Spending in the Wesley Bell vs. Cori Bush race in St. Louis (as of 7/27/2024)
There is a lot of confusion about how campaign finance laws work and who is funding what in this high stakes primary election. Campaigns are required to post their contributions and expenditures quarterly, and the FEC shares them online, but for many people who do not understand how it works, it’s a bit confusing. The amount of spending in the Democratic primary for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District is almost unprecedented with the exception of the recent Jamaal Bowman vs. George Latimer primary in New York’s 16th Congressional District. St. Louis, however, is a different market than New York, which makes it even more concerning to see this in our area. Let’s dig into where all of this money is coming from in this primary.
When a person donates to campaign, they go through a mediator that processes the payments. If you receive an email from a politician you support asking for a donation, it will likely lead to an ActBlue page if the candidate is a Democrat, or a WinRed one if the candidate is a Republican. In addition, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) endorsed candidates are also listed on the AIPAC website as a separate way to raise money for their candidates. There are a lot of AIPAC endorsed candidates, but they list their highest priorities at the top of the page. Currently that’s Wesley Bell. As of July 25th, Bell has received $2,526,337 directly through AIPAC. This counts for 61% of the total $4,077,744 that he has raised in this election.
https://x.com/Sludge/status/1816589804861092070
In comparison, as of March 20th 2024, the politician who has received the most ever from pro-Israel donations (mostly from AIPAC, but others as well) in his career is Joe Biden with $4,223,143. With the exception of Biden, Bell has received more through AIPAC donations than every single candidate in their history. Other candidates with long political careers supporting Israel, such as Bob Mendenez ($2,510,505), Hillary Clinton ($2,357,122), Joe Lieberman($1,998,774), Mitch McConnell ($1,953,910), Chuck Schumer ($1,725,324), John McCain ($1,493,816), and Ted Cruz ($1,401,335), have all received less money from AIPAC than the current St. Louis County prosecutor has received in a few months while running in a primary for one of 435 House of Representatives seats!
If we look back at Bush’s victory over Lacy Clay in 2020, Clay raised $813,390 and Bush raised $1,418,014. So for Bell to raise over $4,000,000 in a campaign only 4 years later is truly eye popping, and the majority of the funding is from coming a pro-Israel lobby due to Bush’s criticism of how Israel is handling its war. However, that only scratches the surface of the amount of money spent benefitting Bell’s campaign.
Legally, individuals cannot donate more than $3,300 to a campaign per election, but there is no limit of how much they can donate to a super PAC or an independent expenditure. In 2022, after progressives started knocking off some establishment Democrats by raising money from small individual donors without taking large corporate PAC money, AIPAC exploited this loophole by creating the United Democracy Project (UDP). As of the last FEC report, in the current election cycle of 2023–2024 UDP has raised $55,847,799.05 with six months to go. Some of the top donors to UDP are WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum ($5,000,000), finance capitalist Jonathan Jacobson ($2,500,000), CEO of GreenSky David Zalik ($2,000,000), president of Elliott Management Paul Singer ($2,000,000), Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus ($2,000,000), the widow of someone considered one of the original “Mad Men” Helaine Lerner ($1,000,000), Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban ($1,000,000), businessman Paul Levy ($1,000,0000), and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft ($500,000). All of these people are billionaires and can afford to donate large sums of money to super PACs that will further their interests. While they are all pro-Israel, they tend to oppose progressive policies in general. Their donations very much are intended to pull the Democrat Party to the right and pushback against the progressive movement. Politico has already dug into the politics of the largest donors to UDP and I encourage people to read it.
As of July 25th, UDP has spent $7 million in this election with about 40% of it in favor of Bell and 60% of it against Bush. UDP is the largest spender by far, but there are other PACs supporting Bell and opposing Bush. The cryptocurrency super PAC Fairshake spent over $1 million against Bush. Mainstream Democrats PAC, an anti-progressive group funded by the co-founder of LinkedIn, has spent almost $900k. Democratic Majority For Israel (DMFI) has spent almost $500k support of Bell. Resist Reclaim Rebuild PAC spent $97k against Bush. Empowering Black Americans PAC, which is led by executives with prior connections to Michael Bloomberg and AIPAC, has spent $83k in support of Bell. Finally, the National Association of Realtors Political Action Committee has spent $46k in support of Bell. There has been a total of $9,649,007 in independent expenditures spent in support of Bell or against Bush. None of these super PACs are running ads on what their primary issue is though, instead they talk about Bell as a “progressive champion” and Bush as “ineffective.”
Some grassroots independent expenditures have come in to defend Bush from this onslaught of spending, but they cannot come close to matching the money of the super PACs spending against her. The biggest one is the Justice Democrats PAC, which put in just over $1,000,000 in support of Bush and $520,005 against Bell. Justice Democrats started as a progressive group looking to take on some moderate Democrats and have been involved in the elections of AOC, Summer Lee, Jamaal Bowman, and Bush. In contrast to UDP’s over $55 million raised, Justice Democrats has raised $1,624,319.84 in this cycle, and they have spent almost the entire amount to defend Bush. They do not have the same amount of large donors as UDP; the biggest individual donor to them was $50,000, and most of their donors are people who chip in less than $100 to support progressive candidates. The other PACs who have supported Bush are the Working Families Party PAC with almost $400k spent, National Nurses United with $121k spent, Congressional Progressive Caucus with $85k spent, Medicare For All with $57k spent, Planned Parenthood Votes with about $50k spent, and Black Voters Matter Action PAC with about $8k spent. These are all much more grassroots and smaller organizations without the backing of billionaires, but they are throwing in everything they can to help Bush from this spending spree. They have spent a total of $2,241,160 helping Bush (against the $9,649,007 spending in Bell’s favor).
In total, there have already been about $14 million spent in support of Bell and against Bush. Bush has raised an impressive $2,642,789 in direct donations through ActBlue, and combined with independent expenditures there have been close to $5 million in support of her. In a Democratic primary for a deep blue seat in St. Louis, this is an unimaginable amount of spending. How can we trust Bell to fight for St. Louis when he is relying on billionaires and super PACs to win his election? How can he be a progressive champion if he has to answer to those donors? He will know better than anyone what happens if you cross the wealthy donor class as he sees what happened to Bush. Meanwhile, we see constant TV ads and receive mailers every day about how Bush is ineffective and Bell will show up for St. Louis. Again, the majority of this spending is done by lobbies that have the primary focus of furthering Israel’s interests. When Bush called for a ceasefire and criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, these lobbies turned their ire on her. But we never hear about Israel in any of their mailers. If Israel is the reason why they want to defeat Bush, then campaign on that and make the mailers about that issue; or, as is the case with a cryptocurrency super PAC, make the advertisements about cryptocurrency, but they know these are not topics to move many voters in St. Louis so instead they attack Bush as ineffective. If she was so ineffective, why are Republicans spending an unprecedented amount of money to remove her in a Democratic primary?
Even if you dislike Bush for one reason or another, for the sake of our democracy, everyone should vote for her and reject big money and lobbies in favor of a foreign government from further corrupting our system. If AIPAC and UDP gets away with this, do you think it will end there? Why would large and wealthy oil lobbies or weapons manufacturers or tobacco companies or whoever also not follow this blueprint? This is a big concern for our democracy and we need to fight against it now and not leave it up to lobbies to decide who gets to represent us in Congress.
I intend to write another piece soon about why you should support Cori Bush too, but I think the most important thing to understand about this election is why there is so much spending against her and where it is coming from.
Sources all below:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/william-l-clay-jr/summary?cid=N00012460&cycle=Career
https://www.opensecrets.org/races/candidates?cycle=2020&id=MO01&spec=N
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/09/aipac-republican-donors-democratic-primaries-00162404