.

RG: In what was a huge win for you guys, an AIPAC super PAC ended up not deciding to spend in the race. Now, Jeff Yass, a Republican billionaire with close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu — we’ll talk about him in a minute, my colleague Akela Lacy did some great reporting on him, this cycle and previously — but on the AIPAC point, I’m curious if there was a moment that you realized, OK, we have done enough work, and we have built up a strong enough foundation, that AIPAC isn’t going to want to come in here.

Because it’s not as if, with a hundred million dollar potential spend, AIPAC necessarily lack the resources to wage a losing campaign. There’s a weird dynamic where they don’t want to lose — and maybe you can talk about this dynamic that is not necessarily intuitive — but my understanding of it is that, OK, yes, they could raise $5 million and have a 5 percent chance of beating Summer Lee late in the game. And, why not? Because they have $100 million, why not spend the 5 million?

My understanding of it is, eventually, it does then get more difficult down the line to go to those same donors and say, OK, now, 2026, 2028, we want to spend another 100 million, another 100 million. And they say, well, wait a minute. You’ve spent $5 million against her three times in a row. At some point, $15 million starts to add up.

So, why do you think they didn’t spend?

UA: Yeah. I think what happened here is, AIPAC got a little ahead of themselves. I think, at the start of this cycle, they were like, we’re going to spend a hundred million dollars, and we’re going to take out every member of the Squad.

And you saw them naming everyone, that they were going to target everyone. It wasn’t just Cori and Jamal. It was Ayana, it was Summer, it was Rashida, it was Ilhan. And that was their goal. And I think, as time progressed and as they saw, one, these people are raising amazing amounts of money, they are organizing the coalition. They’re not going to be taken by surprise like they were the last cycle. They started walking that back, and they started saying, OK, no, we’re actually going to focus on these six, and now we’re just going to focus on these four.

And they actively tried to recruit in Summer’s race, they looked for a challenger. Akela actually reported on that, they tried to find local electeds to primary Summer and they couldn’t. They polled in that district, we saw it. We saw a very classic Mellman poll in that district. And I think what they found was, it’s not viable for them.

And so, now, obviously, they have sort of rebranded, and said, what we’re going to do, we’re just focusing on Jamal and Cori. Because, like you said, you’re absolutely right. I think halfway through this cycle, they realized they’re not going to get a bunch of W’s trying to challenge every member of the Squad. And, despite the fact that they do have just the money to kind of waste on those races, they saw that, one, that they were losing their grip over the Democratic Party, writ large — as they were going through this, as I think a Clinton administration official said, a political identity crisis — but, also, like you said, their donors are not going to accept just five losses and two wins. So, you even saw them spend a few thousand dollars in Danny Davis’s race, so that they could say they won that race, as if they were a part of that W.

And so, now it’s clear, one, for us, that after Summer’s victory, AIPAC has already failed at their one goal at the start of this cycle, which was to defeat the Squad. And their goal now is to double down and spend millions of dollars against the former middle school principal and nurse to show their GOP billionaire donors that they can win in a cycle. And I think, now, that’s why those two races especially feel like the fight for the soul of our Democratic Party.

RG: And Jeff Yass is a different question, because he doesn’t have to raise the money. He himself is a billionaire. So, if he wants to repeatedly lose, that’s his billionaire prerogative. And, in fact, that does seem to be almost the only thing that he does in Pennsylvania. It’s extraordinary how much money he puts into races across the state — not just in Summer’s race — that he then loses.

What was the effect of the amount of money he spent? And will it be over a million by the end, do you think? What was your read on how much he put in? I know by primary time It looked like only about eight or nine hundred thousand had been publicly reported.

UA: Yeah, I believe it was about 800k that’s been publicly reported, we’ll see if it’s more. And I think, like we’ve kind of said, call it Moderate PAC, call it AIPAC, call it DMFI, call it United Democracy Project, I think the pattern we’re seeing across the country is, GOP billionaires finding their pet project super PAC to target Black and brown Democrats and progressives in these primaries to elect right-wing Democrats that are aligned with corporate power and these super PACs and billionaires.

And so, I think Jeffrey Yass, as you noted, to anyone in Pennsylvania who’s involved in politics is enemy number one to anything you care about, be it abortion rights, or public education, or democracy. And so, it totally makes sense that someone like Summer Lee poses a personal threat to a Republican billionaire like that.

I think it was, good luck to him on his money, and continue to spending in failures. But I think it was a massive mistake for these people to go out and try and find a Republican billionaire to spend in this race, because that is a very clear story that Summer had been telling before that.

You know, when we were talking about waiting for AIPAC to come in, we were waiting for the Bernie Marcuses and Jan Koums and Paul Singers of the world to come and spend millions of dollars in this race. And, sure, they didn’t come in, but we just had a different billionaire with a different name that albeit was known to more Pennsylvanians.

And so, I think, really, what you did is localize a Republican billionaire in that fight to make this fight even more clear about who Summer is, and who her opponents are. And I think it’s the same struggle you were seeing with Jamal Bowman and George Latimer and Cori Bush and Wesley Bell. You know, you have the Bernie Marcuses and Paul Singers on Wesley Bell and George Latimer’s side, and you have everyday people and the grassroots movement behind Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman.

RG: In the time that I’ve got left with you, let’s talk about those two races.

So, the nurse that you mentioned, Cori Bush, and the principal you mentioned, Jamal Bowman, do have candidates, they were able to recruit challengers that they’re comfortable with. Let’s talk about Bush; she’s running against Wesley Bell and another candidate who’s in the race, which maybe could help Cori Bush? I’m curious for your take because, in my experience, it’s easier to take somebody out if you just have a one-on-one shot.

But how’s Bush looking against Wesley Bell? He’s a quote-unquote “progressive prosecutor,” we covered his race, I think, in 2018 when he first ran. That kind of Soros-backed progressive prosecutor organization rallied behind him. And so, he had been not necessarily that far from Bush, but it seems like when he saw that AIPAC was going in full speed against Cori Bush, he dropped out of the Senate race, which he was going to lose — he was just running to raise his profile — and decided to run for the House instead, to kind of ride this river of AIPAC cash.

How’s the Bush-Bell race looking?

UA: I think that race is really interesting, because you have a man who is, like you said, running against Josh Hawley, who I think dropped out for whatever amount of money AIPAC said that they would get in for, to now be running against Cori Bush. And now he shares donors with Josh Hawley, he’s taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Josh Hawley’s donors, and other antiabortion Republican Missouri politicians’ donors. And so, I don’t think anything could embody more of what an empty vessel and empty suit looks like than Wesley Bell going against Cori Bush.

All he has really spoken on is his record as a prosecutor. You don’t hear any vision for everyday people in that district, you don’t hear any policies or things that he cares about. It’s really just referencing what small levels of reforms he may have been a part of on the prosecutorial level, while what he’s going to do is let AIPAC do all the attacks against this working-class Black woman, former nurse who has been an abortion rights champion, been a champion against insurrectionists, been a champion for everyday people sleeping on the steps of the Capitol to stop an eviction moratorium. The contrast couldn’t be clearer in that race between those two folks.

And I think it makes sense that a Cori Bush is such a massive threat to the kind of Republican billionaires and right-wing movement that backs AIPAC, because nothing is a greater threat than a former single mother who’s lived homelessness, who’s lived through sexual and gun violence, who is willing to tell her abortion story, and is willing to put her body on the line for everyday people in that district. When I promise you Wesley Bell is not sleeping on any steps of the Capitol to stop an eviction moratorium.

RG: Cori Bush also learned from an unsuccessful race in 2018; you guys backed her then. Then she wins in 2020, wins reelection easily in 2022.

I’m curious, how big an issue is Israel-Palestine in this race? Because I wonder, like you had said, in 2022, none of the AIPAC super PAC ads ever touched on the issue, but the salience of it was lower, because it was pre-October 7, and there wasn’t a war and a plausible genocide according to the ICJ going on. So, has the fact that AIPAC is pouring so much money into the race itself been registering in the race?

AR: Honestly, I feel like they’re continuing to not run ads publicly on digital, at least right now, in those districts that are focused on what’s happening in Gaza right now. They’re continuing, it seems like, to do the same playbook as they’ve done. They polled very early about what attacks they want to hit on that are recycled from what they’ve had in previous years, except updated with information about particular issues that are really impacting certain voters. So, we haven’t seen it, and we haven’t seen AIPAC’s super PAC starting to spend. But what they have done is they’ve bundled over a million dollars directly to Wesley Bell and George Latimer’s campaigns that they’re now starting as those individual campaigns to spend. So, they are definitely here.

They are previewing, you know, Cori and Jamal’s opponents as their primary at their conferences, where they’re fundraising and bundling money. So, they’re definitely involved in the races and, I think, recognize the same thing we do, which is that Democratic Primary voters for the most part don’t know who AIPAC is. And when they do know who AIPAC is and where the money comes from, they don’t like that it’s basically obfuscating and funneling in GOP Donald Trump money into Democratic Primaries to challenge these incumbents.

And so, I think that it’s something that we’re going to continue to deal with. I think, as Usamah mentioned, there’s a lot throughout Wesley Bell’s career before he decided to switch over to challenging the first Black congresswoman the state of Missouri has ever had. He’s also not someone that has done well with his public service career, and that will be continuing to come out throughout the primary.

But I’ll also just say, in Jamal’s race, we’re talking about two very different districts, right? Two very different media markets. In St. Louis, what we’re worried about, the campaign and AIPAC will be able to run, it’s a relatively cheaper media market. If you move over to New York 16, it’s very different. It’s New York city, it’s definitely who has the most [and] can spend the most on things like cable and paid communications and stuff like that.

It’s also the place where redistricting has been something that the local political establishments have been very much— As Jamal in particular and candidates like Cori are truly, as Usamah said, the former principal, the former nurse, they are the most working-class champions in Congress right now. And they’re not like the politicos in the back rooms dealing with all of the redistricting stuff. And so, there have been, systematically, over the past two cycles for Jamal, a carving out of historic Black neighborhoods in his district.

Now, we still feel like we are in this fight, but it’s definitely been a process to get here. And I’d say that Latimer, George Latimer, who’s Jamal Bowman’s opponent, is the former county executive. He’s also been more similar to, I’d say, like an incumbent, because he’s been in the local and state political establishment for over 20 years. So, this is not someone that is some random outsider coming in. And, even to a large extent Bell, except maybe less so, this is someone that has been actively known to people as an executive person for some time.

So, I think in Jamal’s race and Cori’s race, there are different challenges, but I think the big, big piece is that these are two people that are challenging historic elections, representatives to these seats, with really not a whole lot of cause other than this issue, but then won’t actually campaign and run on it in the same way.

UA: To your point on Palestine, and this issue, and whether it’s actually coming up, I think the truth is the reason AIPAC didn’t run ads on Israel last cycle or, likely, this cycle, is because they can’t win on that issue. Not only, one, is it an issue that is not necessarily the issue that a majority of voters are necessarily voting on, but it’s also not an issue where their policies are actually popular among Democratic voters.

You know, where the Squad was at, where Jamal, Cori, Summer, and everyone was at since six months ago, has been where Democratic voters have been. They overwhelmingly support a ceasefire, they overwhelmingly support conditioning military funding to Israel. And it’s not voters who are evolving over this cycle as the genocide unfolds in front of us, it is Democratic politicians and leaders who are catching up to where their voters have been for months. And so, that is why you see a Chuck Schumer speak on the floor of Congress, or Nancy Pelosi sign on to letters conditioning funding. Or more Dems than ever voting against military funding to Israel.

That is showing, one, not only where the Squad’s leadership is, which is at the front of the Democratic Party, but also that Democratic voters are right there with them. And, finally, eventually, some other folks are catching up. You won’t hear George Latimer and Wesley Bell talk about those things. You won’t hear them condemn even the killing of World Central aid kitchen workers, when even President Biden is condemning it and everyone else is, because AIPAC won’t let them.

And it just shows how deeply, one, right wing the policies are that AIPAC supports, because the only other people who espouse the same views are the Mike Johnsons of the world and the Donald Trumps of the world.

RG: How much do you still hear about that crazy fire alarm thing? Is that a problem for Bowman?

UA: I don’t think it’s a real problem. I think if you look at his Twitter replies, you will see a lot of folks who have MAGA in their bio comment and reply in it. But I don’t think it’s an issue for voters who actually care about substance, because they know what Bowman has done for that district, they know what he’s been fighting for. And they also remember what he got to Congress for in the first place, which was defeating a politician that’s very similar to who we’re seeing right now.

George Latimer is just Elliot Ingle 2.0. And what we had already seen when Jamal first got elected was a career politician who did not care about his district, who didn’t even live in his district, and had left behind Black and brown communities that Jamal was actively working with as a principal of a middle school.

And so, there are folks who are in the community and who show up for the community, and there are folks who show up when it’s politically advantageous. And I think Elliot Ingle and George Latimer are the latter

RG: Would it be fair to call both of them underdogs at this point? What’s your sense on the races? And when are the primaries?

AR: I think that they’re definitely incumbents. We’re walking in as incumbents in this fight. And, also, they’ve unfortunately got a hundred-million-dollar threat coming down the pike. And so, as working class candidates, as a working-class movement that is backing them up, it does mean that we’ve got a lot to overcome, but we’ve done it before.

And so, it is very possible, but it’s going to be, just like everybody that came together to protect Summer against GOP billionaires, we need the whole of our movement — organizations, donors, everybody — to do the same for Cori and Jamal, because they are going to be hit with disingenuous lies and attacks. And, because these primaries are, really, as Usamah was talking about, an existential fight, not only in the fight to defend Palestinian lives and rights in this moment in D.C., but for all marginalized people in this country who are at risk of — and because we’re at risk of losing some of our two biggest powerful megaphones — and as folks that have been with them and recruited them, we can tell you that it is a lot easier to defend them than it is to get back these seats.

And so, this is a really big fight. And it’s because of our success over the years that we are being targeted so heavily. They want to protect their investment, they know that it’s under threat. They are losing a generational fight, that’s why they’re on the ropes. And former Bill Clinton officials are talking about them having an identity crisis, despite having such a massive war chest. And it’s showing that money is not the only thing that matters here.

But we definitely do need it. We need to keep an amount to stay competitive. Jamal’s election is going to be June 25th. And then, a couple of weeks before that, is early vote. And early vote we’re also treating as just as important as election day.

UA: Cori’s primary is on August 5th and Jamal’s primary is on June 25th. 

RG: Those are probably going to be pretty low-turnout affairs.

AR: I think, in general, most elections, unfortunately, in this country that aren’t presidency are low-turnout elections, which means that we’ve got to really hustle to turn our people out, in a way that, unfortunately, the millions and millions of dollars that are coming down the pike are meant to suppress. And, even right now with the $100 million threat, they want us to be cynical, they want us to think it is impossible to overcome that level of spending, and Summer’s race just showed that that’s not the case. And the work that we’ve been doing alongside dozens of other national progressive groups— and our Palestinian and Muslim community especially in this moment — have been [able] to overcome that and keep them out.

So, I think that it’s unlikely we can keep them fully out of Jamal and Cori’s race. But we’re walking in as the incumbents. We’ve got a plan to win, we just need the money, resources and the whole movement to come together in the same way that we did to elect them in the first place. And we got this.

RG: All right. Well, Usamah, Alexandra, thanks so much for joining me.

UA: Thank you, Ryan.

RG: That was Usamah Andrabi and Alexandra Rojas, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grimm, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept.

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