In a statement to KQED, an AIPAC spokesperson said the results of the 2024 election “reflect America’s pro-Israel sentiment.”
“Our 5 million grassroots members have been deeply engaged in the democratic process to support Democratic and Republican candidates who stand with Israel, as it battles aggression from Iran and its terrorist proxies,” the spokesperson said.
The United Democracy Project is one of the highest-spending super PACs in the U.S. — the biggest being Make America Great Again Inc., which spent $376 million during the 2024 election. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling in 2010, super PACS have no limit on how much money they can spend to influence elections through independently produced advertisements, messaging and events. (Super PACs cannot, however, make donations directly to candidates like PACs can.) For example, the United Democracy Project contributed $5 million to Standing Strong, a super PAC supporting Adam Schiff’s run for California senator. This support sparked criticism from pro-Palestinian activists.
“Candidates do not control spending from outside organizations, and Senator-elect Schiff is one of the staunchest supporters of overturning Citizens United, authoring the principle constitutional amendment to do so,” a Schiff campaign spokesperson said to KQED in an email. “Adam is grateful for the outpouring of grassroots support he received throughout his campaign and looks forward to representing all Californians.”
According to Open Secrets, AIPAC and its affiliated PACs contributed over $200,000 to California congressional candidates in the 2024 election cycle.
Additionally, Open Secrets tracks individuals associated with AIPAC — including employees, members, and their immediate family — and how they donated. These donations totaled over $2.7 million in California.
View the full amount of money given to California’s congressional candidates in the table below, with highlighting showing candidates from the nine Bay Area counties.
Among the Bay Area’s recipients, incumbent Rep. Jimmy Panetta of the 19th District — which includes most of Santa Cruz county — received the most money from both AIPAC’s affiliate organizations and individuals associated with AIPAC. Panetta's constituents in Santa Cruz protested his ties to the pro-Israel lobby with an August sit-in.
Other Bay Area recipients of AIPAC PAC money include Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Josh Harder, who also won their elections.
In SoCal, two key races see AIPAC spending
In Southern California, the United Democracy Project focused its largest spending on two congressional races. In Los Angeles County's 34th District, the super PAC spent over $1.7 million supporting incumbent Jimmy Gomez and $576,454 against progressive challenger David Kim, who had called for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
Kim gained 44% of the vote — a decrease from 47% in 2020 and 49% in 2022. In an email to KQED, Kim said “outside AIPAC money contributed to” this loss, noting “the sheer amount of mailers and ads we saw flooding our mailboxes, computer screens and TV screens with AIPAC-UDP-paid ads boosting the incumbent, and attacking me.”
Representatives for the United Democracy Project did not respond to KQED's repeated requests for comment for this story. When Gomez won the race, AIPAC congratulated him on social media, saying that they’d “proudly helped pro-Israel progressive leader Jimmy Gomez defeat a challenger who ran on an overtly anti-Israel platform.”
But quite a different dynamic played out in the Southern California city of Irvine’s open-seat race for the 47th Congressional District, where Democrat Dave Min faced Republican Scott Baugh. According to Open Secrets, the United Democracy Project spent over $4 million against Min, funding multiple television spots and mailers attacking him.
Many of these ads did not touch on Israel or Palestinians at all, instead focusing on Min’s past drunk driving arrest.
AIPAC’s strategy surprised political analysts and pro-Palestinian activists, since Min rarely commented on the siege of Gaza and was endorsed by another pro-Israel advocacy group, Democratic Majority for Israel. Min’s campaign claimed that the opposition was driven by his private conversations with AIPAC members in which he criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for security failures on Oct. 7 and said he opposed the annexation of the West Bank.
Despite the considerable spending against him, Min still won the Orange County seat.
‘Good policy and good politics!’
The day after Election Day, AIPAC celebrated that most candidates they'd endorsed won their races, declaring on X that “Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!”
However, political analysts note many candidates AIPAC has supported are incumbents, who historically are more likely to win reelection. And advertisements funded by AIPAC and its affiliates “actually don't really talk about the war in Gaza or U.S.-Israel relations,” according to The Guardian reporter Joan Greve.