The Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District remains too close to call, but one thing is certain after Thursday’s special election: the massive spending by a prominent pro-Israel PAC backfired.
The United Democracy Project, a super PAC that has received tens of millions of dollars from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and has spent heavily in Democratic primaries over the years, spent more than $2 million to cut down former Rep. Tom Malinowski. Now, the former congressman is narrowly trailing progressive activist Analilia Mejia in the special Democratic primary with more votes still left to count.
The ads may have hurt Malinowski, but they also fractured the establishment vote in a crowded field — with Mejia lying in wait.
That means whether it’s Malinowski or Mejia, who has been critical of Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza, one of them is likely to be the district’s next member of Congress, in a significant political blow to those pro-Israel groups.
A crowded special primary isn’t necessarily a bellwether for every Democratic primary around the country. But the episode illustrates how, as United Democracy Project amasses a deep war chest in preparation for this year’s primaries, it’s getting harder to shape a party that’s grown increasingly skeptical of unilateral support for Israel in recent years.
Malinowski, who served two terms in Congress after a swing-seat victory in the 2018 election, jumped into the crowded race as a favorite. But the party establishment was fractured — Malinowski had the backing of Sen. Andy Kim, but former Gov. Phil Murphy and other prominent party leaders endorsed Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, while others backed former Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way.
Meanwhile, Mejia seized the progressive lane, backed by national leaders like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as local progressive figures like Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and the Working Families Party. Mejia emphasized her outsider cred throughout the primary, emphasizing in ads, “I don’t work for the political machine.”
“What helped me was that I spent all the time that I could actually talking to voters. I did not go negative. I focused on issues. I made sure that I was speaking to people’s daily problems and existence,” she said during a press conference Friday, where she switched between English and Spanish.
Malinowski was largely seen as a supporter of Israel during his time in Congress, but United Democracy Project told media outlets it was targeting him because he had spoken of conditioning aid to Israel.
The group’s ads didn’t discuss Israel at all, instead criticizing Malinowski for approving funding to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as part of a bipartisan budget deal during President Donald Trump’s first term. UDP also cast him as corrupt for “cashing in on Covid-related stocks while in Congress” during the pandemic.
“As good a race as Analilia ran, as good a candidate as Analilia is, let me be clear: AIPAC created this race for themselves,” said a longtime New Jersey Democratic strategist who was not involved in the special election and requested anonymity to speak candidly. “In a way only they can, they spent millions of dollars beating back a moderate Democrat to get themselves a progressive that is totally outside the frame that they would like.”
“There wasn’t too much attention on this race until the last weeks,” the strategist added, while also crediting the “perfect storm” that grew from Mejia “building a movement” to take advantage of the opportunity.
“If it wasn’t for the AIPAC spending, this would have been a sleepy primary. When they came in and dropped millions of dollars on the race, it totally upended the race.
Julie Roginsky, a veteran New Jersey Democratic strategist who ran the super PAC supporting Malinowski, directly criticized AIPAC’s actions in a post on X, calling them counterproductive to its goals.
“I ran the superpac in support of Tom Malinowski’s campaign. I am also a pro-Israel Jew. What AIPAC did in this race is bad for Jews, bad for Israel, and bad for having bipartisan congressional support for the very issues AIPAC claims to care about,” she wrote.
The winning candidate will emerge with about 30% of the votes cast thanks to a layered and tangled web of dynamics — including a fractured field of establishment candidates, the decline of the state political machine that once controlled these primaries, and surging frustration among Democratic voters who want their leaders to channel that energy, as well as the super PAC spending.
But the pro-Israel group’s high-profile political loss is reverberating across both Jewish-American political media and a Democratic Party that has grown deeply divided over how it views Israel, especially its recent conduct in Gaza.
Patrick Dorton, a UDP spokesperson, brushed aside the New Jersey loss in a statement, calling the result “an anticipated possibility” and teasing more involvement to come in the regular primary for this seat in June.
“Our focus remains on who will serve the next full term in Congress. UDP will be closely monitoring dozens of primary races, including the June NJ-11 primary, to help ensure pro-Israel candidates are elected to Congress,” he said.
UDP is flush with cash, having ended 2025 with $96 million in the bank after a $30 million donation from AIPAC. It is once again expected to throw its weight around in Democratic primaries like it has in previous election cycles.
The group spent $61 million in 2023 and 2024, including more than $22 million in its two most prominent races, successful attempts to unseat two progressive Reps. Jamaal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in Missouri. It also spent more than $4 million to help Democrat Sarah Elfreth win an open congressional seat in Maryland that year.
In the previous election cycle, it spent $33 million, again primarily in Democratic primaries. UDP has bolstered a handful of Republican candidates too, though much of its spending has been in Democratic races.
The group’s massive spending in recent years has provoked massive resentment among AIPAC opponents, who have long argued that Democrats need to break from the concept of unconditional support for Israel. Now, they’ve been emboldened not only by shifting politics around the issue but also by frustration with AIPAC’s big spending against a number of progressive candidates.
“AIPAC represents one of a larger constellation of right-wing interests and lobbies that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Democratic primaries, and that should be a five-alarm fire to every Democratic voter,” Usamah Andrabi, the communications director at the progressive Justice Democrats, told NBC News in an interview before the New Jersey election.
The New Jersey contest is just the first in what’s expected to be a busy primary calendar for the AIPAC-aligned super PAC. While the group hasn’t jumped into any other races yet, at least publicly, a handful of candidates it boosted in the past are in difficult primaries — including Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee in North Carolina; Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who is running for Senate in Michigan; Democratic Rep. Wesley Bell in Missouri; and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales in Texas.
Polling has shown that Democratic voters have become more critical of Israel’s actions in recent years.
In September, an AP-NORC poll found that 71% of Democrats believed Israel’s response in Gaza after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, had gone “too far,” up from 63% a year prior. Just 15% of Democrats said in the poll that providing aid to Israel’s military to fight Hamas is an extremely or very important foreign policy goal of the United States.
A Pew Research Center poll from that same month found that just 18% of Democrats have a favorable view of the Israeli government, similar to the 14% who say they have a favorable view of Hamas and below the 37% who said they have a favorable view of the Palestinian Authority.
And last march, Gallup found that 59% of Democrats said their sympathies lay more with Palestinians than Israelis in “the Middle East situation,” the first time in more than 20 years of tracking that question that a majority of Democrats chose the Palestinians.
There are also signs of shifts among Democratic lawmakers. More prominent Democrats have begun referring to Israel’s conduct as a “genocide,” even as many remain critical of Hamas’ attacks. Currently, 61 Democrats are co-sponsoring a bill that would ban the president from giving Israel bunker-busting bombs and certain other munitions — a bill those Democrats refer to with the shorthand “Block the Bombs.”
In a message posted to X Friday morning, Ocasio-Cortez wrote that AIPAC’s spending in New Jersey demonstrated it had “zero tolerance for any diversity of thought from their line” and that its goal was to “pressure elected officials to increasingly place themselves at odds with our responsibility to represent the electorate and the views of the majority of Americans.”
“I hope Dems begin to see that moderate or progressive, AIPAC is not our friend,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
