AIPAC Unleashes a Record $14.5 Million Bid to Defeat a Critic of Israel

Pro-Israel political groups have transformed a Democratic primary on the outskirts of New York City, overwhelming the race with record-shattering outside spending to take down one of Israel’s most outspoken detractors, Representative Jamaal Bowman.

The onslaught by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and allied groups has made good on a warning delivered to lawmakers like Mr. Bowman after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack: Moderate your views or face a deluge of political attacks.

Now, in barely a month, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC has spent $14.5 million — up to $17,000 an hour — on the race, filling television screens, stuffing mailboxes and clogging phone lines with caustic attacks. With days to go, the expenditures have already eclipsed what any interest group has ever spent on a single House race.

Pro-Israel groups are using the same approach elsewhere, most notably in an August primary in St. Louis. AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has already spent $1.5 million there to take out Representative Cori Bush, who is a Black member of the House’s left-wing “squad” like Mr. Bowman.

The paid messages almost never mention Israel. In Mr. Bowman’s race, they have favored attacks aimed at the party’s base portraying the congressman as a pariah who “keeps attacking President Biden” and courts “controversy, chaos and conspiracy.”

“Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda, and he’s hurting New York,” warns one TV spot. The tracking firm AdImpact estimates it has been seen 180 million times.