Mastodawn

90% of crypto's Illinois primary spending failed to achieve its objective

https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/202603172318

90% of crypto's Illinois primary spending failed to achieve its objective

The cryptocurrency industry super PACs dumped $14.2 million into the Illinois primaries. 90% of that – $12.8 million – was wasted, in that it went to opposing Democratic candidates who won their primaries (Stratton in the Senate race, Ford in H-07) or supporting their opponents. The PACs' only victories in the state were where they contributed money towards outcomes that were already highly likely. They opposed Robert Peters (H-02), who had been polling in third place and ultimately received 12% of the vote. They supported Bean (who was leading the polls in H-08) and incumbent Budzinski (H-13). Sadly this early spending in Illinois used up less than 6% of what the super PACs have on hand, so buckle up for a looong eight months.

Molly White

You can't talk about what happened in the Illinois primaries without talking about the other PACs who spent big, specifically AIPAC and other dark-money Israel-affiliated PACs that spent to defeat pro-Palestinian candidates (eg Kat Abugazaleh) without ever once mentioning Israel [1].

It's far more accurate to say that pro-Zionist groups spent big in the Illinois primary and got mixed results. Crypto just went along for the ride.

There is a war in the Democratic Party between anti-genocide candidates, who enjoy 90% support in the base, and the establishment who is doing everything to defeat them, up to and including intentionally losing the 2024 presidential election [3].

Nobody cares about crypto.

[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illino...

[2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...

[3]: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-...

AIPAC faces calls to reassess strategy after split results in Illinois

In its first midterms test, the powerful pro-Israel group backed two victors but failed to secure its preferred outcome in the two districts where it spent the most.

Politico

ourmandave Mar 20

I don't understand why they'd throw an election so the other pro-Israel side can win.

thuridas Mar 20

I Will never understand why US allows this kind of political intervention.

PearlRiver Mar 20

A lot of rich people were afraid democracy would change the world but it turns out those with money will always have the power.

And this is not an American thing every country has its lobbying industry.

Pesky thing called the First Amendment.

Citizens United cough

A case where the opposition claimed that under a correct reading of the Constitution they had the authority to ban books.

I don't like lobbying and campaign finance either, but people shouldn't pretend these are simple or absurd arguments.

Money is speech, and is sacred, but books with gay people in them aren't speech, and need to be carefully controlled.

They really interpret the First to protect lobbying and campaign donations?

I mean the Second as written also isn’t primarily about the right to pack heat, so it’s not that surprising.

chimeracoder Mar 20

The First Amendment does not explicitly mention campaign spending (or political campaigns at all), and until 2010, the First Amendment was not considered to apply to monetary spending in political campaigns.

The right to petition the government is explicitly protected, but that doesn't apply in the case of IL-9, which was an open race and therefore none of the candidates were actually elected representatives.

Even still, this is money on how a private entity decides who its going to support for a future election.

None of these people are even running for government yet.

If the democratic party wanted to so something about it, they could, but the freedom of expression and association guarantees that a party that wants to have lots of money spent on ads an such can do it

Henchman21 Mar 20

Citizens United is an abomination. Its the reason we're in dire straits at present. It "legalized" bribery.

If Mongolia pays a bunch of US citizens to vote for some candidate that promises to push the US towards militarily supporting Mongolia, do you think the First Amendment supports that?

Or more accurately, imagine if the US had special rules and exceptions for dual citizens of Mongolia and the US that don't exist for any other country and then it allowed those dual citizens to push for certain candidates without having to be registered as a foreign lobby.

Now try substituting Mongolia with Russia or China.

AIPAC was promoting the third place finisher. They opposed both Biss and Abugazeleh who finished first and second.

In his victory speech, Biss credited J Street. So still Israel, just not AIPAC specifically.

J Street is specifically anti-war, anti-settlement and pro-justice.

HDThoreaun Mar 20

Kat Abugazaleh was a carpet bagger with literally 0 experience governing. The fact that she came close to winning is an indictment on our meme obsessed voting population and imo proof that ranked choice is absolutely needed. There were multiple bonafide progressives in the race with local roots and experience in the state house but the progressive movement abandoned them in favor of a candidate who ran their campaign from tiktok with 85% of the fundraising from out of state. Honestly a disgrace.

That's a long way of saying "Kat ran a better campaign".

I have criticisms of her campaign, specifically

1. She was a carpet-bagger (as you said). She moved in Illinois in 2024 I believe;

2. She initially ran in a district she didn't live in. I believe she initially lived in IL-7 but ran in IL-9 and moved there at some point;

3. She chose to primary a relatively good candidate, Jan Shakowsky. My working theory is she was trying to fly under AIPAC's radar by primarying a relatively pro-Palestine candidatei; and

4. She essentially advocated for going to war with China over Taiwan for literally no reason. Nobody in her district cares about this. You can blame that in part on having a bad foreign policy advisor but the buck stops with the candidate.

And despite all of that and millions being spent against her by pro-Israel groups she still got ~30% of the vote and came second.

But as for "better candidates", I'm sorry but my advice is "run a better camapign".

This is what I've been saying to the people who blame the voters for Trump's win in 2024. Democrats knew how dangerous he was and how weak of a candidate he should have been and they still decided to skip the primary and run an unpopular candidate so late in the race after it became clear that Biden wasn't going to make it after the first debate. They met a serious and decisive moment with incompetence and the public is facing the consequences of that. They should be taking this all more seriously and doing introspection on the loss rather than blaming the voters.

HDThoreaun Mar 20

Oh I agree she ran a better campaign given that there isnt ranked chocie voting. Im just stating that I am very unhappy that 25% of the dem electorate are looking for clown meme candidates. Thats by far the biggest lesson from her campaign, 25% of primary voters do not care about anything other than memeage. I cant say thats a good way to get competent politicians but it is now the world we live in.

> But as for "better candidates", I'm sorry but my advice is "run a better camapign".

I know this is wishful thinking but itd be nice if politics had just a little bit of substance instead of purely being a popularity contest where competence at governing is irrelevant.

Also Kat still lost. If the progressives backed one of the local candidates they likely win, so its hard to really say she ran such a great campaign. She blew it for them

She had exactly the same policy profile on China and Taiwan as every other Democrat in congress and didn't change that until a bunch of tankies on Twitter jumped her about it, because she is susceptible to Twitter tankies, which is something you can't say about Fine or Biss, and is a small part of why Biss won.

Nobody in her district cares about her Taiwan position. It's not a real issue. But she made it one because Ryan Grim or Hasan Piker (I forget which) got mad about it. Because she's terminally online, and everybody knows it, and nobody wants a terminally online congressperson.

>imo proof that ranked choice is absolutely needed

Ranked choice still succumbs to a spoiler effect. https://realrcv.equal.vote/alaska22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU

Approval voting works better and simpler, and STAR voting works even better though with more complexity. https://www.equal.vote/beyond_rcv_zine

Real World RCV

Visualize Real World RCV elections

HDThoreaun Mar 20

Approval makes the game theory too complicated imo. Too easy to think of cases where a voter leaves off someone because they want their favorite to win but then ends up with neither winning. STAR is the best but voters might be too stupid to figure it out. Really multi district is the best but unfortunately no chance of that happening it seems

I think the threat of unapproved candidates winning would lower a voter's approval threshold to include other candidates. Increasing the approval threshold happens when the voter likes all of the candidates, in which case there isn't too much of a problem.

I really want to believe that ordinary people can handle STAR voting. Not too far from product reviews: most will initially vote 5, 4, or 0. As long as the system encourages more honest voting (instead of lesser-evil voting), it can help fix our corrupt political system.

Full agreement with multi district/proportional, but I don't know how to sell it to normal people (they want THEIR representative).

Kat did not in fact come close to winning. She mobilized exactly the people she was expected to mobilize, and the only surprising thing about the election is that Bushra Amiwala --- a locally engaged and active elected with exactly Kat's profile --- didn't pull more votes from her. That sucks. But even with every one of Amiwala's votes, she still had no chance.

People are looking at the vote spread in isolation and not the whole breakdown of the election. Kat had a thing she needed to do in order to be a contender, and that was to pull votes from Biss and Fine in north suburban Cook County. She failed to do so, and Biss, who basically everyone thought was going to win, won.

HDThoreaun Mar 21

I mean we can be honest here about how she performed. I just dont believe that you dont find it surprising that a carpetbagger with no experience and zero ground game got 26% of the vote and the winner only got 29%.

> Kat had a thing she needed to do in order to be a contender

All she needed to do was convince Simmons or Bushra to drop out and she wins. She didnt need any of the Biss or Fine votes

> But even with every one of Amiwala's votes, she still had no chance.

If she got every of Amiwala's votes she literally wins by more than 1%

Fair enough. If she had taken every one of Amiwala's votes, she'd have won by ~2000 votes.

This is just activist cope. Voters in Illinois CD7, where I live, didn't put Melissa Conyears-Ervin (lavishly supported by AIPAC) into a tight second-place run against La Shawn Ford because Israel bamboozled them. If you look at the map of where the MCE votes came from, it's very unlikely any of them gave a shit about Israel whatsoever. Her votes followed the exact same pattern as they did in 2024, when she gave Danny Davis (the long-term incumbent) a run for his money, and when she wasn't supported by AIPAC at all.

In the Illinois 9th, AIPAC supported candidate seemingly at random in an attempt to split the progressive vote and clear a path for Laura Fine. Didn't work there either.

It may very well be the case that Israel is disfavored by a strong majority of Illinois Democrats (I'd certainly understand why). What your analysis misses is salience: people care about lots of things they don't vote about. Poll primary voters here; you will find a small group of them that think Israel is the most important issue in the district (they will be almost uniformly white PMC voters and they'll be disproportionately online). Mostly you're going to find voters that (a) hate Trump and (b) are concerned about the economy.

It's clearly not the case that "anti-genocide candidates" enjoy a 90% share of the Illinois Democratic primary electorate, because they didn't win.

Did you miss the part where I said that the AIPAC and AIPAC-affiliated PAC spending never mentions Israel?

Did you miss the part where I pointed out that the results were identical to just one cycle ago where AIPAC wasn't a factor at all? I'm a politically engaged Illinois Democrat (to the point where I have precinct maps of CD7 and CD9 running for local political discussions), I understand what AIPAC was doing here. Unfortunately for your argument, it doesn't appear to have had any effect.

First, IL-7 was nothing like it was in 2024. What are you talking about? In 2024, a 14 term incumbent, Danny Davis, was seeking reelection. Now there's some noise here because IL-7 changed in the 2021 redistricting and became more Democratic but still, Davis is a long-time veteran.

Davis was a progressive but has a more mixed record on Israel funding and defence bills. He's concered with what he has called a "humanitarian crisis", which is more than most, but never gone so far as to use terms like "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" AFAIK.

Davis faced challenges in 2024 but won pretty handily. One of his challengers wasa the future 2026 AIPAC chosen candidate, Melissa Conyears-Ervin. AIPAC indirectly (eg through UDP) spent millions [1] in the IL-7 Democratic primary and still came in third.

So, IL-7 in 2026 was a massively funded primary in an open field with no incumbent and 2024 was a 14 term incumbent seeking reelection without massive spending. In what way are they comparable?

Bonus question: if millions are spent to oppose a candidate and they still win, how can you say the results were "identical"?

[1]: https://chicagocrusader.com/la-shawn-ford-wins-7th-district-...

La Shawn Ford wins 7th District primary despite $2.5M opposition spending

Despite facing millions in opposition spending, La Shawn Ford triumphed in the 7th District primary with strong support from voters. La Shawn Ford

The Chicago Crusader

MCE got the same votes she did in the 2024 primary in 2026. It's not complicated; just get the precinct level results, give them to Claude, and tell it "put this on a map". Remember you'll need precinct results both from Cook County and Chicago. She played in exactly the same parts of the CD7 map that she did last cycle, and ranked the same.

Tell me what AIPAC had to do with that, given that AIPAC was not involved in her 2024 run.