James Talarico of Texas won the Senate seat by more than 12 percentage points. A clip of him saying he was “sick to my stomach” over what was happening in Gaza and that he had “never taken money from AIPAC” went viral. In Michigan, Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel who has called for the US to stop giving financial support to the country, won the general election against Republican Mike Rogers. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice,” El-Sayed said in his victory speech.
AIPAC is the country's largest pro-Israel lobbying group. It said in October that it would stop making direct contributions and endorsements after this election cycle, though much of its spending already runs through opaque channels such as its super PAC, the United Democracy Project. According to Track AIPAC, the group funded hundreds of candidates in the primaries and general election.
The Quincy Institute’s tally put around $55 million of the $84 million spent by AIPAC, UDP and linked groups toward losing candidates. In Michigan, AIPAC and affiliated PACs spent some $30 million on Representative Haley Stevens, who unsuccessfully sought the party’s nomination for the Senate contest. According to the New York Times, AIPAC then put an additional $9 million into backing Rogers. In Maine, AIPAC-linked groups gave more than $4.8 million in support of Senator Susan Collins’s re-election campaign. Collins lost to Troy Jackson.
AIPAC-related groups have successfully backed candidates in Democratic strongholds, especially in primaries, helping ensure the party nominates candidates who are not too far to the left or overly critical of Israel. The groups provided more than about $3 million to support Representative Wesley Bell, who won a House seat in Missouri with more than 81 percent of the vote. George Latimer was re-elected to the House in a New York district after defeating Jamaal Bowman in 2024, a race in which AIPAC spent some $14 million.
Rina Shah, a former senior GOP congressional aide, told Al Jazeera that AIPAC support was once a no-brainer for Republicans but has become a real topic as a younger, more America First wing asks hard questions about foreign entanglements and Gaza weighs on voters. Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute said candidates now find AIPAC donations toxic and are rejecting them. AIPAC said on X that its members are determined to expand their political activism in the cycles ahead and pointed to support for Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
Another group, J Street, which describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace, said it backed more than 200 candidates with over $13 million in a campaign aimed especially at AIPAC-backed candidates. President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement the group was proud to have supported candidates committed to a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.