A $30 Million Question About American Campaign Finance That Has Nothing to Do With Israel

In Michigan's Democratic Senate primary on August 4, AIPAC and its affiliated groups put close to $30 million behind Haley Stevens. It was the largest investment in a single race in the organization's history. Total outside spending in that primary exceeded $41 million. AdImpact found $46.1 million in primary ad spending and reservations as of July 1, roughly 74 percent of it supporting one candidate.

Abdul El-Sayed won.

Most of the commentary that followed was about Israel. Almost none of it was about the mechanism, and the mechanism is where the actual civics lesson lives.

Four entities, not one

AIPAC itself is a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization that does not disclose its donors. The American Israel Education Foundation is the affiliated 501(c)(3) that funds congressional travel. AIPAC PAC, launched in December 2021, is a conventional political action committee that contributes to candidates and bundles individual contributions capped at $3,300 per donor per candidate per election. United Democracy Project, registered with the FEC in January 2022, is an independent expenditure-only committee. It raises and spends without limit, contributes nothing directly to candidates, and cannot legally coordinate with them.

The consent problem

Here is the part that reframes the entire debate. Haley Stevens could not have declined that $30 million. No candidate can decline, cap, block, or return an independent expenditure made on their behalf. She could publicly denounce it. She could not stop it.

The same rule protected and constrained her opponent. El-Sayed could not have refused the roughly $2.3 million in outside money that benefited him, including approximately $2 million from Fighting for Michigan PAC.

This is why the two candidates could make apparently contradictory claims and both be accurate. El-Sayed's statement that he has never taken corporate PAC money is true. Stevens' statement that no one owns her vote is not disproven by a $30 million expenditure she had no authority over.

For anyone evaluating a candidate's independence, the operative question is therefore not "did they get AIPAC money." It is "through which channel." Direct and bundled PAC contributions are consensual and refusable. Super PAC expenditures are neither.

On the foreign entity question

This comes up constantly and it is worth being precise, because precision here is not a softening.

Federal law bars foreign nationals from making contributions, donations, expenditures including independent expenditures, or disbursements in connection with any federal, state, or local election. A foreign government could not legally do what AIPAC did in Michigan. That conduct would be criminal, not merely undisclosed.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires registration when an organization acts as an agent of a foreign principal, which turns on direction, control, contractual relationship, or foreign funding that creates agency. Advocacy that aligns with a foreign government's policy preferences does not meet that threshold on its own. FARA specialists outside the organization have consistently said the statute is clear on this point.

The historical objection is real and worth acknowledging: AIPAC's predecessor organization, the American Zionist Council, was ordered to register under FARA in the 1960s, and AIPAC was subsequently structured as a domestic membership organization. Critics characterize that as deliberate circumvention. Petitions to compel registration have been filed repeatedly and have not advanced at the Department of Justice.

Where the substantive criticism holds

Three criticisms survive scrutiny.

Scale and placement. The spending concentrates in low-turnout primaries, where the marginal effect of each dollar is far higher than in a general election.

Content mismatch. Independent expenditures from a single-issue organization frequently address unrelated subjects. The closing Michigan ad concerned the 2024 uncommitted movement. PolitiFact rated it Half True, accurate on the underlying facts and silent on El-Sayed endorsing Harris the day after Biden withdrew.

Disclosure asymmetry. UDP files publicly with the FEC. Its single largest funding source is $51.5 million transferred from AIPAC's own treasury, a 501(c)(4) that does not disclose donors. The spending is transparent. Its largest origin is not.

Two lines should be kept distinct from all of the above. The claim that this constitutes foreign money in American elections is factually incorrect, because foreign money in American elections is already illegal and this is domestic money. And the claim that American Jews hold divided loyalties is not campaign finance criticism at all. It is an antisemitic trope with a long history, and collapsing it into a disclosure argument does the disclosure argument no favors.

Full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trumps-former-defense-lawyer-is-now-attorney-general/id1626987640?i=1000783133550

WHERE I STAND ON THIS

I'll be direct, because I was direct on air.

Chasing a FARA designation for AIPAC is a waste of everyone's time. It is not happening without evidence of direction and control that no one has produced, and every hour spent on it is an hour not spent on the thing that would actually work.

Cap it. Cap what any lobby can spend in a primary, and apply the cap to all of them equally. Teachers unions, crypto, trial lawyers, pharmaceutical money, AIPAC, all of it. When thirty million dollars can land in a single low-turnout primary, that election has stopped being a contest between candidates and started being a contest between donors. I do not care which side the money is on. The structure is the problem.

And El-Sayed won anyway, outspent more than ten to one. That should tell every consultant in Washington something about what money can and cannot buy. It bought a lot of airtime. It did not buy the seat.