Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
The political arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee funneled over $5 million to other groups as part of its work to defeat Illinois Democrats critical of Israel in House primaries held Tuesday, filings made public late Friday show. The secretive giving is the latest example of how outside groups are obscuring their spending in competitive campaigns.
The contributions, which didn’t have to be disclosed until after Election Day under federal campaign finance regulations, funded part of a record-breaking total of outside spending: $225 million has been spent to influence midterm elections so far, according to a Post analysis of federal election data. Special interest groups, including AIPAC, have sometimes tried to veil their spending by using affiliated organizations that appear unrelated to the parent organization’s stated policy goals.
AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that has grown increasingly unpopular with Democratic primary voters, cloaked its spending in a trio of innocuously named organizations — Chicago Progressive Partnership, Affordable Chicago Now and Elect Chicago Women — and ran ads that attacked candidates, including Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, for a variety of reasons other than his position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
“It’s awful for politics,” said Jim Kessler, an executive at Third Way, a center-left think tank and advocacy organization. The use of shell super PACs, he added, shows these groups know “what you’re peddling is not popular with voters.”
The groups behind the spending argue they are using legal tools to further their goals and hinted they will do so in future primaries. Critics argue that the masking is underhanded, noting that the practice suggests the groups know their policy objectives are unpopular, or they would otherwise be willing to reveal the spending before the races are decided
