PRIMARY OCCUPATION
People applaud at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, at Washington Convention Center, in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 2019. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP
A People-Powered Insurgency Threatened to Reshape the Democratic Party. Then Came AIPAC and Its Allied Super PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel.
by Ryan Grim
“I am going to work hard to ensure that something like this never happens to a progressive candidate again,” Nina Turner said on election night. “We didn’t lose this race — the evil money manipulated and maligned this election.”
As Maram Al-Dada, a 34-year-old aviation engineer in Orlando, Florida, prepared to speak at a rally in May 2021, he couldn’t help but think of his family. One particular moment from his childhood in Gaza was seared into his memory. His grandmother would often walk him as a boy to the border fence and point to the property on the other side that had been the family’s home until 1967, when the community was evacuated amid the Six-Day War. On the seventh day, the family hadn’t been allowed to return, but his grandparents would sneak out at night to tend to their crops, making sure things would be in good shape for the family when they eventually did make it back. They’d be shot at by Israeli troops and sneak back. But soon the fencing went up, leaving only the pointing to be done.
Then one day in the early 1990s, about 25 years after the family had been forced from their home, a lighter-skinned man speaking broken Arabic came to their southern Gaza village of Bani Suheila looking for Al-Dada’s grandmother. His grandparents still held the deed — or the paper, at least — but the man was now living on their property. Al-Dada still doesn’t understand why the man came to see his grandmother, or what he wanted, but vividly remembers an intensely demeaning experience.
Now there was more fighting, and Al-Dada and his fellow Floridians — he’d moved to the Sunshine State in 2011 — were there to protest Israeli evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, and airstrikes on the Gaza strip during Ramadan, 2021. They were the latest violent attacks in what had become known as the Gaza War.
Al-Dada hadn’t been back in years. In 2008, as his grandfather was dying, he tried to visit through the border with Egypt but was denied. A crossing from Israel for a Palestinian is effectively impossible, given travel restrictions that apply only to Palestinians. His grandfather died, a follow-up attempt to gain humanitarian entrance for the funeral was rejected, and he hasn’t been to Gaza since.
Al-Dada saw those at the rally as another type of family. After he’d gotten to the U.S., he joined the Florida Palestine Network, a thriving grassroots organization that included many Palestinian emigrés and non-Palestinian kindred spirits. One of the most active young men in that group stood next to Al-Dada: Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who, for all appearances, was a true believer in the cause. “Free, free Palestine!” he and Al-Dada chanted as they both got ready to address the crowd. “‘Y’all are gonna hear me say this over and over again,” Frost told those gathered when it was his turn to speak. “We have to demand — not ask — we have to demand that our leaders see the world through the eyes of the most vulnerable and use that vision to make every goddamn decision they ever make.”
Following the rally, Frost, then 24, posted a photo on Instagram, with the caption, “Orlando is in solidarity with all facing oppression across the globe. From Palestine to Colombia, we denounce it all.” He added a thank you to his friend, Rasha Mubarak, another Palestinian American, for leading the organizing of the rally. “Much love!” The most committed activists were all part of a group chat, where several dozen of them, including Mubarak, Al-Dada, and Frost, all celebrated the successful event.
It was also the start of something bigger. In the weeks leading up to the rally, rumors had swirled around Orlando political circles that Val Demings, the local congresswoman and former sheriff, was being courted by party leaders in Washington to run for Senate and would soon take the plunge. Frost reached out to Mubarak, who he had met amid the street protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and asked her to be part of his kitchen cabinet, an informal circle of advisers who make up the early infrastructure of a campaign. “Rasha connected me with a few different politicos, people here in Florida, and stuff like that. And then she was a member of the kitchen cabinet,” Frost said.
Mubarak laid out his path to victory. “We need to run a really progressive race that’s people-centered and inclusive of Palestinian human rights. Understanding that this is a Black seat and that many of the other establishment Democratic candidates will split the vote,” she said. Frost is Afro-Latino so they thought he would have a shot, even if he wasn’t a shoo-in. “If he’s willing to be the progressive, bold candidate, people are gonna believe in that. And he’s gonna bring out a different base.”
Just being the “first Gen Z candidate” for Congress wouldn’t be enough. “Being the first is historic, but changing history via policy is entirely different. Being the first Gen Z is only surface-level and what we need as his residents are deeper: a congressional leader in the state of Florida that aligns with the notion that everyone deserves to move with freedom, experience liberation, and live equitable lives. A congressional leader that did not leave any community behind. We do not have that in Florida,” she said.
A week after the rally, Demings made it official. Mubarak began connecting Frost with donors around the country and activist groups in the district. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Central Florida, Mubarak’s Palestinian family hailed largely from the West Bank and Jerusalem. A national political consultant and organizer, she’d become a prominent figure in Orlando politics. Frost also brought on Rania Batrice, progressive Palestinian American consultant, to do his media strategy. Word spread that Frost, an anti-gun violence advocate connected to the Parkland survivors, was the genuine progressive in what was, as hoped for, becoming a crowded field. In August 2021, he officially launched his campaign.
People listen as former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner gives her concession speech after losing to Cuyahoga County Council member Shontel Brown at The Lanes on Aug. 3, 2021 in Maple Heights, Ohio. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
While bombs were raining down on Gaza that May, another air war was playing out in Cleveland, Ohio, that would not just profoundly reshape the Orlando election but bend the arc of the Democratic Party in a new direction.
In a special election to replace Rep. Marcia Fudge in the House after Fudge was named Housing and Urban Development secretary, Nina Turner, a former state senator and surrogate for both of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, was polling some 30 points ahead of the field. Amid the Gaza War, she retweeted a Jewish advocacy group, IfNotNow, that is the bane of right-wing “pro-Israel” groups.
Jewish Insider flagged the post in an article, noting the divergence on the issue between Turner and her leading opponent, Cuyahoga County Chair Shontel Brown. “Advocacy groups such as Pro-Israel America and Democratic Majority for Israel,” reported Jewish Insider, “have also thrown their support behind Brown, who has had to contend with Turner’s substantial warchest with less than three months remaining until the August 3 primary, according to the latest filings from the Federal Election Commission.” Brown would not have to contend with that disadvantage for long.
Two groups — Democratic Majority For Israel, or DMFI, and Mainstream Democrats PAC — began spending millions pummeling Turner on the airwaves. The two were effectively the same organization, operating out of the same office and employing the same consultants, though Mainstream Democrats claims a broader mission. Strategic and targeting decisions for both were made by pollster Mark Mellman, according to Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic operative and Silicon Valley executive who serves as the political adviser to LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, who funds the Mainstream Democrats PAC. DMFI has also funneled at least $500,000 to Mainstream Democrats PAC.
“Our money is going to the Mainstream Democrat coalition, which we trust to identify the candidates who are most likely to convey to Americans broadly, an image of Democrats that is then electable,” Mehlhorn told me earlier this year, saying he relies on the consultants linked to DMFI to make those choices. “I trust them. I think Brian Goldsmith, Mark Mellman, they tend to know that stuff.”
While DMFI is ostensibly organized around the politics of Israel, in practice, it has become a weapon wielded by the party’s centrist faction against its progressive wing. In fact, DMFI, Mainstream Democrats PAC, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have spent so much money that the question of Israel-Palestine now dominates Democratic primaries.
Across the country, progressive candidates who a cycle earlier had been loudly vying for national attention with bold ideas to attract small donors were instead keeping their heads down, hoping to stay under the radar of DMFI and AIPAC.
When Justice Democrats, in the wake of Sanders’s first presidential campaign, began its effort to pull the party to the left by competing in Democratic primaries, the issue of Israel-Palestine was not central to its strategy. But its candidates tended to be progressive across the board, rather than what had previously been the standard, known as PEP, for “progressive except for Palestine.” The insurgency inside the Democratic Party has since produced a counter-insurgency, funded heavily by hedge fund executives, private equity barons, professional sports team owners, and other billionaires and multimillionaires, many of them organized under a “pro-Israel” banner.
“It’s been a radical transformation in the politics of Israel-Palestine and the politics of Democratic primaries,” said Logan Bayroff, director of communications for J Street, which describes itself as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization. This cycle, Bayroff helped run J Street Action Fund, an outside spending group designed specifically to counter the influence of DMFI and AIPAC. It spent less than 10 percent the amount its rivals were able to put in the field.
Mehlhorn was explicit about his purpose. “Nina Turner’s district is a classic case study where the vast majority of voters in that district are Marcia Fudge voters, they’re pretty happy with the Democratic Party. And Nina Turner’s record on the Democratic Party is [that] she’s a strong critic,” he said. “And so this group put in money to make sure that voters knew what she felt about the Democratic Party. And from my perspective, that just makes it easier for me to try to do things like give Tim Ryan a chance of winning [a Senate seat] in a state like Ohio — not a big chance, but at least a chance. And he’s not having to deal with the latest bomb thrown by Nina. So anyway, that’s the theory behind our support for Mainstream Democrats.”
Mellman, in an interview with HuffPost, acknowledged that his goals extended beyond the politics of Israel and Palestine. “The anti-Biden folks and the anti-Israel folks look to her as a leader,” Mellman said. “So she really is a threat to both of our goals.”
Turner said she was told she had to distance herself from members of the Squad, particularly Muslim Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, or face an onslaught. “I was told by a prominent Jewish businessman that ‘We’re coming at you with everything we got, you need to disavow the Squad,’” Turner said, and “if I didn’t do it, they were coming for me. And that also the Palestinian community didn’t have rights that were more important than the state of Israel.”
“I even have emails right now, to this day, of local primarily business leaders in the Jewish community where they were encouraging Republicans to vote in this primary and were saying things like: We must support Shontel Brown, in no way can we let Nina Turner win this race,” Turner said.
“This is a very important election for our community!” wrote one Turner opponent in an email to neighbors. “Shontel’s main opponent, Nina Turner, was the honorary co-chair of the Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, as well as the leader of ‘Our Revolution,’ the post-2016 organization of Sanders enthusiasts. She has raised money proclaiming her desire to join ‘the Squad’ and has been endorsed by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (see Turner fundraising emails attached below).”
Another neighbor forwarded the email on to still more folks, adding, “Many of us wouldn’t bother with this primary election but this one is really important and electing Shontel Brown is a must. Whether a R or a D you can elect to vote in the D primary.”
Shontel Brown takes pictures with her supporters after learning she won Ohio’s 11th Congressional District on Aug. 3, 2021. Photo: Stephen Zenner/Getty Images
On August 3, 2021, Turner lost to Brown 50 percent to 45 percent, falling short by roughly 4,000 votes. The deluge of money — DMFI had dropped more than $2 million — following the Gaza attacks tilted the race, Turner told me later. “Had that race been in May, you would be interviewing Congresswoman Nina Turner, that’s irrefutable,” she said.
“I am going to work hard to ensure that something like this never happens to a progressive candidate again,” she said on election night. “We didn’t lose this race — the evil money manipulated and maligned this election.” The characterization of the funding as “evil,” mixed with the notion of manipulation, brought out fresh charges of antisemitism.
The race in Orlando largely stayed off the national radar through the rest of 2021, since the primary wouldn’t be held until August 2022. As the year closed out, Mubarak set about posting her end-of-year Instagram shoutouts and wanted to highlight the work they’d all done the past May in opposing the Gaza War. She went to dig out Frost’s old post, which had singled Mubarak out for her organizing that day and discovered it had been taken off his feed. Mubarak called Frost out on it; she said he explained that a social media staffer had scoured his accounts and archived some posts and that it must’ve been caught up in the sweep. He’d put it back up, he said.
But the reference to Mubarak was removed and a subtle but meaningful edit was made to the caption: Gone were references to “all facing oppression across the globe” and the pledge that “we denounce it all.”
The post now reads simply: “Orlando stands in solidarity from Palestine to Colombia!” When Mubarak flagged the change and her omission, she said, he explained that “local endorsers have a problem with your advocacy.”
Frost told another ally that his goal was to avoid getting crushed by DMFI. “We’re just trying to see if we can keep them out, and maybe if they come in, they won’t spend anything,” they recalled him speculating.
Frost told The Intercept that he wasn’t really aware of the influence of outside spending at that point in his campaign. “I honestly didn’t know much about outside spending at that point, or IEs” — independent expenditures made by Super PACs — “or kind of the role that they play,” Frost said. “I didn’t really learn about the outside money that played into [Turner’s] race until months after, to be honest. … I saw the results come in, I looked at my phone, I remember I was like, sitting in my kitchen and I was just like, Damn, we lost. I remember being surprised and being upset and then kind of saying, you know, I need to win, we need more progressives in Congress. So I hadn’t really connected those dots, to be honest, and wasn’t really fully aware of, kind of, the role of outside money in general in these Democratic primaries.”
Campaign sources, however, say the issue was front and center, with questions about what type of positioning might keep the outside money out. When allies in the free Palestine movement warned him that capitulating to DMFI and AIPAC wouldn’t let up even after he was elected, whether he capitulated or not, they recall Frost saying, “I’ll figure that out when I get there.”
On January 31, kickstarting the primary season, Jewish Insider published a list of 15 DMFI House endorsements. Among them was Randolph Bracy, a local state senator who was considered one of the most competitive moderates in Frost’s race. Mubarak texted Frost the news. “Didn’t think they would hop in so early,” Frost replied. “They hate progressives lol.”
The names on DMFI’s endorsement list, and the names left off, tell a story of the group’s commitment to fighting back against the party’s left flank in Democratic primaries and an increasingly extremist view of what being pro-Israel meant.
“In Michigan and Illinois, Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Sean Casten (D-IL) are, with support from DMFI, waging respective battles against progressive Reps. Andy Levin (D-MI) and Marie Newman (D-IL), who have frequently clashed with the pro-Israel establishment over their criticism of the Jewish state,” the Jewish Insider piece read.
Levin was an incumbent member of Congress and a scion of a powerhouse Michigan family that included Carl Levin, his uncle and a former lion of the Senate, and former House Ways and Means Chair Sander Levin, his father. Levin had been redistricted into a primary against another incumbent Democrat, Stevens, who became conspicuously outspoken about her unwavering support for Israel, becoming one of just 18 Democrats casting public doubt on the wisdom of President Joe Biden reentering the Iran nuclear deal. To include Levin among an anti-Israel cohort stretched the definition to a breaking point. Wrote Jewish Insider:
Michigan Democratic Reps. Andy Levin and Rashida Tlaib hold a campaign rally on July 29, 2022 in Pontiac, Mich. Getty Images
The attack on Levin helped define what DMFI meant by pro-Israel, and it included support for expanding settlements and ruled out criticism of the Israeli government. That Levin couldn’t be written off as antisemitic made him that much more of a threat. That he was willing to defend his colleagues like Omar and Tlaib was intolerable. Accusing Tlaib of antisemitism is made difficult if a former synagogue president has her back. AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr, asked by the Washington Post in a rare interview why Levin was targeted, said, “It was Congressman Levin’s willingness to defend and endorse some of the largest and most vocal detractors of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”