Democrats trying to unseat each other II

[lpetrich]

After describing Progressive-Insurgency groups,

These groups’ resources pale in comparison to those at the disposal of the Tea Party—and many of the insurgents would not accept their, or any, PAC money even if they offered it. The insurgency has also enjoyed the support from left independent media, but there is no parallel to unconditional support from an outlet with the reach of Fox News. Indeed, not just the two insurgencies but the Democratic and Republican parties have asymmetrical media ecosystems that differ in their degrees of support and criticism of their policies.

After noting similarities between the TP and the PI,

The Tea Party had substantially more candidates than the Progressive Insurgency and aimed to return to the founding of the dominant political order rather than replace it. The Tea Party enjoyed much greater financial resources and media support from its core extra-party infrastructure than the Progressive Insurgency, which has great implications for its electoral success and ability to change its host party’s politics.

 

[lpetrich]

The above comparison of the two insurgencies suggests that they would have different levels of outright electoral success. Insurgent victory over an incumbent in a primary election is party change through turnover. For movements aimed at Congress or lower levels of government, at least one instance of insurgent defeat of an incumbent is a requisite for all other forms of insurgent- driven party change as it heightens the threat of insurgency for incumbents.

How did they do?

"In short, especially in their first election, Tea Party candidates were remarkably successful in winning election to Congress."

"The Progressive Insurgency has not been as successful."

"As such, the level of Democratic Party cooptation of progressive insurgent policy has been much lower than the Republican Party’s cooptation of Tea Party policy."

Then noting that establishment members of both parties created PAC's to protect themselves from insurgent challenges.

After the Progressive Insurgency’s first election, the Democratic Party also formalized its blacklist of firms that work with challengers to limit insurgents’ access to campaign infrastructure, before repealing the formal rule shortly after the 2020 election. The Republican Party did not have a similar rules change to retaliate against the Tea Party.

So the D's reacted more strongly than the R's.

Also, "A few Democrats have also emphasized their closeness to elected insurgents to lessen the threat of an insurgent challenge without coopting their policy."

 

[lpetrich]

Then how combative the insurgents are.

Most important, the Tea Party’s reactionary conservatism and desires to inhibit government to make Americans hate it more enabled it to use obstruction and procedural radicalism to get what it wanted—which was often just sabotaging policy. In Tea Partiers’ first Congress, their obstruction led to “repeated episodes of a near government shutdown” over government spending and debt.

...
The elected insurgents’ greatest achievement—and clearest example of their combativeness toward party leadership—was their organized ouster of John Boehner as Speaker of the House for being an insufficiently ideologically and tactically hardline.

The TP's weren't exactly calling JB "Papa Bear". AOC seems to be much friendlier than (say) Jim Jordan, and some parts of the left got annoyed at her once calling Nancy Pelosi "Mama Bear".

In contrast, elected progressive insurgents are trying to make government responsive to the needs of working- and middle-class people and show Americans that their government can work for them. To do so requires passing new policy: they cannot realize their objective through putting their feet down and obstructing Congress. In this way, the progressive insurgents are constrained by their ideological orientation.

Making life much more difficult for the PI than for the TP. The US Gov't has several veto points, making it biased toward inaction. A bill must get a floor vote in one chamber, then pass that chamber, then get a floor vote in the other chamber, then pass that chamber, then be signed by the President. Five veto points right there. A bill usually goes through some committees, and they provide additional veto points. This gives a total of at least nine veto points. By comparison, a parliamentary system has much fewer veto points. Only two, though committees make that number at least four.

"To reiterate, passing policy in Congress is extremely hard, as even the Tea Partiers learned when, after winning unified control of government, they failed by one vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, their signature issue."

Then temporal relationships. The Tea Party preceded Donald Trump and made his primary victory possible. But the Progressive Insurgency was a response to the first defeat of Bernie Sanders.

 

[Swammerdami]

The Tea Party was named after the Boston Tea Party, a protest against Britain's crony-capitalist colonialism in only allowing its North American colonists to buy tea from the British East India Company and not from (say) some Dutch company.

The Tea Partiers were terrorists who — much as Tea-Trumpists on January 6 — dressed in Native American costumes and destroyed private property belonging to the British East India Company.

Rather than enforcing the laws against importing Dutch tea, the British government had actually LOWERED the total tax on its own tea to compete with illegally smuggled Dutch tea. It was Americans who had been smuggling Dutch tea into the colonies who were particularly motivated to prevent the importation of this now-cheaper British tea!

 

[lpetrich]

"The Efficacy of Intraparty Insurgency over Third Party Bids: Comparing the Progressive Insurgency to the Green Party"

Noting "The Progressive Insurgency has achieved levels of outright electoral success and policy influence on the Democratic Party in a matter of years that the decades-old Green Party could only dream of."

For starters, "Contesting elections since 1996, the Green Party has failed to win a single seat at the national level."

GPUS Elections Database - for the US Green Party - Greens in State Legislatures – GPUS Elections Database - a total of 9 Greens, with 5 elected as Greens and 4 changing their party affiliation to Green. The first one was elected in 1999, and the later ones were elected at a roughly constant rate.

Nearly all the elected Greens are in local offices, and those offices often don't have much partisanship. Victories – GPUS Elections Database claims at least 1360 victories.

Greens compete with Democrats for voters, and that makes them spoilers. Ralph Nader, likely a spoiler for the Democrats in 2020, conceded as much in 2016. Ralph Nader: Why Bernie Sanders was right to run as a Democrat - The Washington Post - "The two-party system suffocates independent challengers. I would know." and "By running as a Democrat, Sanders declined to become a complete political masochist, and he avoided exposing his campaign to immediate annihilation by partisan hacks."

BS was also much more successful than RN, who won 2.74% of the popular vote and no electoral votes. In 2016, BS won 43.1% of the popular vote and 39.2% of the delegates, while in 2020, BS won 26.3% of the popular vote and 27.0% of the delegates, thus outperforming RN by a factor of 16 in 2016 and a factor of 10 in 2020.

 

[lpetrich]

Then noting that the idea of a Green New Deal was invented by the Green Party in 2010, but it became a mainstream idea only when AOC was elected in 2018 -- elected as a Democrat.

"The Future of the Progressive Insurgency and its Place in Left Resurgence"

Challengers critiqued the insurgency’s current state of organization as stifling its success. They suggested that concentrating monetary, staff, and volunteer resources on fewer candidates each election cycle would increase their rates of victory. According to Mark Gamba, a 2020 insurgent in OR-05, the Progressive Insurgency “is not strategic. It’s willy-nilly. It’s anarchy. It’s people doing whatever, doing things like running against popular progressive people who are already in Congress.”

There is already some of that. The Justice Democrats supported 78 candidates in 2018, 17 in 2020, and 16 in 2022.

What some of the PI's propose is a sort of political machine.

This “ecosystem” would offer financial support or fellowships for working-class candidates, coordinate and deliver early financial support for campaigns, and put aside principles to play the big money game—even, according to one, taking advantage of Super PACs’ unlimited spending capacities. It would encourage elected insurgents and others with name recognition and cache in the movement to endorse candidates and get involved early in the electoral cycle, not just weeks before the election. It would also involve creating a pipeline of congressional candidates who have served in prior elected office in state legislatures or on city councils (one of the most significant factors in predicting insurgents’ primary vote share) which require far fewer resources to win. In fact, some tenets of progressive insurgents’ diagnoses directly contradict what the original post-Sanders groups sought to cultivate: a grassroots movement of ordinary citizens without political backgrounds running for office.

"The success of New York insurgents running for offices from city council to Congress is also probably why one of the state’s senators, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, seems extraordinarily weary of an insurgent challenge as evidenced in his preemptive policy cooptation." - I think that AM meant "wary".

Also noting progressive successes Boston, St. Louis, and Nevada.

 

[lpetrich]

To continue the Progressive Insurgency’s momentum, according to Jen Perelman, a 2020 insurgent in FL-23, challengers need to stay highly involved in the movement. The problem, she said, “is that when most progressives lose, they go away and you never hear from them again. They let their entire platform die.”

Many of them do run again, however.

After mentioning the Texas primaries and progressive successes there, "First, in Texas and across the United States, it appears that 2022 insurgents are primarily running against Democratic incumbents, in open Democratic seats, and in open or Republican-held swing seats—not in Republican districts."

Then mentioning that there seem to be fewer progressive candidates running and that some previous candidates are running again.

The PI movement does not have much overall coordination, resulting in PI vs. PI contests. That happened in 2020, and it happened again this year, with Jasmine Crockett vs. Jessica Mason in TX-35, Summer Lee vs. Jerry Dickinson in PA-12, which almost cost SL the election, and several candidates in NY-10, which let a Levi Strauss heir win.

 

[lpetrich]

"The Progressive Insurgency has made an impact on the Democrats and on American politics, but it has not yet won power on the scale required to address America’s myriad crises the way it sees fit and usher in a new political era of multiracial social democracy in the United States."

"Concluding Words on the Progressive Insurgency"

Then mentioning Nina Turner running again in 2022, and supporting fellow insurgents, like supporting Shervin Aazami (CA-32, 7.2% against incumbent Brad Sherman) and Amy Vilela (NV-01, 17.6% against incumbent Dina Titus) along with Cori Bush.

Now Vilela is again trying to do what seemed impossible before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it possible, as are Nina Turner and progressive insurgents running for the House of Representatives across the country. Most of them will lose, but losing is not the end of their ideas or their influence. And the few that do win, like Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Bush, gain the institutional power to legislate to improve the lives of millions of Americans. Still growing, the Progressive Insurgency is in its early years of working to make the United States a more equal, a more just—a more perfect—nation.

Then a big list of progressive insurgents in 2018 and 2020. Followed by a list of insurgents interviewed for this thesis. Then the variables examined, like the Cook Political Report's Partisan Voting Index.

 

[lpetrich]

I like Amelia Malpas's concluding statement.

About progressive insurgents, "Most of them will lose, but losing is not the end of their ideas or their influence." Back in 2018, AOC loosely estimated that 100 have to run for 1 to win ("Knock Down The House"). That may be overly pessimistic, but it is an uphill struggle to get elected, and it helps to have practice in city councils and state legislatures. If Not Now, When do we Start a Brand New Congress? - Importing Democracy - Brand New Congress wants "extraordinary ordinary people" - people with leadership ability but who aren't already in politics and who live as ordinary people.

"And the few that do win, like Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Bush, gain the institutional power to legislate to improve the lives of millions of Americans." - and get influence out of proportion to their numbers.

"Still growing, the Progressive Insurgency is in its early years of working to make the United States a more equal, a more just—a more perfect—nation."

With the potential of ending Gilded Age II, a conservative period which has lasted longer than any other Schlesinger period, even the original Gilded Age, a conservative period that lasted some 30 years and that ended some 120 years ago. We are also due for a Samuel Huntington creedal-passion period and the emergence of a new party system.  Cyclical theory (United States history) has more details.

 

[Derec]

Cori Bush got the pandemic extension moratorium extended on August 2021,

This exemplifies the main problem I have with Biden. He lets himself be influenced by these left wingers to do things that are neither good policy nor good politics. In the case of the moratorium extension, he even knew that it was illegal for him to do so, and yet he still did it.
By the time the eviction moratorium was extended last August, the economy had been pretty much fully reopened for almost a year. There was no reason to keep the moratorium going even until 8/2021, much less past that date. CDC also did not have the authority to impose such a far-reaching moratorium on the private sector.

The question should not be primarily if these "progressive" legislators like Bush or AOC are able to get their ideas through, even if only temporarily. The primary question should be, "are those ideas any good?" And most often, they are not.

 

[Derec]

"The success of New York insurgents running for offices from city council to Congress is also probably why one of the state’s senators, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, seems extraordinarily weary of an insurgent challenge as evidenced in his preemptive policy cooptation." - I think that AM meant "wary"

Why not both.
Schumer has proven himself to be a weathervane with his caving to left-wing radicals in order to avoid a primary challenge.

 

[TSwizzle]

Finally got round to opening my ballot and OMG.

Two democrats are running for congress in my district and my choice is between Adam "Shifty" Schiff, a Russian election interference conspiracy loon and someone called Maebe A Girl Pudlo, some sort of drag queen/artist.

It is California so it's all good, I suppose.

 

[thebeave]

Finally got round to opening my ballot and OMG.

Two democrats are running for congress in my district and my choice is between Adam "Shifty" Schiff, a Russian election interference conspiracy loon and someone called Maebe A Girl Pudlo, some sort of drag queen/artist.

It is California so it's all good, I suppose.

I wonder if Maebe A Girl Pudlo is the one dancing naked in the Daily Mail video you posted?

 

[lpetrich]

Finally got round to opening my ballot and OMG.

Two democrats are running for congress in my district and my choice is between Adam "Shifty" Schiff, a Russian election interference conspiracy loon and someone called Maebe A Girl Pudlo, some sort of drag queen/artist.

It is California so it's all good, I suppose.

I wonder if Maebe A Girl Pudlo is the one dancing naked in the Daily Mail video you posted?

thebeave, show us all what a great work ethic you have and track down who was in that Daily Mail video.

TSwizzle, why do you call Adam Schiff a "Russian election interference conspiracy loon"?

 

[lpetrich]

Amelia Malpas recently wrote this for the WaPo: How progressives have influenced the Democratic Party's policies - The Washington Post - "When ‘primaried’ by progressives, Democratic incumbents shift further left, research finds"

The 2022 congressional primaries recently ended. About 70 Sanders-style progressives ran, fewer than in previous years. Seven won primaries in strongly Democratic districts. However, only one defeated a Democratic incumbent. That’s the fewest since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise victory over Joseph Crowley in 2018.

Some argue that progressives’ primary losses show their momentum declining. But my research finds that even when they lose, progressive insurgents influence the policy positions and priorities of the incumbent — and the broader Democratic Party. The post-Sanders progressives have a lot to do with Democrats’ ambitious agenda under President Biden.

AM then described her criteria for identifying progressive insurgents, noting 103 candidates in 2018 and 96 in 2020. Then noted that threatened incumbents tended to cosponsor elected PI's' bills.

Then, "Progressives’ fingerprints are on Build Back Better, although their influence shrank at every legislative stage"

"Despite their influence, post-Sanders progressives have not transformed Democrats as much as the tea party movement transformed Republicans."

But the number of progressives in Congress will grow because of this year’s primaries. Progressives are in Congress in part because their ideas have gained new relevance over several tumultuous years of democratic, economic, racial, climate and health crises. With their increased presence in Congress and the widened popularity of their ideas, some proposals that appeared politically impossible just a few years ago have become viable among Democrats. How many more become law depends in part on how Democrats do this November.

 

[lpetrich]

How AIPAC and DMFI Outspent the Democratic Insurgency - "A People-Powered Insurgency Threatened to Reshape the Democratic Party. Then Came AIPAC and Its Allied Super PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel."

Looking back to 2021, when the Democratic establishment backed Shontel Brown against Nina Turner.

Two groups — Democratic Majority For Israel, or DMFI, and Mainstream Democrats PAC — began spending millions pummeling Turner on the airwaves. The two were effectively the same organization, operating out of the same office and employing the same consultants, though Mainstream Democrats claims a broader mission.

...
While DMFI is ostensibly organized around the politics of Israel, in practice, it has become a weapon wielded by the party’s centrist faction against its progressive wing. In fact, DMFI, Mainstream Democrats PAC, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have spent so much money that the question of Israel-Palestine now dominates Democratic primaries.

Across the country, progressive candidates who a cycle earlier had been loudly vying for national attention with bold ideas to attract small donors were instead keeping their heads down, hoping to stay under the radar of DMFI and AIPAC.

When Justice Democrats, in the wake of Sanders’s first presidential campaign, began its effort to pull the party to the left by competing in Democratic primaries, the issue of Israel-Palestine was not central to its strategy. But its candidates tended to be progressive across the board, rather than what had previously been the standard, known as PEP, for “progressive except for Palestine.” The insurgency inside the Democratic Party has since produced a counter-insurgency, funded heavily by hedge fund executives, private equity barons, professional sports team owners, and other billionaires and multimillionaires, many of them organized under a “pro-Israel” banner.

A counterrevolution financed by oligarchs. The Empire striking back.

Turner said she was told she had to distance herself from members of the Squad, particularly Muslim Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, or face an onslaught. “I was told by a prominent Jewish businessman that ‘We’re coming at you with everything we got, you need to disavow the Squad,’” Turner said, and “if I didn’t do it, they were coming for me. And that also the Palestinian community didn’t have rights that were more important than the state of Israel.”

“I even have emails right now, to this day, of local primarily business leaders in the Jewish community where they were encouraging Republicans to vote in this primary and were saying things like: We must support Shontel Brown, in no way can we let Nina Turner win this race,” Turner said.

 

[lpetrich]

The article then went into how Maxwell Alejandro Frost chickened out of his association with Palestinian activists.

DMFI PAC announces first slate of House endorsements - I'll go over how each of them did, and add some more ones that the article discussed.

1. John Larson* CT-01 - unchallenged
2. Randolph Bracy FL-10 - lost to Maxwell Alejandro Frost 34.0% - 25.0%, beat others 15.5%, 9.7%, 6.9%, 2.4%, 2.2%, 1.9%, 1.3%, 1.1%
3. Gilbert Villegas IL-03 - lost to Delia Ramirez 65.6% - 23.9%, beat others 6.5%, 4.0%
4. Sean Casten* IL-06 - beat Marie Newman* 68.1% - 28.8%, another 3.1%; forced together by redistricting
5. Jake Auchincloss* MA-04 - unchallenged
6. Glenn Ivey MD-04 - beat Donna Edwards 51.2% - 35.1%, others 6.0%, 1.9%, 1.9%, 1.3%, 0.9%, 0.8%, 0.8%
7. David Trone* MD-06 - beat others 79.0% - 16.0%, 5.0%
8. Haley Stevens* MI-11 - beat Andy Levin* 59.5% - 40.5%; forced together by redistricting
9. Adam Hollier MI-13 - lost to Shri Thanedar 28.3% - 23.5%, beat others 16.9%, 8.6%, 8.2%, 6.4%, 4.6%, 2.3%, 1.2%
10. Don Davis NC-01 - beat Erica Smith, 63.5% - 30.9%, others 3.1%, 2.5%
11. Valerie Foushee NC-04 - beat Nida Allam 47.2% - 35.3%, others 7.4%, 5.4%, 1.5%, 1.5%, 1.2%, 0.5%
12. Dina Titus* NV-01 - beat Amy Vilela 82.4% - 17.6%
13. Carolyn Maloney* NY-12 - lost to Jerrold Nadler*, beat Suraj Patel, Ashmi Sheth 56.3% - 24.2% - 18.3% - 1.0%; forced together by redistricting
14. Ritchie Torres* NY-15 - unchallenged
15. Shontel Brown OH-11 - beat Nina Turner 66.3% - 33.7% (2021: 50.1% - 44.6%)
16. Kurt Schrader* OR-05 - lost to Jamie McLeod-Skinner 56.9% - 42.7%
17. Steve Irwin PA-12 - lost to Summer Lee 41.9% - 41.0%; beat Jerry Dickinson, others 10.9%, 4.8%, 1.5%
18. John Fetterman PA-Sen - beat Conor Lamb, Malcolm Kenyatta, another 58.6% - 26.3% - 10.9% - 4.2%

* means incumbent.

So AIPAC isn't invincible.

 

[lpetrich]

The article then discussed AIPAC attacking Marie Newman, Andy Levin, and Summer Lee. Last May, SL tweeted
Summer Lee on Twitter: "
Trayvon, a kid, was walking in his own neighborhood, going home.
George didn't like the way he looked and assualted him.
Trayvon fought back with his fists.
George drew a gun and killed him.
American government: "George had a right to defend himself."
" / Twitter
then
Summer Lee on Twitter: "When I hear American pols use the refrain "Israel has the right to defend itself" in response to undeniable atrocities on a marginalized pop, I can't help but think of how the west has always justified indiscriminate& disproportionate force &power on weakened & marginalized ppl" / Twitter
then
Summer Lee on Twitter: "The US has nvr shown leadership in safeguarding human rights of folks its othered
But as we fight against injustice here in the mvmnt for Blk lives, we must stand against injustice everywhere. Inhumanities against the Palestinian ppl cannot be tolerated or justified" / Twitter

That set off some people in Pittsburgh, like a member of a Jewish community organization. He is concerned about her because “she’s endorsed by some people I believe are antisemites, like Rashida Tlaib.” and “Another thing that worried me was her equating the suffering of the Gazans and Palestinians to the suffering of African Americans. That’s one of these intersectional things. If that’s her take on the Middle East, that’s very dangerous.”

Lee had no doubt she would be hit, she just didn’t know when or how hard. “I’m being very honest, there was no world in which I did not think this was gonna happen,” she said. “From the moment I saw the ways in which the four Black and brown women who came in in 2018, which is the same year that I came into the state House, watching the way that they had to navigate the issue, knowing the way that they had to navigate money and politics, then seeing Nina Turner, it was a very clear trend to me.”

“We honestly knew on day one — and before. So on day zero, it was something that we were thinking about,” she said. “The question was always, when does it come in, but I didn’t think that I would have the privilege of avoiding it.”

Tweet or no tweet, Lee is convinced that she would have been targeted regardless, because the issue of Israel-Palestine is a cover for a broader assault on the progressive wing of the party. “There’s a difference between having controversial views. There’s a difference between having problematic views. But what this does is it says you can’t have any views,” she said. “To say that you should fall in line and I am still not convinced to this date that that is where they exclusively expect us to fall in line. Because the reality is is that if this were about that topic, if this were about Israel-Palestine, then they would have come into this district 10 toes talking about Israel-Palestine. But they didn’t. This is a way to chill and to keep the progressive movement from growing as a whole. This is a way to temper a movement that centers, particularly Black and brown women who are progressive, and stops them from building power right here.”

But not exclusively Black and brown. “I mean, the reality is that they went after Andy Levin,” she noted. “He’s a self-described Zionist. So they’re coming after progressives and the way that we’re able to build power for working-class folks.”

 

[lpetrich]

Then John Fetterman professing undying love of Israel.

Fetterman, unprompted, stressed there should be zero conditions on military aid to Israel, that BDS is wrong, and so on. “Let me just say this, even if I’m asked or not, I was dismayed by the Iron Dome vote,” Fetterman added. DMFI and AIPAC stayed out of the race.

The article then mentioned Ritchie Torres:

“In New York City we’ve seen the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is explicitly pro-BDS,” Torres said in a private meeting with DMFI after winning his 2020 primary, video of which was leaked to me. “The democratic socialist left endorsed in about 11 races and won every single one except mine. So it’s proven to be effective at winning elections and I worry about the normalization of anti-Semitism within progressive politics.”

Also mentioned Greg Casar of Austin TX cutting ties with DSA to avoid attracting the attention of DMFI.

Why DMFI? "AIPAC itself had become a toxic brand inside the Democratic Party after the organization worked to torpedo Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, the Iran nuclear deal."

DMFI members make the argument that they are targeting the left to beat the right.

But in DMFI’s first cycle, it hit obstacles. The group’s first play for power, an effort to persuade Bernie Sanders to dismiss two Muslim advisers from his presidential campaign, was unsuccessful, as was DMFI’s later effort to hit him with TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Next, would-be Squad member Jamaal Bowman of New York overcame more than $2 million in DMFI spending in 2020 to oust Rep. Eliot Engel, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and one of the most outspoken Israel hawks in Congress. That Bowman won in a landslide, and even carried heavily Jewish precincts, was a stinging defeat for DMFI and AIPAC, as Bowman had refused to back off his support of Palestinian human rights.

Then about the money that AIPAC and DMFI raised: "... given that AIPAC and DMFI had to overcome the fact that what they were advocating for — unchecked, limitless support for the Israeli government, regardless of abuses — was unpopular in Democratic primaries." They did so by spending a LOT of money.

Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Indivisible, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, and the Sunrise Movement worked in coalition with J Street on a number of races that DMFI and AIPAC played in, and where they could muster enough money, the candidates had a shot.

“If you look at the races we lost, we were outspent by the bad guys 6, 8, 10 to 1. If you look at Summer’s race, it was more like 2-1,” said Joe Dinkin, national campaigns director for the WFP.

Then on how much various PAC's spent on the IL-03 race. Progressive favorite Delia Ramirez: $1.7 million vs. AIPAC favorite Gilbert Villegas: $1.4 M.

Self-funder Shri Thanedar spent $4 M on his campaign, while AIPAC spent $4 M on his opponent. ST won.

 

[lpetrich]

After a long discussion of how Maxwell Frost tried to associate himself with Ritchie Torres and distance himself from Palestinian allies, a discussion of PA-12 and Summer Lee vs. AIPAC candidate Steve Irwin.

On Election Day, she bested Irwin by less than 1,000 votes, 41.9 percent to 41 percent, taunting her opponents for setting money on fire.

Summer Lee on Twitter: "$4.5 mill 🗑" / Twitter

Had she not enjoyed such high popularity and name recognition in the district, AIPAC’s wipeout of her 25-point lead in six weeks would have been enough to beat her. John Fetterman, meanwhile, was able to face his centrist opponent in an open seat for Pennsylvania Senate without taking on a Super PAC too and won easily.

Steve Irwin was also helped by Jerry Dickinson splitting the progressive vote. If he had dropped out, SL would have won by a larger margin. SL was backed by Justice Democrats and JD by Brand New Congress, another case of progressive-PAC vote-splitting.

Then Donna Edwards in MD-04, trying to do a comeback.

During her first year in Congress, she had voted “present” amid a pro-Israel resolution amid its latest war on Gaza and cast a handful of other votes that deviated from a 100 percent AIPAC-aligned voting record. DMFI and AIPAC backed her corporate attorney opponent, taking a race that was Edwards’s to lose and, with a staggering $6 million-plus in spending, turned it into a landslide against her.

The ads, as usual, did not mention Israel-Palestine but instead attacked Edwards, a Black woman, as lazy when it came to constituent service, a charge even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an ally of AIPAC, weighed in to protest. “It’s focused on the issues that are important to the voters in that district. The objective here is to ensure that your candidate emerges victorious and that the anti-Israel candidate is defeated,” Kohr, the AIPAC CEO, told the Washington Post, explaining why its primary ads don’t mention Israel.

Anything to win, it seems.