Congress
AIPAC looms large ahead of New York primaries
NEW YORK — The country’s most prominent pro-Israel special interest group isn’t even spending in Rep. Dan Goldman’s high-stakes primary. It could be his biggest problem anyway.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has a familiar electoral playbook: funnel millions of dollars into an election through a super PAC to boost pro-Israel candidates, attack those critical of Israel or both. The group’s massive spending over recent cycles has established it as a boogeyman among progressives, who’ve attempted to use AIPAC’s intervention, or the threat of it, to activate their base.
With days to go before New York’s primary, AIPAC hasn’t claimed involvement in any competitive races across the city. But it still looms large.
Across the country, attacks over AIPAC have hit a fever pitch this cycle on both sides of the aisle, speaking to the public’s increasingly negative view of Israel. In New York, insurgent challengers in Democratic primaries are using AIPAC as a cudgel to criticize opponents over their support for Israel. Some are suggesting shadowy super PACs are actually funded by the group and have pointed to donors who’ve previously given to AIPAC.
David Greenfield, a former New York City Council member and head of the Met Council, a Jewish charity, described that form of scrutiny as “a little obscene.”
“When we look back, this will have been the high point of anti-AIPAC fervor. I think some of it is irrational and unfair,” Greenfield said. “Crossing from anti-Israel to discriminating against Jewish constituents, I think that’s a very dangerous place to be.”
The tensions over AIPAC are especially prominent in Goldman’s race, where his challenger, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, has repeatedly hammered the incumbent over his ties to the group.
“We can’t let AIPAC and other pro-Netanyahu groups make an example out of me,” Lander wrote in a fundraising plea, one of more than two dozen that mention AIPAC. “Now when pro-Netanyahu groups are trying to control who gets elected to Congress, I’m asking you to join our movement to stop them.”
Lander — who, like Goldman, is Jewish — has positioned himself as more critical of Israel than the incumbent. He’s criticized Goldman for voting for U.S. military aid to Israel, called the country’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” and vowed to never take AIPAC money.
The message has persuaded many in the party’s progressive wing to side with him. The deep-blue 10th District, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, is where Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who endorsed Lander, had a dominant performance during last year’s mayoral primary.
At a “solidarity rally” for Jews and Muslims in Brooklyn on Sunday, Lander drew cheers from the hundreds gathered when he said he won’t take money from AIPAC. Mamdani appeared as a featured guest.
Goldman, who’s said the “legal terminology” of genocide should be avoided, has also criticized Israel. But no matter how much he tries to neutralize Lander’s attacks, they remain a prominent factor in the race.
The incumbent rolled out an ad denouncing President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Iran war. He suggested he and Lander aren’t so different, saying last month: “We are both progressive Zionists who believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and we both support a two-state solution to bring peace to the region.” Goldman has also tried to shift focus away from Israel, arguing voters are more interested in kitchen table issues. And he’s even returned campaign donations he received from AIPAC, which endorsed him (though he still receives contributions from people who’ve donated through the organization).
When asked if AIPAC’s endorsement is harming him in the race, Goldman said: “It’s quite possible that it is.” But he took issue with Lander’s rhetoric around the group, which he’s called a “dog whistle.”
“It’s just continuing a pattern of lying to and deceiving voters with buzzwords and litmus tests that are not factual,” he said. “I am very concerned that people — Jews like Brad, who are using Israel and AIPAC as a wedge issue in a race — ultimately may win this battle, but do serious damage to the Jewish community.”
Speaking to Blue Light News after Sunday’s event, Lander called that assertion “cynical.”
“I find that language offensive. Like, I don’t want the support of antisemites. I’m a proud Jew, I wear it on my sleeve,” he said. “What AIPAC is doing is a shanda, is bad for American democracy, is of course bad for Palestinians who are created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image, is bad for Israel, has shredded U.S. credibility in the world. And most people in this district, including, I believe most Jews in this district, agree with me.”
Lander acknowledged there’s no evidence of AIPAC super PACs getting involved in the race — either through its known entity or a newly created group, a strategy it’s employed in other races. But he pointed to AIPAC supporters donating to Goldman’s campaign and through a joint fundraising committee supporting Goldman along with Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who’s also facing a tough primary.
Lander said the “whole set of tropes around Jews and money” and rising antisemitism makes him “very anxious.” Still, he accused AIPAC of “corroding our democracy and making Jews less safe.”
During a debate Monday, the candidates were asked if they believe AIPAC is hurting the Democratic Party. Lander said it is — “by the way it spends money” and “demanding unconditional U.S. support for Netanyahu’s wars.”
Goldman said AIPAC “has some real problems and is harmful in many ways.”
“But they are an organization that I coordinate — or that I discuss things with — as is J Street, as are many, many other people, and I will always be independently focused on this issue,” Goldman continued.
Lander’s campaign quickly clipped that quote and shared it online. Goldman accused Lander of taking his words out of context “to mislead the public.”
The exchange underscores just how salient attacks over AIPAC are in Democratic primaries. But some are raising concerns.
In an interview with POLITICO last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, one of a handful of Jewish governors, said criticisms of AIPAC spending have “been used cynically by some to try and silence certain voices, to try and say that certain people participating in politics shouldn’t count or should be viewed in a toxic way.”
Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which is backing Goldman and Espaillat, said the rhetoric across Democratic primaries “has shifted into what I consider to be a dangerous place in this election cycle.”
“I’m concerned about the public demonization of perhaps what started as AIPAC, but now appears to have grown into rhetoric that includes the Israel lobby or Zionists,” Soifer said — noting that “can very quickly” blur into antisemitism.
While Lander has made criticizing Israel central to his campaign, Greenfield said he doesn’t think he’s crossed a line. But candidates in other races, Greenfield continued, are “seeing AIPAC ghosts wherever they turn.”
One race he thinks that’s happening is the contest to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez.
Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who has the backing of Mamdani and the city chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, has sought to tie her most prominent opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, to AIPAC. Both have called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide,” though Valdez has frequently criticized Reynoso for taking so long to use the term.
She’s suggested that Real Fight NYC, a super PAC boosting Reynoso, is funded by AIPAC — despite there being no clear evidence of that. Real Fight NYC, which did not respond to a request for comment, will not have to disclose its donors until after the primary. But at least one donor to it has emerged: the American Federation of Teachers.
Valdez’s campaign pointed to AIPAC funneling money into shell PACs in other races, as well as a report that Reynoso supporters have also donated to AIPAC. But Reynoso has insisted he doesn’t take AIPAC money, and his campaign said it returned the money referenced in the story.
“These false accusations are an attempt to distract voters from the real issues,” said Jasmine Gripper, head of the state Working Families Party, which is backing Reynoso. “We should be focused on improving people’s lives, not spreading misinformation.”
Morris Katz, a top Mamdani strategist and Valdez adviser, wrote in a since-deleted X post that it’s “deeply dishonest” for progressives to “pretend that a new PAC just emerging now is anything other than an AIPAC shell.”
Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for AIPAC’s main super PAC, United Democracy Project, has denied involvement in the race. As far as playing in other local primaries, Dorton said on Sunday that they’re “evaluating all of the New York races very carefully” but “don’t have anything to announce right now.”
Espaillat, like Goldman, is endorsed by AIPAC. In his run to retain his seat in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, progressive organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier has made criticizing the group a mainstay of her campaign, with her supporters suggesting some of the super PACs supporting Espaillat are funded by AIPAC.
The incumbent recently had his endorsement from the New York Progressive Action Network rescinded because it said he “has continued to accept money from AIPAC-related entities, has not signed the Block the Bombs Act, and recently declined to call the destruction of Gaza a genocide.” When asked if he broke a promise not to accept AIPAC money, Espaillat said he hasn’t “broken any promise in my political career.”
A recent poll commissioned by Justice Democrats, a pro-Avila Chevalier group, found 56 percent of likely Democratic voters in the district had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of AIPAC. Espaillat was asked in a debate Tuesday if he regrets accepting its support following the war in Gaza.
“No one dictates or tells me how to vote. My constituents do that,” he said, quickly pivoting to Avila Chevalier’s support from American Priorities, a super PAC seeking to counter pro-Israel entities.
That group is also supporting Lander and Valdez. Goldman and Reynoso have also criticized their opponents over American Priorities’ involvement.
But during their debate, Avila Chevalier once again turned the conversation back to AIPAC.
“I’d like to note that my opponent has yet to actually clearly and directly answer the question regarding his AIPAC money,” she said.
A GOP-aligned super PAC has more-than tripled its investment in the Ohio Senate race over the last week as it seeks to boost a socialist candidate — an apparent attempt to sink former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s chances.
Enough Promises Ohio, which was created last month, has spent a combined $1.58 million to promote Greg Levy and oppose Brown, according to recent filings from the Federal Election Commission. Levy, a candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is also on the ballot in the tight race for Senate between Brown and Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted. He’s running a longshot bid, currently polling at 5 percent, but could siphon away more progressive voters from Brown.
It wouldn’t be the first time this cycle that operatives for a major political party attempted to raise a third-party candidate’s profile to meddle with the outcome. Recent public polling shows a dead heat between Brown and Husted in the race.
The super PAC spent a total of $828,359 on mailers supporting Levy or opposing Brown. Spectrum News, The Washington Post and Axios previously reported Enough Promises Ohio spent $400,000 on such mailers, but the expenditure has since grown.
The group also poured an additional $753,000 into ads supporting Levy and opposing Brown over the weekend, including one video ad on Google that knocks Brown as someone who “sold us out” and boosts “real progressive Greg Levy.”
The campaign finance filings show Enough Promises Ohio used a printing company linked to a Republican political firm, Whistletop Strategies. Whistletop has worked with an affiliate of President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC and lists as its “director” Big Dog Strategies, which helped run Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno’s 2024 election campaign and is a consultant for the Ohio GOP.
Enough Promises Ohio did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Big Dog Strategies.
Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for the Husted campaign, told Blue Light News, “our campaign had no involvement with the group you are referencing. Therefore, we have no comment.”
Levy himself has distanced himself from the PAC, calling its boosting of him an “attempted deception of voters” that’s “a form of digital blackface.” Levy is Black. His spokesperson, Charlie Koenigsmark, also told Blue Light News he and the campaign “completely condemn this attempt to manipulate voters.”
Brown did not respond to a request for comment.
Artificial intelligence is challenging some lawmakers’ confidence that they have the capacity to regulate it.
The slow pace of Congress and a challenging political environment are already working against lawmakers under pressure to address AI threats. There’s also a significant gap in tech policy expertise.
“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo said in a recent interview.
One big concern is at the staffing level: getting people with a deep understanding of the technology around rank-and-file members. Aides who specialize in tech policy often get lured to private companies with huge salaries that can be hard to resist.
Some lawmakers, like Rep. Mark Takano, are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995. A Takano aide said he’ll introduce a bipartisan bill to restore such an office in the coming weeks.
Members have also been leaning on fellows from TechCongress — a nonprofit founded by former congressional aide Travis Moore that places technology experts in member and committee offices.
Moore said in an interview that there are plenty of people who want to work on Capitol Hill, but it’s a matter of “Congress’s will and capacity to absorb that talent.”
Not everybody buys into the theory that staffing will solve the problem. Some conservatives, in particular, have seized on the lack of member expertise to argue for a hands-off regulatory approach.
“We don’t understand it well enough,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who has repeatedly brought in technology experts through the TechCongress fellowship, told reporters this month. “We don’t have the expertise to do it.”
“Do you really trust the members of Congress, who barely understand AI, to write the regulations around something?” added Rep. Eric Burlison in an interview last month.
There are a few members who consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on it. They’ve taken educating their colleagues into their own hands but have not always seen great enthusiasm.
Liccardo, for example, recounted how he has brought in experts to brief lawmakers — including huge AI industry figures like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic— only to struggle to convince members to attend.
“We have had challenges in the past trying to get folks’ attention to the issues,” he said.
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Lawmakers are under pressure to pass legislation to address the threats from advanced artificial intelligence, but many have serious doubts they have the capacity to regulate the technology’s explosive growth.
Few are expecting lawmakers themselves — some of whom still proudly use flip phones — to become AI experts overnight. But while even congressional Luddites acknowledge there is urgency for Capitol Hill to quickly expand its expertise in tech policy to help with legislating, regulating and conducting effective oversight, there’s no consensus yet on how to achieve it.
“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) said in a recent interview.
Congress already has a long track record of lagging behind as technological innovations transform the world beyond Washington: It has adopted a largely hands-off approach to regulating the Internet as it integrated into everyday life in the past 40 years, relying instead on existing laws that govern other industries and taking smaller piecemeal bites.
The challenging political environment won’t help speed things along now: Democrats are split over whether the answer is to put guardrails on the AI industry or ban “superintelligence” entirely, while many Republicans — including President Donald Trump — warn that any regulation would stifle innovation and cede ground to China.
Some members consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on AI policy. Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) have pursued masters degrees in AI and machine learning, in addition to many others who are self-taught.
The “overwhelming number” of lawmakers have some idea of what AI is and what it is capable of, Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), co-chair of a House Democratic commission on AI policy, said in a recent interview. But, she added, “None of us can say that we understand where it’s going.”
The larger concern is at the staff level — putting people with real expertise around the rank-and-file members who don’t have the bandwidth or interest in educating themselves on the frontier of the industry. Aides who do specialize in tech policy often get lured to the industry with huge salaries that can be hard to resist.
That’s where Travis Moore, a former congressional staffer, has spent more than a decade trying to help.
In 2015, Moore left his post as legislative director for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and founded TechCongress, a nonprofit that places technology experts in member and committee offices. The hope is that those offices will be convinced to hire those fellows full-time — or at least recognize the need to secure in-house tech policy expertise.
“You should have a technologist at the table to at least mitigate the unknown unknowns,” Moore said, regardless of what members themselves know about technology.
As AI has boomed, so has demand for TechCongress’ fellows: In the last two years, Moore has fielded more than 1,200 applications for about 36 fellowship slots through the program, which does not accept funding from corporations or tech companies.
Of nearly 130 fellows selected through the program since its founding, Moore said 32 were later hired full-time. Two-thirds of all the fellows have pursued careers in public service, either on Capitol Hill or other government roles.
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), one of the leaders on AI policy on Capitol Hill, is among the offices that currently employs a TechCongress fellow. The House Judiciary Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also host fellows.
Moore says his initiative has shown there are plenty of people who want to work on Capitol Hill to help inform some of the most pressing issues of the moment — even when more lucrative salaries in the private sector beckon.
“The constraint is not talent supply,” Moore said in an interview. Rather, he said, it’s a matter of “Congress’s will and capacity to absorb that talent.”
Some on Capitol Hill are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) has long championed efforts to revive the OTA for years and expects to reintroduce his legislation restoring the office in the coming weeks with bipartisan backing, spokesperson Austin Clark said.
Not everybody buys into the theory that staffing will solve the problem. Some conservatives, in particular, have seized on the lack of member expertise to argue for a hands-off approach to regulation.
“We don’t understand it well enough,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who has repeatedly brought in technology experts through the TechCongress fellowship, told reporters this month. “You can’t address it based on what policymakers know about it on a one-size-fits-all universal basis. … We don’t have the expertise to do it.”
“Do you really trust the members of Congress, who barely understand AI, to write the regulations around something?” added Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) in an interview last month.
Others don’t see a hopeless cause, but a convenient excuse.
“I understand it’s hard, but lots of things we do here are hard,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview, noting that lawmakers have had to bone up quickly on everything from nuclear energy policy to complex weapons systems and advances in health care, like biologic drugs.
“I just think the industry wants us to believe that there’s seven people who understand this, and that’s just not true,” Murphy said, accusing some of his colleagues of “just throwing shit up against the wall to try to figure out how to justify doing nothing.”
A few members on both sides of the aisle have taken educating their colleagues into their own hands. Obernotle says he helped tutor more than two dozen House members through the bipartisan AI working group he chaired in the previous Congress.
Liccardo, who represents parts of Silicon Valley, recounted how he has brought in experts to brief lawmakers — including huge AI industry figures like Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Jensen Huang of Nvidia — only to struggle to convince members to attend.
“We have had challenges in the past trying to get folks’ attention to the issues,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, I’ll just say, to get everybody up to speed.”
Riley Rogerson, Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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