Pro-Israel Lobbies Are Backing Winners, Not Creating Them
Last Tuesday night in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s Eleventh District, Representative Haley Stevens defeated Representative Andy Levin by a decisive margin of 20 percent. For most of the country, these two names mean nothing, and this intra-party contest barely registered. But for a subset of activists focused on Israel, the election has taken on outsize importance. That’s because Levin, a Jewish labor organizer and former synagogue president, is known as one of Israel’s strongest critics in Congress, while Stevens is aligned with the more centrist pro-Israel approach of most Democratic lawmakers today. When redistricting caused the two members to run against each other, dueling Israel-related money followed. A super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) poured $4 million into the race supporting Stevens. J Street, a liberal Zionist group and staunch ally of Levin, spent $700,000 behind him. In the end, the candidate with the bigger Israel outlay won: Stevens trounced Levin 60 percent to 40 percent.
The story I just told is technically true, but it is mostly misleading. Here’s another one. Consider this hypothetical matchup between two Democrats in Michigan:
