John,

After being pummeled with $20 million from right-wing outside spending, Rep. Jamaal Bowman lost his primary election in NY-16 on Tuesday. This was the most expensive House primary in U.S. electoral history, with Republican megadonors using AIPAC’s Super PAC to spend over $17 million against our progressive incumbent.

Despite this disappointing news, Jamaal remains one of the most transformational leaders of our generation. He has become a political force who, alongside the rest of the Squad, has changed the trajectory of American politics and the urgency we expect from our elected leaders.

We recruited Jamaal to run for Congress in 2020 because his life’s work has been deeply rooted in serving his community — as a loving father, husband, and community leader serving children and working families as a principal and leading advocate for public education in NYC for over 15 years.

Jamaal was an underdog from the beginning, with our progressive movement always facing an uphill battle. From the moment Justice Democrats candidates are recruited to run, they are up against decades of establishment infrastructure and multi-million dollar war chests fueled by right-wing millionaires and billionaires.

The work of Justice Democrats is to break down the barriers that exist for people like Jamaal Bowman to run for Congress. Through your contributions, we have:

• Worked directly with Jamaal’s campaign to help them knock on 170,000 doors and make over 1,000,000 phone calls to voters this calendar year;
• Raised the campaign over $200,000 directly from all of you on our email list;
• Spent more than $1,300,000 on the independent expenditure side, making us the largest outside group spender supporting Jamaal;
• Poured hundreds of staff hours into the campaign, stepping into key management and communications roles when gaps existed, and closely coordinating with and supporting Jamaal’s campaign staff.

Jamaal’s historic victory over 30+ year AIPAC darling Rep. Eliot Engel and his courage on many key issues, especially on Israel’s genocide, made him a top target.

Jamaal and our movement were such a threat to right-wing power, to GOP megadonors, and to AIPAC’s influence in Congress that they had to spend $15 million to defeat us. This demonstrates the power of our people-funded movement, the strength that any single progressive with the moral clarity to stand up to far-right interests has, and just how on defense AIPAC really is.

For AIPAC — the single largest spender in American politics including the presidency to date — this race is so much bigger than re-electing a Congressman. It is part of their final attempts to stop a rising tide of a new generation of voters and leaders who refuse to stay silent in the face of injustice at home or abroad.

AIPAC knows the future is not on their side, so they have no choice but to overwhelm, confuse, and depress voters with a flood of dark money to generate support for their candidates. That’s exactly why they pledged to spend an unprecedented $100 million to unseat the Squad this year.

The sheer quantity of spending against our progressive champions proves to us that our mission is not only a just and popular one that represents the interests of the majority, but it is such a threat to the existing power structures that they will spend more money than they ever have in their history to try to silence us. It is up to us as a progressive movement, and as a Democratic Party as a whole, to stand up and change this system that sacrifices regular people for megadonors.

Win or lose, we know that primaries leave their mark on history and we will never go back to a world where it is a given that members of Congress will sell out our most marginalized communities and back down to corporate interests. We will never go back to a world where all of Congress stays silent as tens of thousands of people are murdered. Our members relentlessly stand for a more just world for all people, even when it threatens their own careers and well-being — as Jamaal selflessly did.

Now that this critical primary fight is over, we know AIPAC is shifting gears and setting its sights on the next one: Rep. Cori Bush’s competitive Democratic primary on August 6 in Missouri’s 1st district. We cannot give in to hopelessness or cynicism — we must fight back, NOW.

We need the grassroots resources to help protect Cori from AIPAC and other right-wing attacks. Will you make a $5 contribution right now to help us re-elect her and the rest of the Squad this year?

Contribute $5

Jamaal Bowman is not a warning, but a model for what every progressive should aspire to be: uncompromisingly dedicated to the interests of their constituents and unwilling to compromise on our core values for political expediency.

Let’s come together in this difficult moment and do what it takes to stop AIPAC from unseating another one of our progressive champions this summer.

In solidarity,

Alexandra Rojas
Executive Director