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PONTIAC, Mich. — Congressman Andy Levin had watched it happen in Ohio, then Pennsylvania, then North Carolina, then Maryland. He knew that the United Democracy Project, a super PAC created by the American-Israel Committee on Public Affairs, had become the biggest spender in the Democratic Party in Congress. primaries, helping pro-Israel Democrats defeat left-wing candidates.
But it was astonishing, he said, to see the pro-Israel PAC spend at least $4.2 million to help Rep.
“The whole thing is so absurd,” Levin, 61, said in an interview here after a rally with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D). “I am Jewish by origin. I have mezuzahs on my office doors. I am one of two former synagogue presidents in Congress.
The Aug. 2 primary in the new 11th Congressional District, drawn by a nonpartisan commission last year, has become one of the nation’s costliest and the latest battle between the Democratic left and donors who want to reduce progressive influence in Congress. It’s also a test of the pro-Israel group’s influence in the Democratic primary, where, after seven months of existence, it has won all but one of its contests.
Four years after Levin and Stevens arrived in the House — the scion of a Michigan political dynasty and a first-time candidate who became a freshman president — they have waged a bitter, sometimes personal battle for a safe seat in the Democratic Party.
A proxy acts as a donor conflict over support for Israel, Levin, echoing supporters such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), cast their race as a battle for the soul of the party. Stevens, who easily outpolled Levin, sees a different choice — a pragmatic young Democrat who would be the first woman to represent some of the district’s cities, or a “60-year-old white man,” as she called him in a debate that shouldn’t have run here .
“I’m not running for Congress to debate ideology,” Stevens, 39, said after a tour of a steel manufacturing plant in Madison Heights. “I think there’s a generational component here, but I also believe there’s a ‘who’s going to be Oakland County champion?'” component.
Neither Democrat wanted to face each other, although pro-Israel donors were eager to topple Levin – the main sponsor of the Two-State Solution Act, which calls East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza “occupied territories” and would put financial pressure on Israel not to annex them. Michigan lost one of its House seats after the 2020 recount, and while the old map put Levin in a safe seat and Stevens in a swing seat, the redistricting put them both in a district that was out of Republican reach.
Disagreements between the pair start with who should run where. Stevens represented nearly half of the new district and ran in two tough races where her story — “I was President Obama’s chief of staff on the auto bailout,” referring to the 2009 bailout of auto companies during the financial crisis — appears constantly on television.
Levin represented about a quarter of the new 11th District, but his home was in the middle of it. (Stevens, who married last year, bought a new home with her husband, who moved her into the redrawn seat.)
Some Democrats wanted Levin to run for a neighboring seat that voted thinly for Trump and where two-time U.S. Senate candidate John James was running for the GOP nomination. “I’m an Oakland County kid,” Levin said, explaining his decision. “My kids are the fifth generation of my family to live here in the new 11th District.” If he ran in the 10th District instead, he expected AIPAC and its allies to oppose him.
“It would be the same story there,” Levine said. “There it is in the general; here, it’s in the primaries.”
Critics of Levin’s views on Israel immediately saw an opportunity. In mid-January, just weeks after Levin and Stevens declared for the 11th District, former AIPAC President David Victor, an Oakland County resident, wrote an email to potential Stevens donors.
The “race of the cycle,” Victor writes, is not in Detroit, where Israel critic Rashida Tlaib (D) is seeking re-election. Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), two frequent AIPAC targets, had “very little influence over their colleagues given their background and fringe status.” But as a self-described Zionist whose father and uncle served in the US House and Senate, Levin is “perhaps the most caustic member of Congress on US-Israel relations.”
Stevens and Levin disagreed about Israel; she pledged “unequivocal support” for the country, while Levin was critical of Israeli settlement building and the “forcible removal” of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. Alanna Alpert, who has been Levin’s rabbi since 2015 — the year they co-founded a liberal group called Detroit Jews for Justice — said the attacks were patently unfair and that her own mother was so distraught to see them that has vowed off support for AIPAC.
“There are some very progressive people in our community who basically have their fears about Israel exploited to distract them from the issues that affect us most,” Alpert said. “Who ultimately benefits from this?” The corporations Andy wants to hold accountable.
Some supporters of Levin’s Israel position mobilized against Stevens. In early July, an activist from IfNotNow, who calls Israel an “apartheid” state, confronted Stevens on camera. In the final stretch of the race, a local IfNotNow organizer formed Jews for Andy to campaign for the congressman.
But as in other races where the United Democracy Project (UDP) has spent money — about $30 million this cycle — Israel was not a leading issue in the district. When the PAC’s ads began running, they echoed Stevens’ positive message. In interviews in the district, voters who said they were still deciding and cited other priorities as they made what for many was a tough choice between two Democrats they liked.
“I don’t think we can lose from this,” said Lori Mizzi-Spillane, 62, who said she thought it through before deciding to back Levin. “Environmental issues are what tipped me over the edge.”
Levin and his allies have tried to highlight more distinctions, from his background as a union organizer — “Congressive for Congress,” reads one campaign slogan — to his support for left-wing principles like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
“I believe Andy!” Warren said at the rally in Pontiac after Levin reminded the crowd that he supported her campaign for president. “I don’t trust Andy because he has a cunning line, because he carefully chooses which bill he will put his name on, because he stands back and waits. I trust Andy because he fights from the heart.”
Convincing voters that Stevens won’t fight for them — or that she’s compromised by PAC spending — has been as difficult here as in other states where the UDP has made inroads. Levin echoed supporters like Sanders, highlighting Republican PAC donations — and AIPAC’s support for dozens of Republican presidents — to argue that the GOP is trying to buy the seat. That’s the message that J Street, a liberal group that opposes further annexation and supports the creation of a Palestinian state, put on air.
“No amount of campaign money is worth abandoning our democracy,” says a narrator in the 30-second spot, linking AIPAC’s support for Republicans to their votes to overturn the 2020 election. The group put more than $700,000 behind the spot, a lot less than the UDP — and less than Emily’s List super PAC Women Vote!, which works to elect female Democrats — had spent on its own seats.
“It’s disingenuous to whine about dark money while using dark money ads to unfairly attack Haley Stevens, who by all accounts is a great mainstream House Democrat who even Andy Levin has supported in the past,” said Patrick Dorton, a spokesman of UDP.
On Friday, Sanders will head to Pontiac to meet with Levin and make the case that the super PAC spending is a ploy to replace a reliable progressive with a business-minded centrist. But Logan Bairoff, a spokesman for J Street, agreed that there is more work to be done to convince Democratic voters that the pro-Stevens ads on their screens have a darker motive.
“We’ve done everything we can to get that information to the voters,” Bairoff said. “The ads come from a super PAC called the United Democracy Project.” Nobody reads the fine print.
Stevens was also dismissive of efforts to frame spending on her behalf as a crime against democracy. “I don’t come from a political family,” she said, before telling a story about the trouble she had raising money in 2018 — and the help national Democrats came to after Republican super PACs attacked her.
“It’s pretty ironic to punish a colleague for super PAC money when you’re getting super PAC money too,” Stevens added, referring to J Street.
Stevens has also benefited from events unrelated to PAC spending, from a larger share of the district that voted for her before to news stories that sync with her campaign messaging. Levin stumbled in June by running an ad featuring a 2018 endorsement from the late John Lewis (D), a civil rights icon and congressman from Georgia who died in 2020. The ad was pulled after members of the Congressional Black Caucus complained — including Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), who backed Stevens after he declined to run in one of the new districts.
Stevens was also aided by liberal anger at the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which led to a wave of new fundraising for Democrats last month, boosting Democratic women in particular. On Monday, Stevens knocked on the doors of primary voters in one of the…
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