Special Interest Super PACs Underperform in Illinois

The votes are in for Illinois’ Democratic primaries, and they paint a dismal picture about the influence of money in politics. An absurd $92 million was spent on four open-seat House races and an open Senate race, a corruption of democracy that is relatively unprecedented in modern elections.

That money did not fully dictate election results. AIPAC-backed candidates, for example, won only two of the four Chicago-area House races where the organization spent upwards of $21 million, including by using hidden Super PACs with neutral-sounding names. The crypto industry, whose main PAC Fairshake did not lose a single primary race in 2024, lost two on Tuesday. Three candidates who absorbed millions of dollars in outside attack ads moved forward as Democratic nominees and will almost certainly be in Congress next year. 

But money did dictate the outcome in a majority of the contested races. The Democratic Party has been co-opted by forces seeking advantage on relatively niche issues that have nothing to do with the motivating topics of inflation, taxes, health care, or immigration. “Illinois underscores the disaster,” said Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America, who has been working on money in politics issues at the Democratic National Committee for several years. 

Cohen does see the momentum for a turnaround, with what he calls the People’s Pledge, where candidates challenge their colleagues to reject Super PAC money in primary elections. It has happened in a handful of races across the country, and Cohen believes more will adopt it in races to come.

If the big money does not guarantee success and candidates who reject it can make it toxic, that could work. But if Illinois’ elections are any indication of what the rest of 2026 might look like, voters and candidates are still up against pro-AI, pro-crypto, and pro-Israel special interests.

Here’s a rundown of the night:

Senate

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton came out on top of the Senate primary, beating Rep. Robin Kelly, who ran to her left, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who ran to her right.

Stratton’s win came despite Fairshake spending nearly $10 million targeting her and a late attempt by pro-Krishnamoorthi spenders to split the Black vote by boosting Kelly, who, like Stratton, is a Black woman.

Krishnamoorthi led practically the entire race in polling, having raised the most money directly and going on air early. But Stratton’s win is a testament to the popularity of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, alongside whom she has served since 2018. Pritzker endorsed Stratton just a day after she entered the Senate race, and funneled $5 million of his personal money to support her. Tuesday morning, he campaigned with her on the South Side of Chicago. Pritzker’s winning bet on Stratton is a good signal of his clout in Illinois, if not his assumed 2028 ambitions.

Though AIPAC did not enter the Senate race, 27 donors affiliated with the organization gave to Stratton, and a former AIPAC president, Lee Rosenberg, serves on her finance committee.

After Stratton’s victory became clear, AIPAC tried to claim it for itself, posting on X: “AIPAC congratulates Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton on her primary win over Rep. Robin Kelly, whose most recent actions have undermined the U.S.-Israel alliance. We look forward to continuing our long-standing partnership with Lt. Gov. Stratton as she advances to the general election.”

IL-09

The voters of the Ninth Congressional District rejected the AIPAC-backed candidate, Laura Fine. When the Prospect and Drop Site News reported that shadow PACs were spending in Fine’s favor, it set off a flurry of condemnation. In the span of just over two weeks, Fine’s favorability rating plummeted 23 points and she fell behind the race’s two progressive candidates, Evanston mayor Daniel Biss and former journalist Kat Abughazaleh.

Biss took home the win in the Ninth District after pushing hard against AIPAC’s involvement in the race. With nearly all precincts reporting, Biss scored 29.5 percent of the vote, to 26 percent for Abughazaleh and 20 percent for Fine.

The day before the election, reporting alleged that AIPAC’s main surrogate PACs had shifted away from winning all its races to merely preventing six candidates from winning: Robert Peters, Kina Collins, Junaid Ahmed, Yasmeen Bankole, Abughazaleh, and Bushra Amiwala. Progressives like Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, which endorsed Ahmed and Abughazaleh, described this as AIPAC walking back its more ambitious electoral goals.

“AIPAC sees the writing on the wall and is now shifting the goal posts so they don’t look as weak as they are,” Andrabi wrote on X.

A press release from Justice Democrats, who endorsed Abughazaleh, summed up the mixed mood of the night: “Kat Abughazaleh narrowly loses primary, but so does AIPAC.”

IL-02

In Illinois’ second congressional district, a largely Black and working-class district that encompasses parts of Chicago’s south side and the south suburbs, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller won, taking a little over 40 percent of the vote. Miller was backed by AIPAC money via a shadow PAC called Affordable Chicago Now, which poured nearly $4.4 million into the race to support her.

That money was enough to hold back her two main competitors: Jesse Jackson Jr. and Robert Peters. Jackson, who was trying to return to Congress after a jail sentence for using campaign funds for personal use, did not receive AIPAC money, but he was a massive beneficiary of pro-AI money from the PAC Think Big, which receives funding from the likes of venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, as well as Open-AI president and co-founder Greg Brockman. Many donors to Think Big are affiliated with pro-MAGA PACs and have supported President Trump’s electoral bids.

Jobs and Democracy PAC, which is affiliated with Open AI competitor Anthropic, was poised to send money opposing Jackson, but the Congressional Black Caucus warned them to stay out of the race and they pulled back their planned campaign. Ultimately it didn’t matter, as Jackson, who some thought would be able to capitalize on the high-profile recent death of his father and namesake, received 29 percent of the vote.

Many of the crypto-funded ads attacking the Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive Peters, meanwhile, ironically tried to smear him as a “corporate pawn.” The pro-crypto PAC that opposed Peters, Fairshake, sent mailers to district residents saying he was “bankrolled by special interests.” Peters finished a distant third.

Some progressives, like those at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, see a glimmer of hope in these ads that dishonestly paint candidates as corporate shills.

“Ironically, the dark money ads prove that voters are hungry for challenging billionaires, health insurance companies, and Wall Street,” the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Adam Green told the Prospect over email. “The question inside the Democratic Party is whether candidates who genuinely believe in those ideas can compete against industries willing to spend millions to appropriate their message, all while backing candidates who will never actually challenge power.”

Crypto PACs “spread lies about a working class champion Robert Peters – who raised the minimum wage, ended the state sales tax on groceries, and eliminated cash bail in the State of Illinois,” People’s Action Power Political Director Marta Popadiak said in a statement on Tuesday. “Just imagine the lies they will spread across the country before the 2026 midterms are over.”

Though Peters lost on Tuesday, by all accounts, Fairshake lost too.

IL-07

Crypto got involved in the Seventh Congressional District, spending  well over $2 million to oppose state Senator La Shawn Ford, who won his primary Tuesday night with around 24 percent of the vote. Ford was the handpicked candidate of Rep. Danny Davis, who will retire from the seat at the end of the year. That endorsement was enough to survive the onslaught.

Fairshake wasn’t the only big loser in the Seventh District. AIPAC’s attempts to buy the seat for Melissa Conyears-Ervin failed. Conyears-Ervin, the Chicago city treasurer, received millions in support from United Democracy Project, a well-known AIPAC affiliate that, unlike in other districts, didn’t try to hide behind a shadow PAC. She came in second with 20.5 percent of the vote. Conyears-Ervin had a history of corruption scandals, including forcing her staff to plan her child’s birthday party. The city of Chicago settled lawsuits for $100,000 with Conyears-Ervin staffers who alleged retaliation for warning her about misusing public funds.

In the district, many of Conyears-Ervin’s recognizable bright pink signs were plastered with a large yellow “for sale” sign. It looks like that message reached voters.

IL-08

The race in the Eighth Congressional District was uniquely flooded with special interest money. Though AI, crypto, and AIPAC spread their cash throughout the four House races and the Senate primary, only in the Eighth District did all three special interest groups align on one candidate. Indeed, Melissa Bean was supported by money from AIPAC’s Elect Chicago Women, the Fairshake affiliate Protect Progress, and pro-AI PAC Think Big. Bean, a former member of Congress for three terms who later became an investment banker, was a constant thorn in the side of Democrats during her first stint in Congress in the 2000s, particularly by frustrating financial reform efforts.

With all that cash behind her, Bean was able to retake her seat, defeating the progressive Junaid Ahmed by about five points. Though Ahmed lost, it was by a fairly small margin, despite being outspent on a 5:1 scale. And despite millions of dollars spent by multiple Super PACs, Bean could only get 31.8 percent of the vote, leaving progressives to wonder how she would have fared if their opposition had consolidated.

“Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics,” the AIPAC X account posted celebrating Bean’s win, in a familiar refrain. But Bean’s small margin of victory suggests that it isn’t politically easy to elect AIPAC-aligned candidates. In fact, it seems to cost about $4 million dollars to narrowly accomplish.

David Dayen contributed reporting.

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