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THERE SURE ARE A LOT OF REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRES FUNDING THE
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES  
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Alexander Sammon
February 7, 2024
Slate
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_ Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—who took more money from the
Israel lobby in 2022 than from any other group and is featured on
AIPAC’s website (alongside House Republican leadership)—has so far
refused to condemn this tsunami of Republican money. _

, Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

 

The presidential field is basically set, but before the Trump vs.
Biden rematch begins in earnest, there are still a bunch of highly
contentious primaries for the House and Senate left to be decided. On
the Democratic side, none will draw more attention and money than the
campaign to knock the Squad—the famed young, progressive legislators
of color—out of Congress
[[link removed]].
And now, thanks to the most recent round
[[link removed]] of
fundraising reports filed to the Federal Election Commission, we know
exactly who’s funding that campaign.

Surprise! It’s Republican billionaires and megadonors.

Let’s back up: During the 2022 midterms, one of the super PACs
affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying
group—called the United Democracy Project—spent more than any
other outside group during the Democratic primaries. Yes, it was
spending on Democrats. But it boosted only conservative Democrats who
were in races against progressive legislators, in part because
progressives are, as a whole, willing to criticize Israel, and
sometimes even question unconditional military aid to Benjamin
Netanyahu’s government.

The presidential field is basically set, but before the Trump vs.
Biden rematch begins in earnest, there are still a bunch of highly
contentious primaries for the House and Senate left to be decided. On
the Democratic side, none will draw more attention and money than the
campaign to knock the Squad—the famed young, progressive legislators
of color—out of Congress
[[link removed]].
And now, thanks to the most recent round
[[link removed]] of
fundraising reports filed to the Federal Election Commission, we know
exactly who’s funding that campaign.

Surprise! It’s Republican billionaires and megadonors.

Let’s back up: During the 2022 midterms, one of the super PACs
affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying
group—called the United Democracy Project—spent more than any
other outside group during the Democratic primaries. Yes, it was
spending on Democrats. But it boosted only conservative Democrats who
were in races against progressive legislators, in part because
progressives are, as a whole, willing to criticize Israel, and
sometimes even question unconditional military aid to Benjamin
Netanyahu’s government.

AIPAC’s most successful sally in 2022 was kicking Andy Levin—not
only one of the most prominent Jewish members of the House, but also a
former synagogue president—out of his House seat in Michigan, in
favor of a more conservative, non-Jewish representative in Haley
Stevens. (Levin had dared to indicate support for a two-state
solution, introducing a bill
[[link removed]] that
would have prevented U.S. aid from being used to fund Israeli
settlements in the West Bank and that recognized East Jerusalem as
“occupied territory,” among other provisions.)

And all of that was before Israel’s devastating war in Gaza began.

Now, AIPAC has made it a clear goal to defeat every progressive
Democrat it can in 2024. At the end of January, Federal Election
Commission filings revealed that the United Democracy Project super
PAC already had $40 million on hand
[[link removed]] by
the end of 2023, nearly double the $26 million it spent on the 2022
midterms. Those numbers will likely skyrocket further.

Massive though it is, the dollar figure is actually less notable than
who donated it. Of the top 10 biggest donors to the Democrats-only
super PAC during the past six months, boosters of Donald Trump abound.
GOP megadonor Bernie Marcus, former CEO of the Home Depot, kicked in
$1 million. An LLC affiliated with Bob Kraft, owner of the New England
Patriots (who gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration) chipped in
$500,000. Paul Singer, another billionaire financier—and Nikki Haley
megadonor, _and_ Rudy Giuliani fundraiser
[[link removed]]—also
kicked in $1 million. (Singer is perhaps best known as the luxury
vacation sponsor
[[link removed]] of
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.)

Singer and Marcus also sponsored AIPAC’s guerrilla campaign to
overrun the Democratic primary process back in 2022
[[link removed]];
some of the even more generous donors in this cycle are new to the
project. The top individual United Democracy Project donor during the
past six months was Jan Koum, billionaire founder of WhatsApp. He
donated $5 million to UDP over the final half of 2023; during that
very same period, he also gave $5 million to the super PAC of
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

Behind Koum was financier Jonathon Jacobson, who contributed $2.5
million. Jacobson has a long history
[[link removed]] of
political giving; since 2008, the top beneficiaries of his largesse,
other than the $1 million he gave UDP Project in 2022, have been
Republican super PACs, Republican candidates including Scott Brown and
Lindsey Graham, and Republican fundraising committees, including Mitch
McConnell’s National Republican Senatorial Committee. David Zalik,
who gave $2 million, is a Haley, Giuliani, and Mitt Romney donor
[[link removed]] as
well.

Amazing that all these Republican megadonors are now so keen to put
money behind Democrats in 2024!

To be fair, they’re not all pure saboteurs. A few of the top 10
contributors to the United Democracy Project super PAC have given
small amounts to Democrats before. One donor of the top 10 can even
plausibly be called a regular Democratic booster, and that’s Haim
Saban, a prominent Hillary Clinton backer
[[link removed]].
But in no world could you even call this a bipartisan group of
benefactors. It’s Republicans who know what they’re doing.

The presidential field is basically set, but before the Trump vs.
Biden rematch begins in earnest, there are still a bunch of highly
contentious primaries for the House and Senate left to be decided. On
the Democratic side, none will draw more attention and money than the
campaign to knock the Squad—the famed young, progressive legislators
of color—out of Congress
[[link removed]].
And now, thanks to the most recent round
[[link removed]] of
fundraising reports filed to the Federal Election Commission, we know
exactly who’s funding that campaign.

Surprise! It’s Republican billionaires and megadonors.

Let’s back up: During the 2022 midterms, one of the super PACs
affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying
group—called the United Democracy Project—spent more than any
other outside group during the Democratic primaries. Yes, it was
spending on Democrats. But it boosted only conservative Democrats who
were in races against progressive legislators, in part because
progressives are, as a whole, willing to criticize Israel, and
sometimes even question unconditional military aid to Benjamin
Netanyahu’s PAC’s most successful sally in 2022 was kicking Andy
Levin—not only one of the most prominent Jewish members of the
House, but also a former synagogue president—out of his House seat
in Michigan, in favor of a more conservative, non-Jewish
representative in Haley Stevens. (Levin had dared to indicate support
for a two-state solution, introducing a bill
[[link removed]] that
would have prevented U.S. aid from being used to fund Israeli
settlements in the West Bank and that recognized East Jerusalem as
“occupied territory,” among other provisions.)

And all of that was before Israel’s devastating war in Gaza began.

Now, AIPAC has made it a clear goal to defeat every progressive
Democrat it can in 2024. At the end of January, Federal Election
Commission filings revealed that the United Democracy Project super
PAC already had $40 million on hand
[[link removed]] by
the end of 2023, nearly double the $26 million it spent on the 2022
midterms. Those numbers will likely skyrocket further.

Massive though it is, the dollar figure is actually less notable than
who donated it. Of the top 10 biggest donors to the Democrats-only
super PAC during the past six months, boosters of Donald Trump abound.
GOP megadonor Bernie Marcus, former CEO of the Home Depot, kicked in
$1 million. An LLC affiliated with Bob Kraft, owner of the New England
Patriots (who gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration) chipped in
$500,000. Paul Singer, another billionaire financier—and Nikki Haley
megadonor, _and_ Rudy Giuliani fundraiser
[[link removed]]—also
kicked in $1 million. (Singer is perhaps best known as the luxury
vacation sponsor
[[link removed]] of
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.)

Singer and Marcus also sponsored AIPAC’s guerrilla campaign to
overrun the Democratic primary process back in 2022
[[link removed]];
some of the even more generous donors in this cycle are new to the
project. The top individual United Democracy Project donor during the
past six months was Jan Koum, billionaire founder of WhatsApp. He
donated $5 million to UDP over the final half of 2023; during that
very same period, he also gave $5 million to the super PAC of
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

Behind Koum was financier Jonathon Jacobson, who contributed $2.5
million. Jacobson has a long history
[[link removed]] of
political giving; since 2008, the top beneficiaries of his largesse,
other than the $1 million he gave UDP Project in 2022, have been
Republican super PACs, Republican candidates including Scott Brown and
Lindsey Graham, and Republican fundraising committees, including Mitch
McConnell’s National Republican Senatorial Committee. David Zalik,
who gave $2 million, is a Haley, Giuliani, and Mitt Romney donor
[[link removed]] as
well.

Amazing that all these Republican megadonors are now so keen to put
money behind Democrats in 2024!

To be fair, they’re not all pure saboteurs. A few of the top 10
contributors to the United Democracy Project super PAC have given
small amounts to Democrats before. One donor of the top 10 can even
plausibly be called a regular Democratic booster, and that’s Haim
Saban, a prominent Hillary Clinton backer
[[link removed]].
But in no world could you even call this a bipartisan group of
benefactors. It’s Republicans who know what they’re doing.

It's going to make House and Senate races really tough for
progressives—even the ones who have survived AIPAC-backed primary
challengers before. Most of these races are happening in deep-blue
districts not in play for Republicans. But Republicans see a way to
make them competitive, by seeking out conservative Democrats and
propping them up with TV advertising budgets befitting major statewide
candidates. The candidates, too, know this is the deal—Squad member
Summer Lee’s primary opponent Bhavini Patel said
[[link removed]] on
a recent fundraising call that her campaign was instructing
Republicans to re-register as Democrats to vote against Lee in their
Democratic primary showdown. (Lee was a top AIPAC target in 2022, as
well.)

That’s bad news for Democrats of all political persuasions. As they
do with any incumbent member, Democratic leadership has endorsed and
pledged money to the progressive members who are facing challengers.
Not for nothing, many of them are among the most popular and prominent
Democratic politicians in the country. But that doesn’t mean they
are immune to being outspent. If AIPAC is spending millions of
dollars, House Democratic leadership will also need to spend precious
resources to counteract some of these attacks—which will then drain
money and attention away from red-to-blue House seats that Democrats
are hoping to flip to secure a majority in Congress.

So you can see why Republicans would delight in this strategy. In a
difficult fundraising environment, siphoning limited resources away
from frontline races means Democrats will be less competitive in
toss-up contests. Meanwhile, if UDP succeeds in knocking out, say,
Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th District, they will make the
Democratic caucus whiter and more conservative—more like the
Republican Party—all while weakening the Dems elsewhere.

Even if those AIPAC-funded campaigns fail, it could still jeopardize
the path to a House majority for Democrats. Millions of dollars of
attack ads are certain to weaken the standing of any candidate, and if
these progressives survive their primaries, they will be wounded in
the general, where AIPAC then could (and will) help their Republican
opponents. In 2022, after spending millions to oppose Summer Lee in
her Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th District, UDP then
continued to spend on attack ads in the general, boosting her
Republican opponent in what became a fairly competitive race. If it
wasn’t clear already, UPD has no loyalty to the Democratic Party
broadly, or to its greater ambitions.

There are other reasons for concern, too. Progressives—the Squad in
particular—are standout small-dollar fundraisers and excellent
grassroots campaigners. In an election where enthusiasm for Joe Biden
is at a perilous low
[[link removed]],
the support of those politicians, who have a record of speaking to
young people and voters of color, will be crucial to bringing those
constituencies back into the fold. They are almost certain to play a
role in a winning Democratic presidential campaign. In fact, despite
recent criticism of Biden’s Israel policy, progressives have been
his closest allies when it has come to passing the president’s
signature legislation.

The donations from Republican megadonors filed with the FEC are only
part of the AIPAC war chest
[[link removed]].
So the biggest issue is that, beyond UPD, there could be a lot more
money coming to prevent Democrats from getting the majority they need.

Of course, it’s not the most novel strategy to fund the friend of
your enemy. Democrats even tried their hand at it in 2022, putting
money into elevating Trumpian loons
[[link removed]] who
were running for Congress and gubernatorial elections in blue-state
primaries so that they would be easier for Democrats to beat. And it
worked! In other words, there’s no rule against fighting dirty. But
the real problem is that Democratic leaders in Congress haven’t
fought back.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—who took more money
[[link removed]] from
the Israel lobby in 2022 than from any other group and is featured
prominently on AIPAC’s website (alongside House Republican
leadership)—has so far refused to condemn this tsunami of Republican
money being brought into Democratic primaries via AIPAC’s super PAC.
A public disavowal of this financial support, or a declaration than
any political consultancies aiding these campaigns are unwelcome in
Democratic politics, would hardly be unprecedented; in 2019, House
Democrats made it an official policy
[[link removed]] to
blacklist any pollster, consultant, or strategist who aided a
progressive challenger against a sitting Democratic incumbent ahead of
the 2020 elections.

Jeffries has so far, in this cycle, endorsed incumbent progressives
[[link removed]] Lee
and Ilhan Omar, and even donated small amounts of money to their
campaigns
[[link removed]]—and
Bowman’s too.* But he has not rung any alarm bells, saying late last
year: “Outside groups are gonna do what outside groups are gonna
do.”

It’s weird. Getting (and keeping) Democrats in power is key to
Jeffries’ own success. And if Democrats are willing to let
Republicans openly sabotage them in their own primary races in the
spring and summer, it’s hard to believe they’ll be able to defeat
Republicans in an open fight in the fall.

_ALEXANDER SAMMON is a Slate politics writer._

_Slate is a daily magazine on the web and podcast network. Founded in
1996, we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and
commentary about politics, news, business, technology, and culture.
Slate’s strong editorial voice and witty take on current events have
been recognized with numerous awards, including the National Magazine
Award for General Excellence Online. The site, which is owned by
Graham Holdings Company, is supported by advertising and subscription
revenues._

* AIPAC
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* Democratic primary
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* Big Money
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* Progressive Caucus
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