Progressives face growing primary threats over Gaza stance

Some of the House’s most high-profile progressives are facing a growing primary threat next year over their position on the Israel-Hamas war.

Several “Squad” members — including Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — have already gotten Democratic opponents for next year as moderates in the party look to oust them over their outspoken views on Israel’s counterstrikes in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attacks carried out by Hamas.

The primary challenges are a clear sign of the deepening rift within the Democratic Party over its support for Israel in the war, which is carrying into its third month.

“If the Justice Democrats start losing seats, that’s a disaster for progressives,” said Cenk Uygur, a left-wing media entrepreneur who is challenging President Biden in 2024.

The four Squad members currently facing the possibility of upsets have been among the most vocal within the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Reps. Bush, Bowman, Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). They have been critical of the Biden administration’s pro-Israel posture over the war and aspects of the Democratic caucus’ response on Capitol Hill, where leading moderates have called for more support for the U.S.’s biggest ally in the Middle East.

Progressives are bracing for hard-fought and expensive battles with credible opponents, as well as anticipating an onslaught of targeted attacks ahead of November.

“These are not normal challengers, these are people who are going to be powered by millions in lobbyist money,” Uygar said. “This is the establishment trying to strike back because progressives wouldn’t bow to orthodoxy.” 

Lee, who narrowly won her race two years ago in the surrounding Pittsburgh area, is being challenged by Bhavini Patel, a 29-year-old Indian American who is running for the seat in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District that Lee represents. The challenge comes amid allegations from moderates that she is not sufficiently supportive of Israel.  

Bowman, a Black former school principal, is facing George Latimer, who serves as Westchester County executive. The white, 70-year-old Latimer told The New York Times this week that after much speculation and pressure from Democratic donors, he decided to mount a bid.

Bush is also being primaried in the surrounding St. Louis area by Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County who ended his Senate bid to unseat Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and oppose Bush instead. 

The influx of primary rivals has led progressives to rally support around their most vulnerable members.

“The coalition is expecting to pull together at least seven figures in spending to protect these incumbents,” one member of the progressive coalition told The Hill on Friday, speaking on background to address the sensitive nature of the current campaign strategies. 

The goal, according to the progressive source, is to “fight back against the Israel lobby’s war-mongering in Congress that risks alienating millions of voters before crucial Democratic elections to defeat Trump and a GOP majority next November.” 

Calls to replace the loudest left-wing voices in the lower chamber have been ongoing since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) first challenged a longstanding and well-funded opponent in 2018, setting off a domino effect with other left-wing candidates successfully following her lead.

Progressives created a playbook that has afforded them some success. They’ve won victories beyond New York, in places like Missouri, where Bush defeated legacy House member Lacy Clay, and more recently Pennsylvania, where Lee won an unexpected victory in an open race despite being outspent by special interest groups supporting her moderate opponent.  

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the House, has caught anger from many Democrats for speaking out against the Israeli government, but she so far hasn’t drawn any primary challengers despite a growing effort to recruit and fund a viable candidate to run against her.

While intraparty tensions have been simmering for quite some time, the actual primary challenges have now become more urgent among those who feel the party needs to do reputational damage control ahead of the next election.

Among the interest groups expected to play a key role is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is likely to spend millions of dollars in the upcoming cycle.  

“We are currently evaluating races concerning detractors of Israel, but we have not yet made decisions,” said AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann in a statement to The Hill, when asked about the group’s strategy towards progressive members.

“Our sole criteria in evaluating candidates is their position on the US-Israel relationship. In fact, we support many progressive pro-Israel candidates including the Democratic leadership, almost half of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and over half of the Congressional Black Caucus and Hispanic Caucus,” Wittman said.

Liberals who are strategizing around keeping as many seats as possible are already acknowledging the vast spending and lobbying in the works to defeat their recruited candidates.  

“Justice Democrats, alongside others, are leading the mobilization of a broad coalition of organizations and donors across electoral, antiwar, Jewish and Muslim groups who are all-in on taking on AIPAC and their Republican-funded Super PACs’ attempts to buy our democracy and elect right-wing Democrats,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, the leading organization that helps elect more Squad members, when asked about preparations to address multiple challengers.  

The Democratic Majority for Israel and the United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, have already gotten involved in races through negative materials.

“We are uniting behind our progressive incumbents who have become the moral conscience of our Congress to defend against AIPAC and the United Democracy Project’s Republican billionaire megadonors,” Rojas added. “This is the fight for the soul of our democracy.”

The drum beat for replacements in largely urban, safely blue districts also comes as the party looks to mitigate the public distrust among some toward President Biden over his response to the war.  

While many Jewish Democrats support Biden’s unequivocal support for the state, a segment of progressive Jews say that stance doesn’t make room for a humanitarian approach to Palestinians, thousands of whom have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Omar, a Muslim American who was elected alongside Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, has been one of pro-Israel Democrats’ biggest targets. While she has continued to be elected by voters for the past three cycles, she’s now calling more direct attention to AIPAC’s expected influence. 

Omar faces a challenge in Minneapolis, part of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, from Don Samuels, a former city council member whom she ran against in the last election. In the 2022 midterms, Samuels only lost by about 2 percent to Omar, a tight margin for one of the most controversial figures in the caucus.

Some progressives have pointed to Biden’s decrease in support among key constituencies over the Israel and Palestine issue, with a sizable amount of younger voters and voters of color expressing support for Palestinians during the conflict, making the distinction between the civilian population and the terrorist group that orchestrated the attack in early October.

The president has gained support on his handling of the war in some surveys, including a poll from the AP/NORC Center for Public Affairs research released this week that showed 59 percent of respondents said they approve of Biden’s response, a several point increase from last month.   

Other polls, however, show him with a decrease in standing among voters of color.

“The climate that we’re dealing with today will likely be very different than the one that exists on Election [Day],” said Michael Starr-Hopkins, a Democratic strategist and CEO of Northern Starr Strategies. “My experience has been that when outside groups drop into a primary and attempt to influence it by spending millions of dollars, those efforts largely backfire.”

“Voters don’t take well to people who don’t live in their community attempting to tell them who they should support,” Starr-Hopkins said. “When you combine that with the increase in new voters, who the midterms proved are overwhelmingly young and progressive, it creates a firewall for prominent progressives who find themselves under attack.”