The Anti-PAC PAC: How "Progressives" Learned to Love "Dirty Money" – Honest Reporting

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The so-called “progressives” who denounce PAC money as corrupt and anti-democratic have proved remarkably comfortable with it when anti-AIPAC groups are spending millions on their behalf. Behind their rhetoric is a growing network of donors and committees spending millions to build an electoral pipeline for candidates who condemn “dirty money” only when it belongs to their opponents.
Key Takeaways:
“Will a handful of billionaires and their super PACs be able to buy this election?” Bernie Sanders asked Michigan voters at a rally this month for Abdul El-Sayed ahead of the August 4 Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat.
“We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intoned to the crowd of about 2,000. Or, she said, voters could choose “Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.”
Rashida Tlaib was there too, assuring voters that El-Sayed is “unbought and doesn’t take corporate PAC money.”
Sanders, meanwhile, railed against the “billionaire class” and its supposed greed. “This is an election between Abdul and the billionaire class,” he declared. “When Abdul is elected to the Senate, he will work with me and other progressives in taking on the greed of the billionaire class and fight for an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.”
The battle lines were drawn. On one side: billionaires, corporations, shadowy special interests and, of course, AIPAC. On the other: Abdul El-Sayed, the supposedly unbought tribune of the people.
There was just one problem. The PAC money didn’t get the memo.
El-Sayed has made money in politics the centerpiece of his campaign for Michigan’s open Senate seat, repeatedly attacking Democratic rival Haley Stevens over PAC contributions, including from AIPAC. He has cast the race as a test of integrity: Stevens takes special-interest money, he does not. Stevens is beholden to corporations, he is “unbought.” Outside spending is not merely excessive, but, in his words, “anti-democratic as hell.”
Unless, apparently, it is spent to elect Abdul El-Sayed.
American Priorities PAC, a newly created super PAC designed to counter AIPAC, announced that it would do “whatever it takes” to help El-Sayed win the primary. Asked what that meant, a spokesperson clarified that it “means spending.”
El-Sayed has not publicly told it to stop.
Then there is Fighting for Michigan PAC, another independent committee created to support his candidacy. It has launched a “multi-million-dollar independent expenditure campaign” and had already spent more than $1.28 million by July 4. Its largest individual donor is El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, who contributed $300,000 across three separate donations, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The PAC says Tayeb has no role in its strategy or operations, and there is no public evidence that El-Sayed’s campaign coordinated with it. But that is merely a legal distinction. More to the point, it bears little resemblance to the broad indictment of money and outside interests influencing political decision-making that El-Sayed and his allies have been selling to voters.
What’s more, these same so-called “progressives” cheering El-Sayed’s anti-PAC message have hardly treated every PAC as an intolerable stain on democracy.
El-Sayed’s defenders will argue that the money supporting him is different.
It comes from labor unions, progressive organizations, Muslim-American groups and pro-Palestinian donors rather than corporations, billionaires or pro-Israel organizations. Its purpose, they would argue, is not to purchase political influence but to protect candidates challenging “powerful” interests.
But that is an argument about whose money they approve of – not about whether outside spending corrupts elections.
To be clear, corporate PACs, leadership PACs and super PACs are not legally interchangeable.
Traditional PACs can make limited contributions directly to candidates. Leadership PACs are controlled by politicians and typically distribute money to political allies. Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts but cannot donate directly to candidates or coordinate with their campaigns.
But the hypocrisy lies in when El-Sayed and his allies decide they matter.
When outside organizations support Haley Stevens, these distinctions are flattened into one sinister mass: “dark money,” billionaires, corporations and special interests buying an election.
When outside organizations support El-Sayed and his allies, every technical distinction suddenly becomes indispensable.
Sanders has performed this routine before.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly insisted that he did not have a super PAC. Technically, that was true: he had no candidate-sanctioned super PAC operated by close political allies in the manner of several of his opponents.
He did, however, benefit from National Nurses United for Patient Protection, a super PAC that had spent nearly $1.2 million supporting him by February 2016 through mailers, organizing and a campaign bus tour.
Sanders had not created the group, did not control it and was not permitted to coordinate with it.
In other words, he relied on exactly the distinction now available to El-Sayed: the super PAC supported him, but it was not his super PAC.
Sanders’ supporters might argue that a nurses’ union is different from a billionaire or corporate interest.
But, again, that is a judgment about the political identity of the spender – not the supposedly corrupting effect of unlimited outside spending.
Apparently, super PAC money does not undermine democracy when the super PAC has the correct politics.
Ocasio-Cortez is hardly operating outside the PAC system that she so readily invokes as evidence of corruption.
She sponsors Courage to Change, a leadership PAC that raises money and distributes it across the progressive political machine. The committee reported more than $274,000 in receipts during the current election cycle through May 31, 2026.
Tlaib sponsors her own committee, Rooted in Community Leadership PAC, which reported more than $153,000 in receipts and nearly $258,000 in spending over the same cycle.
Tlaib’s congressional campaign has also accepted direct PAC contributions, including $4,000 from America’s largest Muslim American political action committee, Emgage, between 2018 and 2023.
These are not the same legal vehicles as super PACs making unlimited independent expenditures. But Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib are perfectly capable of understanding such distinctions when the PACs are raising money for them, funding their allies and expanding their political influence.
That precision mysteriously disappears when the money supports an opponent.
Then every PAC becomes “dark money,” where donors are buying influence and every expenditure becomes proof that democracy has been bought.
Apparently, PAC money is not inherently corrupting after all.
It is only corrupting when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are not the ones benefiting from it.
The same selective outrage was on display during Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 campaign for mayor of New York.
When a super PAC spent heavily to support Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani denounced it as an assault on the city’s campaign-finance system.
“We know New Yorkers want a system of rules, systems that they can actually trust in,” he declared, accusing “Trump billionaires” of “making a mockery of that system and the intent of that law.”
Strong words.
They were not, however, applied to the outside groups spending money to elect Zohran Mamdani.
New Yorkers for Lower Costs ultimately spent more than $2.7 million supporting his candidacy and hundreds of thousands more attacking Cuomo.
Defend and Advance, an independent expenditure group linked through its treasurer to Emgage Federal PAC, spent another $33,528 promoting Mamdani. Unity & Justice Fund PAC added nearly $13,000 more.
Mamdani did not receive those funds directly, and there is no suggestion that his campaign illegally coordinated the spending.
But that remains a far cry from the standard he applied to Cuomo.
He had portrayed outside spending as evidence that wealthy interests were subverting democracy and attempting to purchase City Hall. Yet when millions were spent to put him in City Hall, the outrage vanished.
Mamdani did not demand that the pro-Mamdani groups stop spending.
He did not accuse their donors of buying the election.
He did not suggest that their money made him beholden to the interests financing his rise.
Instead, the same outside-spending system he had condemned suddenly became something from which he could benefit while maintaining a safe legal distance.
That is the trick: When super PAC money helps an opponent, it is corruption. When it helps Mamdani, it is merely an independent expenditure.
And when challenged, the politician who had just delivered a sermon about billionaires buying democracy could retreat behind the very campaign-finance technicalities he had ignored when attacking Cuomo.
El-Sayed is now using the same playbook.
El-Sayed is not merely receiving incidental support from a sympathetic organization.
He is the latest beneficiary of an increasingly well-funded political network built to elect the anti-Israel left while attacking pro-Israel spending as inherently corrupt.
American Priorities was established in January 2026 as an explicit counterweight to AIPAC. Its founder, former Bernie Sanders strategist Hannah Fertig, described a “huge gap in the progressive spending ecosystem” and said the group wanted Democratic foreign policy to reflect the party’s shifting views on Gaza and American military assistance to Israel.
It pledged to spend at least $10 million during the 2026 elections.
This is not a grassroots campaign-finance reform organization, but a super PAC specifically created to deploy unlimited political spending against pro-Israel candidates and in favor of those who share its radical foreign-policy agenda.
By June 30, American Priorities had raised more than $5.8 million and spent nearly $5.75 million. More than $5.66 million of that went toward independent expenditures supporting favored candidates or attacking their opponents.
And El-Sayed is far from its first beneficiary.
American Priorities spent more than $1.55 million supporting Adam Hamawy, the New Jersey congressional candidate and Gaza doctor whose campaign placed opposition to Israel at its center.
It spent more than $1.1 million supporting North Carolina progressive Nida Allam.
In New York, it deployed approximately $1.34 million to promote democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier and attack incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat. It spent another $455,750 supporting fellow democratic socialist Claire Valdez and opposing her rival, Antonio Reynoso.
The PAC also spent more than $455,000 supporting Pennsylvania progressive Christopher Rabb, approximately $500,000 helping Randy Villegas and attacking his opponents in California, $150,000 supporting Melat Kiros in Colorado and $100,000 supporting Frederick Haynes III in Texas.
This is not a random assortment of candidates.
It is an attempt to build a national electoral pipeline for anti-Israel politicians.
Hamawy, whom the PAC backed with roughly $1.5 million before his primary victory, had served as a doctor in Gaza and made opposition to American support for Israel a defining campaign issue.
Valdez and Avila Chevalier were both part of Zohran Mamdani’s democratic-socialist congressional slate in New York. Avila Chevalier campaigned on abolishing super PACs even as American Priorities spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect her. Valdez pledged to end Citizens United while benefiting from the same unlimited outside-spending system that decision enabled.
Neither found the contradiction sufficiently troubling to reject the assistance.
Asked about the outside spending supporting her, Avila Chevalier retreated to the familiar technicality: “I can’t control outside groups.”
Yet she could have denounced their spending, demanded that they stop or applied her promise to “abolish super PACs” to the super PAC trying to put her in Congress.
American Priorities has therefore already tested the El-Sayed strategy elsewhere: condemn super PACs in principle, benefit from them in practice and then insist that the candidate cannot possibly be held responsible for money legally spent without campaign coordination. The PAC’s donors also reveal that this is part of a broader political network rather than a spontaneous reaction to the Michigan race.
Its two largest reported donors, Omer Hassan and Mohammad Waqas Javed, each contributed $1 million. Both had previously given approximately $250,000 to New Yorkers for Lower Costs, the super PAC that helped elect Mamdani.
A person familiar with American Priorities told CNN that Mamdani’s campaign was the moment that inspired many of its donors and brought them into national politics. Emboldened by his victory, they began looking for ways to reshape the Democratic Party around the Palestinian cause.
The same million-dollar donors who helped finance the outside-spending operation behind Mamdani are now bankrolling a national super PAC supporting El-Sayed and other anti-Israel candidates.
No allegation of illegal coordination is required to expose the contradiction.
El-Sayed wants voters to regard his opponents as controlled and compromised, but when an organization backed by million-dollar donors spends hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting him, he treats the money as something that simply materialized beyond his control.
Fighting for Michigan PAC and its bumper spending, including from his own father-in-law, makes the contradiction even more glaring.
The “unbought” candidate is therefore being promoted by two separate super PACs: one partly financed by his own family, the other connected to the donor network that helped carry Mamdani into City Hall.
Yet El-Sayed continues to campaign as though outside spending exists only when it benefits the other side.
Outside money, he and his allies have repeatedly told voters, purchases candidates. It corrupts elections and turns public officials into employees of billionaires and special interests.
But millions in outside money are now being deployed to elect El-Sayed.
Suddenly, the same politicians who spoke so gravely about democracy being sold to the highest bidder have discovered the finer points of independent-expenditure law.
PAC money corrupts. Except when it comes from an anti-AIPAC PAC.
Billionaires buy elections. Except when million-dollar donors are bankrolling pro-Palestinian candidates.
Outside spending is an assault on democracy. Except when it is helping Abdul El-Sayed.
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© Divuach Ne’eman, 2025
Born in London, England, Rachel O’Donoghue moved to Israel in April 2021 after spending five years working at various national newspaper titles in the UK.
She studied law at the University of Law, London, and gained a master’s degree in multimedia journalism at the University of Kent.
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