The United Democracy Project, a super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and another influential group, Democratic Majority for Israel, has spent more than $60 million on Democratic House primaries since the 2020 election.
More than a quarter of that was spent on trying to oust Bowman, who is running against Westchester County Mayor George Latimer (Democrat). The roughly $16 million these groups spent on the election is more than double what they’ve spent on any other race, and an amount rarely seen in a House primary.
In recent years, teams have spent a lot of money on a lot of races, and in many cases, that investment has paid off, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the more money spent, the better the chances of winning.
Below is a review of their performance so far, based on data from Open Secrets.
- These groups have spent at least $400,000 on each of the 16 primary elections since 2020, with their candidates winning 11 of them.
- Their second-largest investment after Bowman’s 2024 run was in Maryland’s 2022 primary, where they spent more than $6 million to help thwart former Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.)’s bid to return to Congress. Edwards, like other candidates the groups oppose, had angered them with some of her stances on Israel.
- They targeted incumbents like Bowman in the 2022 elections, winning the elections of both Reps. Murray Newman (D-Ill.) and Andy Levin (D-Mich.).
- But Newman’s defeat was lopsided despite a relatively small investment, suggesting she was destined to lose anyway. And these groups have lost some of the most high-profile races, including Bowman’s 2020 defeat of incumbent Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), when the groups spent $2 million trying to save the incumbent. And the California primary earlier this year and the 2022 victories of incumbent Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania) and Shuri Thanedar (D-Mich.) are three races in which they spent more than $4 million each.
- They’ve also faced particular resistance when targeting lawmakers who are part of “The Squad,” a diverse group of progressive Democrats, as they did in Bowman’s 2020 primary and Lee’s 2022 primary.
In addition to targeting Bowman again, the groups have spent roughly $2 million so far this election cycle on another Squad-aligned member, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri), who faces another big test for the groups in the Aug. 6 primary.
A Bowman defeat would be the biggest signal yet of these groups’ power, but it’s unclear how much talk they will get about the issues they hold dear.
Bowman’s campaign, like many of the other candidates mentioned above, doesn’t really focus on Israel-related issues in its ads. And Bowman has had personal issues beyond his critical comments about Israel over the Gaza war, including pleading guilty to a misdemeanor for setting off a fire alarm during a heated debate in Congress over a possible government shutdown. Bowman was subsequently censured by the House of Representatives.
But we’ve seen time and time again in recent years that even the fear of a tough primary can have a big impact on how lawmakers behave. Few lawmakers lose primaries — none have so far this year, although Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) is on the verge of losing an uncontested election last week — but lawmakers in safe districts, like Bowman, tend to toe the party line because they know the only real hurdle to reelection is the primary.
If Bowman were to fall, his colleagues would undoubtedly notice.
