How did AIPAC-backed candidates fare in the US midterm elections?

Nearly a year before he stunned many by winning a seat in the United States Senate from Texas, James Talarico drew attention for his vehement rejection of campaign funding from the country’s largest pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “I’ve never taken money from AIPAC, and I’m not taking money from AIPAC in this campaign,” Talarico said in a clip for a podcast that later went viral. “Seeing what’s happening in Gaza makes me sick to my stomach as a teacher, as a Christian, as a human being.” On November 3, Talarico won by more than 12 percentage points. Pro-Israel groups allied with AIPAC gave modest support – about $6,000 – to Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton, but Talarico’s willingness to be so open about his disdain for AIPAC is still a notable part of a shift in US politics. In races across the country, AIPAC and political spending groups linked to it poured tens of millions of dollars into backing one candidate or another. While the group did back many winning candidates, nearly two-thirds of the total money it spent this election cycle went to those who ended up losing. On November 4, the day after the Democratic Party roundly defeated Republicans and won control of both the House and Senate, AIPAC said it had already counted some 234 candidates it backed, from both parties, as having won their contests. Pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and UDP backed candidates in at least 32 of 35 Senate races this election, according to Track AIPAC. In 26 of those races, the groups spent more than $100,000 on a candidate, and 21 of those candidates won their races on November 3. “AIPAC members are determined to expand their political activism in the cycles ahead,” the group said in a post on X that specifically pointed to support for the two most powerful Democrats in Congress – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries – who have also continued to call for maintaining strong US ties with Israel. Around $55m of the $84m that AIPAC, UDP and linked groups spent in the election cycle went to candidates who did not win, according to the findings. “We have entered a new era,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank that advocates for less US foreign involvement. “It is not just that AIPAC is spending millions of dollars and losing. You also have a new reality now in which candidates find AIPAC’s donations toxic and are rejecting it.” The most notable race in which an AIPAC-backed candidate lost was for a Senate seat in Michigan, where the group and affiliated PACs spent some $30m on Representative Haley Stevens, a Democrat who unsuccessfully sought the party’s nomination for the contest. Most of that money was spent in primaries, where AIPAC financially backed Bell’s campaign against former Representative Cori Bush, who was one of the first lawmakers in Congress to call Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide and who had lost to Bell in a primary in 2024.