The strategic logic is straightforward: Israel has become a liability to mention in a Democratic primary. Democratic voters have shifted dramatically on the question of U.S. support for Israel's military operations in Gaza — particularly among younger voters and communities of color. An ad that said "vote for the candidate AIPAC prefers" would hurt the candidate. An ad that says "Elect Chicago Women supports Laura Fine for Congress" does not. The money is the same. The accountability is not.

The Playbook, Perfected

The American Prospect broke down just how coordinated this approach is [2]. Across three competitive Illinois races, the same pool of prior AIPAC and UDP donors are giving to the same set of candidates — often in clusters, on the same days. Donna Miller in IL-02 received 83 percent of her fourth-quarter 2025 fundraising haul from prior AIPAC/UDP-linked donors. Laura Fine in IL-09 received $88,000 from 65 such donors. Melissa Bean in IL-08 got similar treatment. The coordination is visible in the FEC records — it's just not required to be disclosed as coordination until after the fact. This is the same playbook AIPAC road-tested in Oregon in 2024, where a pro-Israel super PAC spent heavily on behalf of congressional candidate Maxine Dexter near the end of a primary, with no meaningful donor transparency before voters cast ballots. Dexter won. The donor behind the last-minute PAC turned out to be AIPAC, a fact that only became clear through post-election disclosure requirements [2].

AIPAC isn't deterred by criticism of these tactics — and it's coming from all directions. The fact that it's now deploying them at scale in Illinois, in four separate races simultaneously, suggests the organization views the Illinois primaries as a defining test of its reach inside the Democratic Party [1]. It should be noted that AIPAC has not always won these tests. In a recent special election in New Jersey's 11th district, AIPAC's intervention was widely judged to have backfired — the organization's targeted candidate lost to progressive Analilia Mejia, who has been vocal in her criticism of Israel [1]. David Axelrod, hardly a progressive firebrand, has warned that AIPAC's aggressive primary intervention risks generating a backlash that ultimately costs Israel more Democratic support, not less. Even some centrist Democrats have grown uneasy with the blunt force of it.

In these districts where we have a progressive primary fight, you're going to see AIPAC put out a network of shell PACs, putting money into races without putting their name on it.

— Usamah Andrabi, Justice Democrats

The $100 Million Track Record — and What It Bought

To understand what's happening in Illinois, you have to understand the scale of what came before. In the 2024 cycle alone, AIPAC's United Democracy Project spent over $100 million in Democratic primaries [4]. UDP spent nearly $10 million in opposition to Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York's 16th district — Bowman lost. It spent over $5 million against Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri's 1st district — Bush lost [3]. Both were among the most prominent progressive voices in Congress on the question of Gaza and U.S. military aid. Their replacements — George Latimer and Wesley Bell, both moderate Democrats — received millions in UDP support to get there. The pattern is not subtle: target progressive incumbents who have broken with the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus, fund their opponents, don't mention Israel in any advertising, and let the money do the work.

What's notable about 2026 is that the strategy has evolved from targeting incumbents to pre-screening open seats. Rep. Danny Davis is retiring. So are Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Rep. Robin Kelly. These are open races without the built-in advantage of incumbency. AIPAC isn't trying to unseat anyone — it's trying to shape who gets in before they arrive. If it works, Illinois's new congressional delegation will have been filtered through a screening process that primary voters never got to audit.

What the Progressive Response Looks Like

The four progressive candidates targeted in these races are not taking it quietly. In February, several held a joint press conference in Chicago condemning AIPAC's involvement, calling it a "coordinated effort" by Trump and AIPAC donors to neutralize Israel critics in the Democratic Party. One candidate has been selling anti-AIPAC merchandise. The joint response represents something relatively rare in Democratic primaries: a unified progressive front that names the money and doesn't flinch. Whether it helps is another question. The playbook's advantage is that by the time voters understand the funding structure of the groups running ads against you, the vote is already over and the data is already public. The progressive candidates are running on small-dollar organizing and name recognition in crowded fields. The AIPAC-aligned candidates are running with PAC infrastructure, coordinated donor networks, and seven-figure ad buys. It's not a fair fight. It's not designed to be.

What makes the Illinois races significant beyond Illinois is the question they're asking the broader Democratic Party to answer. AIPAC's explicit mission is to maintain bipartisan support for U.S.-Israel policy. That mission now increasingly means neutralizing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — not by winning the argument on policy, but by funding its way to a different nominee before the argument can be had. Whether you think that's legitimate depends on your view of how political parties should select their candidates. But it's worth being clear about what's happening.

There's a serious conversation happening right now about who controls elections — about foreign interference, about the integrity of the ballot, about whether shadowy actors can shape American democracy from the outside. That conversation is worth having. But it should probably include a clause about nine-figure domestic PAC spending that flows through newly minted groups with no public accountability until after your vote is cast. That particular mechanism for shaping who represents you doesn't require a foreign power. It just requires a super PAC and a primary calendar.

March 17 as a Referendum

If the AIPAC-aligned candidates sweep all four Illinois races, the message to progressive Democrats will be stark: no matter how you perform on the merits, no matter how good your ground game, the money wall can be placed around your candidacy and voters can be reached before you build enough awareness to counter it. If one or two of the progressive candidates survive — particularly in crowded fields where the AIPAC-backed candidate might split moderate votes — it will signal that the playbook has limits. The New Jersey result suggests it does. Analilia Mejia won with a plurality in a crowded field, despite the outside money. Crowds diffuse concentrated money when no single candidate can consolidate it.

Illinois has four such crowded fields, all voting on the same day. The progressive candidates running in them are, by and large, serious people with serious records. Daniel Biss has a state legislature track record. Kina Collins has been preparing for this race for years. Robert Peters has built a coalition across Chicago's South Side. The question isn't whether they're good candidates. The question is whether Democratic primary voters get to evaluate them on those terms — or whether the evaluation has already been done for them by organizations who decided what kind of Democrat Illinois should send to Congress before Illinois had the chance to say. The answer comes March 17.