Politics

AIPAC faces its biggest test this year in Illinois

Published

7 months ago

March 17, 2026

CHICAGO — The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is making a nearly $22 million bet in Illinois that its money, if not its policy views, can still hold sway in Democratic politics.

In three of the four Illinois House races it’s targeting, AIPAC appears to be using shell PACs to largely conceal where that money is coming from rather than spend from its main super PAC vehicle, United Democracy Project. Like in other recent contests, their ads focus on anything but Israel.

But AIPAC appears at risk of inadvertently helping the candidate most hostile to its views in the race to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky — just as it did in New Jersey last month. The group has taken a sharp tactical shift in recent days, pivoting from attacking a Jewish candidate who has criticized Israel and focusing instead on a Palestinian-American candidate who has been more outspoken.

Interviews with a dozen Democratic elected officials, candidates and strategists — including both supporters and critics of Israel — revealed growing concerns about AIPAC’s interventions. Strategists warn that AIPAC’s attacks on Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, created an opening for progressive social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian-American who is a vocal critic of Israel and appears to have late momentum in the race, over AIPAC’s preferred candidate, more moderate state Sen. Laura Fine. In the past week, the group has pulled down all of its anti-Biss messaging, but it could prove too late.

“There’s been a strategy shift,” said a person directly familiar with AIPAC’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Our primary goal in Illinois is to prevent potential ‘Squad’ members from being elected to Congress.”

Tuesday’s primary will be the first test of AIPAC’s political muscle in the 2026 primary season after amassing nearly $100 million in its warchest, even as polls show more and more Democrats have negative views of Israel — and of the group itself.

“AIPAC may deliver another candidate who is plainly not on their agenda and … the concerns about their interventions within the primary electorate are only going to intensify,” said David Axelrod, a longtime Chicagoan and former senior adviser in President Barack Obama’s administration. “These ads are not branded as AIPAC for a reason, so there’s a recognition that they are a controversial presence in Democratic primaries.”

AIPAC recently spent $2 million to sink former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) in a special election primary. Malinowski, a pro-Israel moderate who would not support unconditional aid to Israel, lost to Analilia Mejia, a progressive organizer who has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza. The move infuriated centrist Democrats, who saw it as a spectacular self-induced fumble — and are worried it may be happening again.

“No one wants to see another New Jersey 11 … and everyone should be concerned about it happening,” said one Democratic donor adviser close to AIPAC who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.

The organization has become increasingly controversial on the left for its full-throated support of Israel’s war in Gaza and is facing a new layer of hostility in the wake of Israel’s joint attack with the U.S. in Iran. Among Democrats, 62 percent think America is too supportive of Israel, compared with just 22 percent who think the support is about right and 8 percent who think it’s not supportive enough, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week.

Democratic candidates and strategists expect AIPAC to intervene in a range of House primaries in the coming months, as well as the Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota. They’re watching to see how the group’s interference plays with voters amid the backdrop of the war.

“You’re going to see more of this unfortunately” across the country, said former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a noted Democratic strategist now weighing a run for president, of the influx of outside spending — from AIPAC to crypto groups. “Illinois is literally the first stop on the way to an ugly future, where billionaires will be the dominant players and candidates will be pawns in their world.”

In Illinois, an AIPAC-aligned super PAC called Elect Chicago Women, had spent heavily against Biss on TV and digital ads, while also spending more than $4 million on TV ads and mailers boosting Fine. In recent days, another AIPAC-aligned group, Chicago Progressive Partnership, put out ads attacking Abughazaleh and propping up another progressive in the race, Bushra Amiwala, in an apparent effort to split the vote.

Local strategists noted the abrupt shift when the Biss attacks stopped earlier this month.

“It looks like they’re changing their tactics” after the New Jersey backfire, said an Illinois Democratic lawmaker, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “Is there evidence that [AIPAC] is adapting and taking lessons from the last election? Yes.”

Biss, for his part, predicted there would be “backlash” to AIPAC’s moves in Illinois in future primaries.

“They’ve chosen to make clear that it’s unacceptable to them to have members of Congress who don’t believe in a no strings attached blank check of military aid to the current Israeli government, no matter what they do in Gaza,” Biss said “So that’s what people in the district and around the country will be interested to see what the outcome is.”

Abughazaleh sees the shift to attack her as a sign that AIPAC is “panicking” to control the race. “They’re realizing that they didn’t take us seriously, and that people aren’t looking for the status quo. So they are panicking,” she said in an interview.

Fine has opposed adding conditions to U.S. aid to Israel, though she has expressed general frustration at the role of “dark money” and the lack of transparency from political action committees, saying it’s “a big problem in our political system.”

AIPAC’s super PAC declined to comment on its involvement in Illinois, including its use of pop-up super PACs to filter funds to candidates. AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa said in a statement, “Our members are focused on building strong bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel partnership in the 120th Congress.”

The group is also spending heavily for its preferred candidates in the races to fill seats left open by Reps. Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi, who are running for the Senate, and Danny Davis, who is retiring.

AIPAC’s allies are not confident about their chances in Kelly’s district. The group is backing Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, but former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has been bolstered by more than $1 million in spending from a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC. Plus, he has sky-high name recognition, especially in the wake of the recent death of his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

Pro-Israel Democrats feel more confident their preferred candidates can win in two other races.

Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin has benefited from nearly $5 million in positive ads from AIPAC’s main super PAC, United Democracy Project, in a crowded 13-candidate primary for Davis’ seat. State Rep. La Shawn Ford has strong name recognition in the district and Davis’ endorsement, but he has struggled to keep up with fundraising.

In Krishnamoorthi’s district, moderate former Rep. Melissa Bean has benefited from nearly $4 million in supportive messaging from the “Elect Chicago Women” group that’s also supporting Fine in the 9th.

AIPAC’s critics argue that the group’s moves in Illinois, particularly concealing the funding sources of its super PACs, demonstrate that “they themselves understand how toxic they are,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the progressive J Street group, which bills itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace.”

“In every part of their political work, they’re doing this surreptitiously,” he added.

Jessica Piper and Andrew Howard contributed reporting.

Politics

Republicans wanted Rubio on the stump. Trump coaxed him there.

Published

9 hours ago

October 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday came as close to the campaign trail as he’s been all year. And even then, he tried to stay just offshore.

Rubio appeared with President Donald Trump in Corpus Christi, Texas, as he rallied alongside an oil tanker carrying Venezuelan crude. The visit helped spotlight a proud White House accomplishment — toppling the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and opening the country’s energy supply — in a political battleground state.

The unexpected nature of Rubio’s presence, after the president coaxed him up on stage during the rally, is likely enough to shield the nation’s top diplomat from allegations that he is interfering in the midterm campaign. The former Florida senator has kept a careful distance from partisan politics, even as colleagues like Attorney General Todd Blanche have defied longstanding norms against some administration officials engaging in electioneering.

“It’s an honor to work for the greatest country in the world, for the greatest president in the history of the United States of America,” Rubio said in brief remarks from the stage. “We love you, Texas.”

A White House official, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to share details of the trip, said that Rubio was backstage during the rally when the president brought him up and that he was only there in his capacity as national security adviser, not to stump ahead of the midterms.

While Rubio, who was not expected to speak at the event, has maintained the tradition of secretaries of State not campaigning, Republicans have been clamoring for the potential 2028 presidential hopeful to do so, seeing him as one of the party’s strongest messengers in a bruising midterm cycle in which they have been desperate for any additional help. One GOP official in a state with a key Senate race, granted anonymity to share private conversations, said that they asked for Rubio to attend a recent political event but were told the secretary of State wasn’t doing political events given his role as chief diplomatic officer.

“Rubio is Trump’s best asset, and they know they are in a dog fight to win in Texas,” said Bill Cortese, a GOP operative who has advised Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Even if Rubio had not come up on stage, “news of Rubio simply being in the state could potentially boost the GOP’s chances in places that they need it.”

Plus, the secretary of State had another good reason for being there: Rubio was one of the central architects of the administration’s Venezuela strategy and has been a leading figure in managing the country’s political transition and economic arrangements with the U.S. in the wake of Maduro’s ouster.

“It’s his win and his deal,” a Trump administration official added about Rubio and the Venezuela link.

Asked why Rubio accompanied Trump on the Texas trip, the White House referred to one of Trump’s Truth Social posts from August in which he credited Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for negotiating the oil deal with Venezuela.

A State Department spokesperson noted Rubio’s role as national security adviser and said that he “needs time with the president on all kinds of issues. The president will be on the go, so being on the plane with him gives him a chance to talk to him about these items.”

The secretary of State notably skipped the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas last month, opting instead to go on a diplomatic trip to Colombia.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), center, listens to Trump speak during the Texas rally.

“Marco loves campaigns and politics and he cares desperately about making sure that the House and Senate remain in Republican hands, but I think he also realizes that part of being secretary of State is you don’t engage in overt political activity,” said a person close to Rubio.

In Trump’s first term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke with tradition and made a handful of public appearances that directly or indirectly appeared campaign related, including delivering remarks to the Republican National Convention in 2020.

On a practical level, most secretaries of State travel overseas so much that it’s hard to spare time for campaigns. But Rubio travels more infrequently than his predecessors, in part because of his national security adviser role, which keeps him at the White House.

And Rubio also has a more nontraditional role even as secretary of State, focusing most of his energy on Latin America while the president’s special envoys, including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, have handled negotiations to try to end the wars in Iran, Ukraine and Gaza.

Yet the Texas visit — in which Trump sought to link one of his signature foreign policy accomplishments with efforts to reduce prices — came as a relief to the Republicans who believe Rubio is one of the party’s most trusted messengers on the economy and have for months wanted to see him on the trail.

Results from The Blue Light News Poll suggest Rubio can be a useful surrogate on the campaign trail. Across three polls this month, Republican midterm voters consistently selected Rubio as their third-highest choice to hit the campaign trail to help their party, behind Trump and Vice President JD Vance but ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others.

Support for Rubio on the campaign trail is also fairly steady across Trump’s 2024 coalition, with only an 8-point gap between the MAGA base (31%) and non-MAGA Trump voters (23%) saying the secretary of State would help Republicans if he campaigned. Meanwhile, MAGA loyalists were significantly more likely than non-MAGA Trump voters to support Trump and Vance hitting the trail.

Notably, Rubio also generates less negative backlash than other figures. Democrats widely support the impeachment of Trump, Vance, Kennedy and others. But support for impeaching Rubio is lower than the other figures, pushing overall public opinion against impeachment.

“Marco Rubio is Republicans’ most valuable asset in this difficult environment. While he has broad support from the MAGA base, he also appeals to centrist voters and obviously to critical Hispanic voters. It makes sense that they would find a way to activate him,” said former Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo.

Kimberly Leonard, Alex Gangitano and Seb Wride, chief pollster at PF Global, contributed to this report.

Politics

Trump is still the center of the GOP money universe

Published

22 hours ago

October 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump is still the center of the GOP money universe

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Politics

Trump’s fundraising dominance is masking a long-term problem for Republicans

Published

23 hours ago

October 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans’ small-dollar donor base has contracted in recent years, leaving the party more dependent on a tiny group of wealthy megadonors for support.

The GOP has had a cash advantage all year thanks to a relatively small group of large donors who have funded super PACs — Elon Musk alone has given nearly half a billion dollars this cycle. But the campaigns themselves have raised relatively little, and there’s one major reason: Other than President Donald Trump, who is still the party’s biggest fundraiser, Republicans still haven’t figured out how to raise money online.

New campaign finance filings reveal just how deep the problem goes. While Republicans have long struggled to grow their grassroots donor base, they’ve moved in the wrong direction in recent years. The number of federal donors giving through WinRed, the major GOP online fundraising platform, is down, with roughly 1.5 million donors so far this cycle compared to 2.2 million at this time in 2022. Meanwhile the number of donors has increased by about one third on ActBlue, from 4.9 million to roughly 6.6 million.

The contrast is stark: A single Democratic candidate, James Talarico in Texas, has had roughly the same number of donors on ActBlue this cycle as all Republican candidates and committees combined had on WinRed, according to a Blue Light News analysis of reports ActBlue and WinRed submitted to the Federal Election Commission.

Republican digital strategists who have been sounding the alarm for years say lagging donations are a product of fatigue, driven by years of urgent messages to the same set of potential donors.

“We beat the absolute hell out of low-dollar donors with texts and emails without expanding our [donor lists], and now no one pays attention,” said Wesley Donehue, a South Carolina-based GOP digital strategist.

Republicans’ online fundraising struggles have put their House and Senate candidates at a particular disadvantage, as candidates — unlike super PACs — face strict contribution limits and need a far larger pool of donors from which to raise money. Poor candidate fundraising has major campaign implications: Democrats’ cash advantage on that front has helped them run nearly as many ads as Republicans despite having less money overall, because candidates and parties get better rates than super PACs on broadcast TV.

Democrats’ grassroots fundraising strength is in part because of how decentralized the party is, with individual campaigns and groups building their own donor lists and fundraising operations. Virtually all of the the top Democratic fundraisers online this year are Senate candidates in competitive races.

But Republicans’ online fundraising, like so much of the party, is still centered around Trump and the official party committees. Unlike on the Democratic side, few individual Republicans have managed to break out.

Republicans’ fundraising troubles have left them more reliant on Trump: The president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., is among the biggest midterm spenders. The group and its affiliates have now spent $296 million — after facing pressure for much of the cycle from some in the GOP who wished it would have gotten involved sooner.

“Candidates are not investing the time and resources in programs that grow the donor lists and attract their supporters into the ecosystem. Instead, they just barrage previous donors with ongoing requests for donation,” said Eric Wilson, a longtime Republican digital strategist and executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. “Credit to the Trump team — they brought new people into the ecosystem, and those people continue to give to them.”

Trump has continued to fundraise since returning to the White House, including through his Never Surrender leadership PAC, which was formed out of his 2024 campaign committee, and two joint fundraising committees from his previous presidential runs.

Of the nearly 1.5 million donors who have given on WinRed this cycle, 324,000 of them — a bit over 22% — have given only to Trump’s groups through the platform but not any other candidate or committee, Blue Light News’s analysis found. Another 39% of WinRed donors have given to both Trump and another Republican.

Overall, that means about 3 in 5 WinRed donors this cycle have given to Trump, when he is neither on the ballot nor able to run for president again. That’s left non-Trump GOP donors in the clear minority just as the party begins to look for a new standard bearer ahead of 2028.

WinRed isn’t the only online GOP fundraising platform, but it is by far the largest and features all of the major party committees along with prominent House and Senate candidates across the map. Its FEC reports include only federal candidates and committees, not those in state-level races or nonprofits that use the platform.

Republicans once saw their online fundraising disadvantages as a matter of technology. ActBlue, which has been around since the 2000s, gave Democrats a major fundraising advantage in the late 2010s, at a time when Republicans had no similar centralized platform. WinRed, which launched in 2019, aimed to counter that. Now strategists say the GOP’s infrastructure has come a long way, but the party’s tactics still lag behind.

Democratic candidates eyeing higher office often maintain large fundraising operations, which they can use to raise money on behalf of candidates in battleground races while also building their own lists. Among the top 20 ActBlue fundraisers this cycle are former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s leadership PAC and Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-Ariz.) campaign committee. Kelly leveraged GOP attacks on his military service earlier this cycle to boost both his own fundraising and help Democrats across the map.

Wilson, the GOP strategist, credited out-of-cycle Democrats for building strong lists that they could use to shore up other candidates. The Republican side, he said, lacks similar coordination.

“Any time a Democrat announces they’re running for reelection, that week every Democrat in the Senate is sending a message to their list raising money for that person,” he said.

About the analysis: Donation totals and number of donors are based on ActBlue and WinRed receipts from all reports this cycle, covering Jan. 1, 2025, through Oct. 14, 2026. Donations that were later refunded are still included. Blue Light News’s analysis identifies unique donors based on matching full names and zip codes.