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Republican Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers reportedly attended three fundraisers hosted by AIPAC in one day this weekend as sources say that his allies are seeking ways to obscure the pro-Israel group’s support from public view.
Rogers, who is running against progressive Abdul El-Sayed, attended the AIPAC-hosted events in Los Angeles on Sunday — thousands of miles from home. He is slated to attend a fourth fundraiser put on by the lobbying group on Monday, The New York Times reported.
The courting of AIPAC funds comes despite the fact that the Rogers campaign seeks to distance him from the group. After AIPAC failed to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary despite pouring $32 million into the race via its super PAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), the group was planning another massive push for Rogers in the general election. This would have been a change in strategy from the group, which spends the majority of its money on Democratic primaries.
But Axios reported on Saturday that Rogers’s allies have asked AIPAC not to run advertisements backing him. Further, Rogers reportedly urged AIPAC board chair Michael Tuchin in LA last week to toss an attack ad against El-Sayed the group had already finished making. (This sparked concerns of illegal conduct as federal election law bars candidates from directly coordinating with super PACs.)
Rogers’s team, instead, is seeking to court AIPAC’s support — and the $59 million in its account as of the beginning of August — in other ways. Axios reported that Rogers’s allies have “urged AIPAC to get involved without putting the group’s name front and center.” The Times said that Rogers urged UDP to “slow down” on its plan to oppose El-Sayed.
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Meanwhile, Rogers allies and AIPAC “have also been considering alternate ways to support his campaign, including AIPAC members contributing to an existing pro-Rogers super PAC or funding a group of a different name so as to not disclose AIPAC as the original donor, the people briefed on the situation said,” according to The New York Times. The paper noted that AIPAC leaders are concerned that such a tactic could appear as if they’re trying to hide, however.
This is seemingly being done in recognition of AIPAC’s increasingly toxic brand in politics; a common attack in Democratic primaries this cycle has been simply to accuse the opposition of taking AIPAC support.
For decades, AIPAC has been one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. In recent years however, public support for Israel has plummeted due to its genocide in Gaza and its other wars, while voters and some parts of the Democratic Party have grown antsy over the billions of dollars in aid sent to Israel as Americans at home languish under a rapidly shrinking social safety net.
AIPAC has lost several of races that it’s thrown money behind in this midterm election cycle, including El-Sayed’s ground-shattering primary win, as well as Peggy Flanagan’s win in Minnesota, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, Aisha Wahab in California, and many others.
El-Sayed has dared AIPAC to oppose him in the general election.
“AIPAC, if you’re listening, burn your money. Come back and burn it again in the general,” he said in the waning days of the primary campaign. “I’m happy to burn your money for you, and then we can get on to the business of governing and asking whether or not our foreign policy ought to be dictated to us by the interests of a foreign government.”
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