As the politics around Israel shift, many Democrats are seeking distance from AIPAC

First Daniel Biss wants to win his primary for an open US House seat in the north Chicago suburbs on Tuesday.

“First Daniel Biss wants to win his primary for an open US House seat in the north Chicago suburbs on Tuesday”

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Then he has the makings of a plan: Tell as many other Democratic candidates as he can that they could beat AIPAC too.

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The grandson of Holocaust survivors who moved to Israel, who grew up with dual citizenship and briefly studied there while an undergraduate, who has a cousin who was called up to the reserves after the October 7, 2023, attacks, Biss is running on a wide array of progressive stances.

But the Evanston mayor said he believes the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, other PACs it is funding and connected donors together are dumping millions into his race because of the specific threat he presents.

“It’s obvious that I care about the well-being of the Jewish people and the problem of antisemitism,” Biss told CNN.

“They can’t dismiss my positions that are for justice, for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people as somehow illegitimate or being pushed forward by someone who doesn’t know.”

“This,” Biss argued, “is a very important race for that reason.”

What’s happening in the Chicago area has been playing out all over the country.

At a Latino voter-focused forum at a Mexican restaurant called El Ranchito on the outskirts of Dallas last month, the first question to the candidates was about taking AIPAC donations.

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From Minnesota to Mississippi, operatives involved in races tolf CNN candidates are constantly facing questions about the group on the trail.

Incumbents tell CNN they expect it to come up regularly at town halls.

And online, detractors constantly pounce on politicians’ comments they perceive as sympathetic to Israel as evidence of being coopted by AIPAC.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in Gaza repels more Americans on the left, even many Democrats who consider themselves strong supporters of Israel have felt out of sync and uncomfortable.

But they and other Israel backers also worry that support for the country is becoming more partisan — and that, especially as prospective candidates start to speak out, anti-Israel rhetoric could become a defining issue in the next presidential primary race.

AIPAC has become a stand-in for all of that.

And that was before the war in Iran — in which critics argue the US is hurting its own interests by following Israel’s lead — criticism the Trump administration has rejected.

Calling out Democrats whose policy positions they don’t like has become a tactic on the left, including by entities like the “AIPAC Tracker” account on X, which lists past donations from pro-Israel groups and donors next to photos of political candidates.

Several incumbents across the country are facing primary challenges explicitly based on their connections to AIPAC, often backed by new, specifically anti-AIPAC PACs popping up.

David Hogg, the March for Our Lives co-founder now running an organization to promote a new generation of leaders, sent a fundraising email last weekend with a one-word subject line: “AIPAC.”

A video AIPAC posted last week of Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens praising Israel and thanking her for standing with the country — what once would have been a pretty standard statement — was greeted by Abdul El-Sayed, one of her opponents in the state’s open Senate primary race, with a post that read: “Good to know. I stand with Michigan.”

A sense of whiplash

Even as AIPAC has also become a target among far-right Republicans making similar claims about it and Israeli influence, an array of Democratic lawmakers told CNN they feel a sense of whiplash by being cast as right-wingers for support that was for so long a mainstream position.

Some say they are distraught by feeling like the government in Jerusalem is forcing them to choose between loving Israel and their other values.

Prominent AIPAC allies among Democrats in Congress and beyond told CNN they believe AIPAC has made navigating this harder by pushing them into maximalist positions in favor of the Netanyahu government and treating anyone who doesn’t as unacceptable.

Those tactics, the allies argue, have gotten politically perilous for the group, and more importantly, for the relationship with Israel that the group is supposed to be reinforcing.

“AIPAC historically had a position that there were friends and future friends,” said Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, a longtime ally and endorsee of the group who is himself facing a primary challenge in part based on positions about the war in Gaza.

“It appears that they got away from that thinking.”

The idea that the group is trying to control American policy through its spending echoes antisemitic conspiracy tropes of Jewish money being used to puppeteer governments, with several Democratic officials who are Jewish telling CNN that they are disturbed how often they’re finding phrases like “Dirty Zionist” in their social media replies.

Even to some who’ve taken issue with AIPAC, the outsize focus on that spending, when AI and cryptocurrency PACs are spending heavily in Illinois races and beyond, demonstrates part of the problem.

“The folks who are using AIPAC as the wedge issue — for way too many of them, it’s a perfect storm to advance their own antisemitic agendas, whether that’s delegitimizing the state of Israel or making it harder for the Jewish community to express their beliefs,” Schneider said.

The consequences can go beyond who wins and loses primaries.

“Whether you’re talking about Republicans and Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes, whether you’re talking about people on the left who openly have just sort of replaced the word ‘Jew’ with ‘AIPAC’ or ‘Zionist’ and then as long as you do that, you’re free to say virtually anything that you want,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told CNN’s Jake Tapper shortly after the synagogue attack in her state on Thursday.

“It’s time that leaders of both parties stand up and strongly condemn antisemitism and say, ‘It will not be accepted in either major political party in the United States.’ Because Jews feel like they have no place to go.”

AIPAC officials dispute accusations that the group has tilted Republican in recent years, or that it is too deferential to Netanyahu.

“First Daniel Biss wants to win his primary for an open US House seat in the north Chicago suburbs on Tuesday”

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Endorsements are guided, they say, by looking at who is the most supportive of the broader goals of a positive US-Israel relationship, backing security aid to Israel without new added conditions and being committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“AIPAC’s been supporting the US-Israel relationship for decades, regardless of who was in power in the United States or in Israel,” said Deryn Sousa, an AIPAC spokesperson.

“Our members will not be deterred by efforts to drive them out of the political process or to silence pro-Israel voices within either party.”

In numbers that referred both to Democrats and Republicans they supported, Sousa added, “It is important to separate the noise from anti-Israel extremists of the right and left and actual impact.

Ninety-seven percent of AIPAC endorsed candidates won their election last cycle and we are proud to have endorsed nearly 330 candidates so far this cycle.”

But top Democratic leaders have started to shift: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries broke ranks with AIPAC last year to also accept the endorsement of its rival organization, J Street.

And according to people familiar with the conversations, he has repeatedly expressed concerns to AIPAC leaders about their involvement in Democratic primaries, and repeatedly been rebuffed.

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