Early in the election cycle, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, through their Super PAC arm the United Democracy Project, pledged to spend upwards of $100 million to target and defeat some of Israel’s most vociferous opponents in Congress, and while their spending is high the total won’t likely reach such a lofty number.

Successful in helping to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx) in the New York Democratic primary back on June 25th, the next major target is Missouri Rep. Cori Bush (D-St. Louis) in the August 6th Democratic primary. Curiously, though she has a strong opponent who held her to only a 50-48% victory in 2022, the United Democracy Project has spent no money against another major anti-Israel Congresswoman, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minneapolis), for the upcoming August 13th primary.

Heading toward the Missouri primary, which is now within two weeks, The UDP is spending heavily to deny Rep. Bush renomination. According to the Open Secrets.com site, an aggregate total of $7.5 million has been spent either against Rep. Bush or for her Democratic primary challenger, former St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell. Over $6 million of that total comes from the United Democracy Project. The Daily Kos Elections site is also reporting that a pro-cryptocurrency organization called Fairshake has executed an anti-Bush independent expenditure of $1.1 million.

Daily Kos reports that adding the pre-reserved media time, the total dollar amount spent or to be spent either for Bell or against Rep. Bush exceeds $12 million as compared to just over $2 million to boost the incumbent. Looking at the candidates’ financial totals from their committee disclosure filings through the 2nd Quarter June 30th deadline, Mr. Bell also has a $4.1 million to $2.6 million fundraising advantage. While Rep. Bush reported only $573,354 cash-on-hand at the June 30th deadline, Mr. Bell had over $2.4 million still remaining in his account.

At the end of the NY-16 campaign against Rep. Bowman, a total of $17.7 million in outside money was spent either for the eventual race winner, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, or against Congressman Bowman, as compared to just $2.96 million for Bowman or opposing Latimer. This, in addition to Latimer outraising Bowman in the campaign committee sector, $6.4 million to $5.6 million. In the end, Mr. Latimer denied the Congressman renomination by a 55-45% margin.

While Mr. Bell is not nearly as accomplished a candidate as Mr. Latimer, he is still highly credible and has a chance to upset the incumbent. In addition to being the elected Westchester County Executive, Mr. Latimer had also won multiple terms in both the New York state Senate and Assembly. Therefore, he is no stranger to winning elections.

In addition to spending millions, the UDP is smart about message delivery. The issue attacks are not about the opponent’s anti-Israel positions or rhetoric. Rather, the message is targeted to the individual district and political situation.

Against both Rep. Bowman and Bush, UDP ran a series of ads attacking both incumbents for not supporting President Biden’s infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. They also attack the pair for being insufficiently supportive of Mr. Biden.

The most recent attack against Rep. Bush again comes not on an Israel support position, but rather that she has authored no legislation that has become law and has missed 187 votes during her congressional career of 3+ years. According to the ad copy, Rep. Bush has one of the highest absentee rates in Congress. Previously, many of the early ad traffic from both Bush and Bell was about abortion.

The Fairshake group is attacking Rep. Bush over her claims that she has brought over $2 billion in federal money back to her St. Louis district. The ads illustrate that much of the money for which Bush claims credit was actually appropriated even before the Congresswoman was elected.

It appears we could see another incumbent defeat come August 6th, this time in St. Louis. There is still time remaining, but if Bush is to salvage her renomination fight she will have to do so while being outspent in the campaign’s closing days.

Though Reps. Bowman and Bush have clearly been the UDP’s top national targets, other anti-Israel members such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), have not been targeted. Unlike Rep. Omar, these members had or have little or no opposition in the party primary so investing large sums would not have denied them renomination.

Since they all have safe seats from a partisan perspective, defeating them in the Democratic primary is the only election where the trio could become vulnerable.