What Happens When AIPAC Decides to End Your Career

In June 2024, Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY-16) lost his primary to Westchester County Executive George Latimer. The two candidates ran inside the same Democratic Party, in the same New York district, for the same House seat.

One side of that race was funded like a House race. The other was funded like a national campaign.

The two sides of one primary

Source: topic_member_totals, filtered to topic_id = 'israel_lobby', cycle 2024, stance = pro.

The first line is the entire pro-Israel-lobby direct spend for Bowman in 2024. Four thousand dollars. The last line is the pro-Israel-lobby spend against Bowman: nearly $10 million. The ratio is about 2,490 to one.

Who wrote the $9.96M oppose check

Almost all of it came from one committee.

United Democracy Project is the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. DMFI PAC was founded in 2019 by former AIPAC operatives. Together they accounted for 99.99% of the independent-expenditure spending against Bowman in the 2024 primary.

On the support side for Latimer, the same two committees show up again: UDP put $4,682,560 behind Latimer, DMFI another $910,682. The pro-Israel-lobby network was, in dollar terms, both halves of the race.

Who funded the committee that funded the opposition

UDP's 2024 funding in our warehouse concentrates in a handful of ultra-high-net-worth households:

A single primary in Westchester, in other words, was shaped by a nationwide donor network — not by the voters of New York's 16th district, and not by the candidates themselves. Bowman's own campaign raised meaningful sums from small donors. He still lost by 17 points.

The structural read

Two things can be true at once. First, Latimer was a serious candidate, a county executive with his own constituency, not a carpetbagger. Second, the pro-Israel-lobby independent-expenditure complex spent roughly $15.8 million shaping a single House primary — $9.96M against Bowman, $5.59M for Latimer in IE support alone — in a district that has never seen competition at that scale before.

Our dataset does not let us say what any voter thought. It does let us say what the money did. AIPAC's super PAC made an explicit decision: it is more cost-effective to spend roughly $10 million ending the career of a dovish incumbent than to spend $10 million persuading him. That is a policy choice disguised as a spending choice.

Lawrence Lessig's line — responsive to the funders, not the people — is usually an abstraction. In NY-16 in June 2024, it had a price tag.

-- Bowman (H0NY16143) and Latimer (H4NY16087) under the Israel-lobby topic, 2024
SELECT cand_name, cand_id, stance, direct_amount,
       ie_support_amount, ie_oppose_amount,
       total_pro_spending, total_oppose_spending
FROM `goodvote-466412.fec_staging_fec_staging.topic_member_totals`
WHERE cand_id IN ('H0NY16143','H4NY16087')
  AND topic_id = 'israel_lobby'
  AND cycle = 2024;

-- Which committees actually ran the oppose spend against Bowman
SELECT c.cmte_nm, ie.support_oppose, SUM(ie.expenditure_amount) amt
FROM `goodvote-466412.fec_staging_fec_staging.stg_independent_expenditures` ie
JOIN `goodvote-466412.fec_staging_fec_staging.stg_committees` c USING(cmte_id)
WHERE ie.cand_id = 'H0NY16143' AND cycle = 2024
GROUP BY c.cmte_nm, ie.support_oppose
ORDER BY amt DESC;

-- UDP 2024 individual donors
SELECT canonical_name, SUM(transaction_amt) amt
FROM `goodvote-466412.fec_staging_fec_staging.stg_contributions_keyed` x
JOIN `goodvote-466412.fec_staging_fec_staging.stg_committees` c USING(cmte_id)
WHERE c.cmte_nm = "UNITED DEMOCRACY PROJECT ('UDP')"
  AND cycle = 2024 AND canonical_name IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY canonical_name ORDER BY amt DESC LIMIT 15;