New Progressive Playbook: Denounce Super PACs, Accept Their Help

Progressive congressional candidates from New York to Colorado are denouncing political action committees even as they benefit from independent expenditures funded by a new anti-Israel super PAC viewed as the progressive counter to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.American Priorities PAC is credited with helping several socialist candidates such as Darializa Avila Chevalier and Colorado’s Melat Kiros unseat incumbent congressmen in recent House Democratic primaries. Launched in February, American Priorities has already pledged to spend at least $10 million during the midterm elections. The super PAC also pledged to put up $2 million to support New York candidates Ms. Avila Chevalier, who defeated five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat, along with Brad Lander and Claire Valdez, both of whom also won their respective races. All three had scored endorsements from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and all three were known for anti-Israel sentiments. American Priorities spent over $1.3 million to support Ms. Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old investigator for a public defender’s office and PhD student who defeated Mr. Espaillat in New York’s hotly contested 13th congressional district. During a forum on “The Brian Lehrer Show,” Ms. Avila Chevalier claimed that unlike Mr. Espaillat, “I don’t take a dime of corporate PAC money.” Justice Democrats, a progressive group with ties to American Priorities, told CNN in a statement that Ms. Avila Chevalier would not have defeated Mr. Espaillat “without the support of American Priorities.”In a debate with Mr. Espaillat, Ms. Avila Chevalier claimed she learned of American Priorities’ outside support of her campaign by reading about it in the New York Times. “It makes sense that there are Democratic donors out there, who, just like Democratic voters, want to fight back against AIPAC and its influence over our democracy,” she said.Ms. Avila Chevalier also pledged in a statement to City & State to join Senator Bernie Sanders’s push to abolish super PACs “on my first day in office.”In one of her last debates against Ms. Espaillat, Ms. Avila Chevalier claimed that she controlled her campaign “and the money that my campaign receives.”“And I’m very proud to say I have not received a dime of corporate PAC money,” Ms. Avila Chevalier said. She added, “I can’t control outside groups.” Many of American Priorities’ top donors are successful Muslim-American entrepreneurs, including a Texas businessman, Hussein Mahrouq, whose company’s holdings include an Automax car dealership and many Dollar car rental franchises. Mr. Mahrouq has so far contributed $425,000 to the super PAC, according to FEC records.Mr. Mahrouq also backed the unsuccessful re-election campaigns of Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, both of whom were known for strident anti-Israel policy positions and statements, according to Jewish Insider. Other top donors include a New York City-based chief executive, Mohammad Waqas Javed, and Idris and Haroon Mokhtarzada, two brothers who co-founded personal finance app Truebill, which Rocket Companies acquired for $1.275 billion in 2021, according to FEC records. A person close to American Priorities told CNN that some of its donors hadn’t been politically active until Mr. Mamdani’s successful 2025 mayoral campaign. The PAC views itself as a counter to AIPAC while supporting both Palestine and Muslim-American voters, “a long-overlooked community” that is “critical to any Democratic majority.”Ms. Valdez, another American Priorities-backed candidate, defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city council member Julie Won in a race for New York’s seventh district. Ms. Valdez, a New York state assemblyman and former clerical workers union organizer for the United Auto Workers union, distinguished herself as one who was not fighting on behalf of “millionaire donors” or “corporate interests.” In a March debate with Ms. Won and Mr. Reynoso, Ms. Valdez said she was against super PAC money.“No super PACs. No, no thank you,” Ms. Valdez said. In a recent WNYC debate, Ms. Valdez’s deflected criticism over her campaign’s outside support from the American Priorities super PAC by pointing a finger at AIPAC. “I think it’s really important to be very clear about the fact that AI, crypto, AIPAC are spending millions and millions of dollars in midterm elections and have for some time,” Ms. Valdez said during the debate. “And the way that some people are countering that is by also spending money.”Ms. Valdez also accused AIPAC of being the secret backer of Real Fight NYC, a super PAC that spent at least $650,000 in support of Mr. Reynoso. But City & State reported that the super PAC was backed by unions including the American Federation of Teachers. She added in a separate debate on NY1 that the outside money supporting her campaign was helping her with a race “that we need to win.”“The hypocrisy is staggering,” Ms. Won and Mr. Reynoso said in a joint statement. The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, is reportedly on pace to spend more than the $46.3 million it deployed for several 2024 campaigns, including one that unseated former Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri.Ms. Bush, who blamed her loss on AIPAC and “big money,” is running against Representative Wesley Bell in a state primary on August 4. While it wasn’t immediately clear if American Priorities will contribute to Ms. Bush’s campaign, the candidate who said “we need to get the big money out of politics” did not seem opposed to the idea. “But right now, having a counterweight to AIPAC and … the big cryptocurrency folks and big real estate, big pharma, the war profiteers, ICE contractors … will be useful to us because often one of the issues we have is we are grassroots,” she told CNN.Bush doesn’t oppose all AI and crypto-currency spending – one of American Priorities’ top super PAC donors, Nazar Khan, is the co-founder of TeraWulf, a former bitcoin mining firm turned digital infrastructure company that owns and operates AI data centers. The company recently proposed building a new AI data center on Cayuga Lake in New York State, Jewish Insider reported. On her campaign page, Ms. Valdez promised to “fight to put a moratorium on AI data center expansion.” Ms. Avila Chevalier also believed there should be a moratorium on data center construction “due to the devastating impacts that they have on our environment.”On Tuesday, Ms. Kiros, a former attorney who said the September 11th, 2001 terror attacks were “inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East,” defeated Representative Diana DeGette in Colorado’s first congressional district. After her victory, Ms. Kiros promised to “vote out any of the incumbents that are standing in our way by taking that kind of corporate PAC money.”“We have to start setting a standard now,” she added.The American Priorities PAC spent $150,000 on TV commercials supporting Ms. Kiros in the last week of her campaign, CNN reported.

New Progressive Playbook: Denounce Super PACs, Accept Their Help

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