Chrisdorney/Shutterstock
After Tuesday’s primaries, the left wing of the Democratic Party would be justified in celebrating. John Fetterman beat out moderate Conor Lamb to earn the nomination in Pennsylvania’s Senate primary. Progressive Summer Lee was leading (albeit by a hair’s breadth) in the race against corporate lawyer Steve Irwin in Pennsylvania’s 12th district. State Representative Andrea Salinas won her primary in Oregon’s 6th District against Carrick Flynn, who was backed by $11 million in spending from a crypto billionaire, and another $1 million from the Democratic leadership-aligned House Majority PAC. And in Oregon’s 5th district, incumbent Blue Dog Kurt Schraeder lost in an upset to Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
Scattered results in disparate races in several parts of the country shouldn't be taken as evidence of any concrete trends — progressives aren’t exactly on the cusp of seizing power in the Democratic Party, which remains largely in the hands of moderates. But Tuesday should be a reminder of how much meddling national groups do in primaries, and how often they are just lighting money on fire.
Take Oregon’s 6th District, which drew attention mainly for the $11 million spent by a group called Protect Our Future PAC, an astronomical sum to drop on a single congressional primary. This was all spent on behalf of Carrick Flynn, a political neophyte who was emphasizing pandemic preparedness—an issue that Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto billionaire behind Protect Our Future, cares a lot about. Bankman-Fried is a believer in effective altruism, which emphasizes giving money in ways that will do the most amount of quantifiable good. The fact that he spent so much on a single candidate who lost badly shows that maybe his EA principles need some sharpening when it comes to politics.
Next door in Oregon’s 5th, Schrader lost, despite having a major spending advantage over McLeod-Skinner. The incumbent spent $3.4 million to the challenger’s less than $600,000 as of the last FEC reports (which report through late April). Schrader was also boosted by outside spending from the Blue Dog-aligned Center Forward Committee and the centrist Mainstream Democrats PAC (funded in large part by Reid Hoffman), who each chipped in around $1 million to the race. But that money couldn’t buy Schrader’s campaign what it needed: a better candidate. McLeod-Skinner hit him for his corporate ties and soft hands and successfully got some local county Democratic parties to endorse her.
In Pennsylvania's 12th, huge amounts were spent to defeat Summer Lee, mostly by pro-Israel groups, including Democratic Majority for Israel (which spent $400,000 to support Irwin) and the deceptively named United Democracy Project, which spends big on Democratic primaries, often on negative ads. UDP spent $2 million in opposition to Lee, and has also spent large sums supporting moderates in North Carolina, Texas and Ohio. If Lee pulls out a victory, it will represent a defeat of the pro-Israel side of the party, which has been spending major sums on primaries. It will also be a victory for left-wing groups Justice Democrats and Working Families Party, which spent a combined $1.7 million to support Lee.
Is the division worth it?
There are several reasons why we at Blue Tent are skeptical that donating large sums in primaries is a good idea. Sometimes, there just isn’t a big difference between two Democratic candidates; other times, donors may be overestimating the power of a single member of Congress. But the worst-case scenario for major donors and outside spending organizations is that they bet big on one side, and lose, getting precisely nothing for a million-dollar spend. (Or in Bankman-Fried’s case, an $11 million spend.)
And for major groups, intervening in primaries comes with a non-monetary cost, as well. House Majority PAC, a group closely aligned with House leadership, spent $1 million in Oregon’s 6th District supporting Flynn, angering the race’s other candidates, as well as Latino organizations that were pissed off that HMP was siding with the white candidate. Even given House leadership’s well-documented penchant for meddling in primaries, backing Flynn was a bizarre choice — the only possible logic is that HMP thought Flynn was best suited to win in the general election, and that obviously seems like a mistake, given that he wasn’t cracking 20% of the primary vote as of Wednesday afternoon.
Then there are DMFI and other organizations allied with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which have become a major counterweight to progressive efforts to replace centrist and liberal House members with those who would be allied with the “Squad.” These groups back candidates who promise to be supportive of Israel (though the content of their ads rarely mentions the issue), and in practice, that has led DMFI and others to buy ads attacking progressive candidates (including Jewish progressives). By getting so aggressively involved in Democratic primaries, the Israel lobby is clearly seeking to preserve the longstanding status quo in which passing aid packages to Israel and decrying the BDS movement are bipartisan priorities. But in the process, AIPAC has positioned itself as a force against progressivism, making younger leftists even less likely to think of Israel fondly.
Escalating costs
As PACs of all types get involved in primaries more heavily, they also drive up the cost of these elections, and, if they engage in attack ads, inevitably contribute to feelings of rancor and division within the party. And though Democrats have tended to quietly embrace dark money in recent years, all the arguments against super PACs still hold water — they’re controlled not by small-d democratic principles, but by the idiosyncratic whims of billionaires and special interests, and they make it harder for candidates not backed by deep-pocketed interests to compete. On Tuesday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison a letter asking the DNC to live up to the party’s anti-dark-money commitment and try to stop super PACs from intervening in primaries.
It’s unclear exactly how the party could go about regulating PACs, though Sanders’ letter mentioned “punishing” candidates who ally themselves with PACs. But getting PAC money out of primaries, if it were possible, would have the side benefit of preventing these billionaires and major organizations from throwing so much money away.