Summary:
As Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people draw international condemnation, its support among US voters is shrinking, and with it the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the wealthy and powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization. AIPAC’s backing, once crucial to candidates, is no longer a sure path to election and in some progressive districts is becoming a liability.
Analysis
When former Congressperson Eric Swalwell was forced to resign due to sexual assault accusations, Aisha Wahab, a progressive California state senator from his Bay Area district, appeared to be a shoo-in to serve the remainder of his term. But after winning a primary, she had to face the second-place candidate, fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez, a former mayor of suburban Dublin, in a runoff special election.
The race changed dramatically after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its Political Action Committee (PAC) stepped in with over $6 million, blanketing the Bay Area with ads attacking Wahab and promoting Hernandez. The spending on a race to fill a seat for 3 months was unheard of; clearly, AIPAC had its eye on November, when the district will elect a new representative to Congress. Whoever fills the seat now will hold the advantage then.
American Priorities, a super PAC created to counter pro-Israel spending, put $200,000 into Ms. Wahab’s campaign, including an ad saying “Don’t buy the Republican AIPAC lies.” Street Action Fund, the independent expenditure arm of the leading pro-peace, pro-democracy Jewish lobbying group J Street, also donated to Wahab’s campaign. Wahab is the first Muslim elected to the California State Senate. In September 2025, she introduced a resolution calling for an end to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. In the end, Wahab won the race, getting around 53% of the vote compared to Hernandez’s 47%. Hernandez vowed to try to beat Wahab again in November.
Wahab’s contest isn’t the only one in which AIPAC and its associated PACs have ramped up spending levels, investments that are not always getting the results they hoped for. In the high-profile Democratic primary for a Senate seat in Michigan, AIPAC and groups associated with it spent close to $30 million promoting Congresswoman Haley Stevens, reportedly their biggest outlay for a single candidate ever. Other dark money groups probably affiliated with AIPAC spent another $30 million trying, unsuccessfully, to prevent progressive candidate Abdul El Sayed from securing a spot on the ballot.
Sayed and other progressives with much less money to spend than AIPAC have nevertheless been winning elections and turning their opponents’ AIPAC support to their advantage. In a recent primary in New York, incumbent congressman Dan Goldman was challenged by former City Comptroller and ally of Mayor Mamdani Brad Lander. Both candidates are Jewish and described themselves as “liberal Zionists.” But any friend of Mamdani is an enemy of AIPAC, whose support for Goldman Lander was able to use against Goldman to win the race.
AIPAC’s investment of $25 million in recent primaries in Illinois produced mixed results: two of the four candidates they promoted for House seats won spots on the November ballot. In those races, AIPAC’s PACs used a series of names designed to attract progressive voters, including ‘Affordable Chicago Now,” “Chicago Progressive Partnership”, “Elect Democratic Women Action Fund” and the United Democracy Project.
Outsize donations will often determine the outcome of an election. That the formula isn’t working for AIPAC is a reflection of the changing attitudes toward Israel, as it continues its assaults on the Palestinian people. Surveys indicate public opinion is shifting, most notably among young people. According to a Pew Research survey, 50 percent of Democrats aged 18–29 expressed more sympathy with Palestinians than Israelis; only 17 percent of respondents over 65 did so.
Another survey by the Associated Press -NORC Center for Public Affairs, found that about 4 in 10 religiously unaffiliated Jews said that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians, and only about 2 in 10 of that group saw Israel’s current operations in Gaza as justified.
The Pew poll also found divergence in views of the Palestinian people. While Democrats’ views have not changed much, pollsters concluded, Republicans’ views have become more negative.
That hasn’t stopped Muslim and pro-Palestinian candidates and groups from organizing, and they are having more success USCPR Action, the political arm of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, endorsed its first slate of 16 federal and local candidates in the primaries. All endorsees committed to rejecting AIPAC and ending US military funding to Israel. So far, 11 of them have won.”
Take Action:
Americans’ Views Of Israelis Have Grown Increasingly Negative, But Views Of Palestinians Have Held Fairly Steady By Becka A. Alper and Laura Silver, July 9, 2026, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/09/americans-views-of-israelis-have-grown-increasingly-negative-but-views-of-palestinians-have-held-fairly-steady/
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action
https://www.uscpraction.org
Reject AIPAC: A broad coalition of progressive groups taking on AIPAC,