In Illinois, a Deluge of Corporate PAC Ads Sold Populism. Wait, What?

Tuesday’s Illinois election yielded unexpected headlines like “Special-Interest Super PACs Underperform in Illinois” and “Progressive Juliana Stratton wins Illinois Democratic Senate primary race.” Billionaire-funded super PACs lost three out of five hotly contested races.

While this is welcome news for progressives, a closer look at early primaries reveals a mildly amusing but troubling parallel story: crypto interests, A.I. industry players like OpenAI and Palantir, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) sought to defeat bold economic-populist progressives not by attacking their ideas—but rather, by mimicking them to confuse voters.

​​These dark-money groups saturated the airwaves with ads portraying corporate-backed candidates as fighters against billionaire power, Wall Street banks, health-insurance abuses, and even ICE. All while carefully obscuring their own identity and running ads that, as The Washington Post reported, “have nothing to do” with their actual (unpopular) priorities.

That matters enormously because the candidates Democrats send into battle this fall will determine whether Congress serves as a strong check on President Donald Trump and the powerful interests that already have too much influence in Washington or largely go along with those policies. Furthermore, the kind of subterfuge we saw in Illinois could hurt Democratic chances of winning the White House in 2028—raising voter hopes that Democrats will challenge corporate power, only to spawn disillusionment when milquetoast imposters fail to do the job.

Let’s look closely at Tuesday’s primaries, where billionaire-funded super PACs spent over $40 million to flood the zone.

The New York Times reported of one outcome that “a moderate former congresswoman defeated a left-wing rival.” That would be news to voters in Illinois’ 8th congressional district, where A.I. industry titans funded an innocuous-sounding Think Big PAC to propel former House member Melissa Bean, once dubbed “Wall Street’s favorite Democrat,” with over $1 million of ads claiming that Bean challenged Wall Street banks, championed Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and fought to expand health care access—a stark departure from her actual reputation before she was ousted from Congress in 2010. The fundraising avalanche helped her win with just 31.8 percent of the vote, as more progressive rivals split the remaining vote and lacked comparable resources on the airwaves.

In the neighboring 2nd congressional district, supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani could have plausibly nodded along to the $4 million in ads run by the AIPAC-funded Affordable Chicago Now. The PAC credited its preferred candidate, Donna Miller, with expanding health care access, combatting violence against women, and challenging ICE. The unstated goal of the spending? Defeating Jewish state Senator Robert Peters, who dared to criticize the Israeli prime minister’s policies and called for a cease-fire after October 7, 2023. A crypto super PAC absurdly called Peters, a two-time Sanders supporter, a “corporate pawn.” The zone flooded, and Miller won with 40.4 percent in a crowded field.

Of course, money does not always dictate the outcome. In Illinois’s 9th congressional district, an AIPAC-funded group called Elect Chicago Women spent nearly $6 million trying to defeat progressives Daniel Biss (endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Senator Elizabeth Warren) and Kat Abughazaleh (endorsed by Justice Democrats and Democratic Socialist voices).

The AIPAC-linked group backed Laura Fine not with ads touting her bona fides on Israel—but with ads saying she favored “stopping health insurance company ripoffs” and championed “the law to unmask ICE.” Another AIPAC-friendly PAC, Chicago Progressive Partnership, made ads promoting longshot progressive Bushra Amiwala in order to split the progressive vote even further, leading Bushra to denounce the very ads promoting her. Biss, the mayor of Evanston, defeated the dark money thanks to a strong local reputation built over years. In his victory speech, Biss took a swipe at AIPAC, saying: “AIPAC found out the hard way—the 9th district is not for sale.”

In total, four House races and one Senate race were contested by dark money interests. AIPAC lost two of four races where they spent at least $22 million. Crypto interests also lost two of four races where they spent millions, while the OpenAI/Palantir-supported PAC lost one out of two it contested. Progressives definitively won one Senate primary (Stratton) and one House contest (Biss)—and Democratic legislator La Shawn Ford defeated both AIPAC and crypto money in another House primary, for Illinois’s 7th district.

Underscoring the point that even dark money “wins” were triumphs of progressive messaging in the eyes of voters, a particularly ironic result played out two weeks before Illinois in North Carolina.

An A.I. industry group called the Jobs and Democracy PAC spent over $1.6 million to help incumbent Representative Valerie Foushee narrowly fend off a progressive challenger. Ads praised Foushee for fighting to “make the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share,” taking on ICE, and protecting the very manufacturing jobs that could soon be replaced by A.I.

When Foushee—who, not coincidentally, co-chairs a new House Democratic Commission on AI—won by less than one percentage point, she turned heads with her victory speech. “I look forward to continuing the fight to deliver progressive change,” she declared. “My priorities are to stop Trump’s attacks on our democracy, regulate AI, overturn Citizens United, establish a Green New Deal, ensure Medicare for All, pass legislation to block arms sales to Israel, and lower the cost of groceries, housing, and education.”

While she is not typically associated with those priorities, the pressure of a competitive primary appeared to shape the campaign’s message—and ads run on her behalf echoed progressive themes.

Why the onslaught of these sleight-of-hand ads? Maybe because those calling the shots at corporate-funded PACs understand something that many Washington pundits still resist: In the 2026 midterms, voters want candidates who stand up to billionaires and corporations, fight Trump’s violent misuse of ICE, and improve quality of life for working families by challenging powerful interests. These themes would not feature so prominently in dark-money ads if they did not resonate with voters.

The real debate inside the Democratic Party is not whether progressive economic policies or standing up to Trump’s corruption appeals to voters. It is whether candidates who genuinely believe in those ideas can compete against industries willing to spend millions to steal their message, all while backing candidates who will never actually challenge power.