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When she conceded her Democratic primary on Tuesday, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush put the blame on pro-Israel groups that dumped millions of dollars into St. Louis. “AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” she said, quoting an old spiritual — and within a day, was being condemned by the White House for saying it.
Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) was part of the coalition that beat Bush. Its chairman, Mark Mellman, produced hyper-accurate polling that showed Bush as vulnerable after she voted against a House resolution condemning Hamas and the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel; its final polling nailed the 5-point margin that St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell was about to win by.
Pending one recount in Arizona, where DMFI is hoping to get a more moderate Democrat past a progressive in a deep blue seat, it’s done with primaries this year. Most members of the House’s progressive “squad” will return to Congress, and DMFI isn’t playing against Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar next week, as it expects her to win; “it didn’t look like we would be able to have the kind of impact there that we would have in these other places,” said Mellman.
Q&A
Americana: Why did you zero in on these two Democrats?
Mark Mellman: The hardest thing to do in politics is to defeat an incumbent member of the House. We don’t want to waste people’s money by spending in places where we can’t win. So, we were looking for two sides of an equation.
One: What’s the value of getting rid of them? We want to oppose people who wreak havoc with the Democratic agenda, and we want to defeat people who are anti-Israel. On both counts, these members were among the worst, among the most divisive, among the biggest opponents of key elements of the Biden-Harris agenda, the most bellicose, hostile, anti-Israel voices in the Congress. The value of getting rid of them was tremendous.
The second question is: Are we able to get rid of them? They looked vulnerable in our polling, because of their own mistakes, because of their own errors, because of their own divisiveness, but they were also vulnerable because they faced strong opponents.
Americana: There were nine House Democrats who voted against the initial resolution condemning Hamas. Did you look at primarying all of them?
Mark Mellman: We considered races against several divisive anti-Israel members. Rashida Tlaib had no opponent. Others had weaker opponents. When we first polled in Cori Bush’s district, she was 16 points ahead, but we looked carefully, and we saw the vulnerability.
Americana: It didn’t look like the Israel issue came up in most paid messaging; it was about their votes against the infrastructure bill, whether they supported Biden. How much did the Israel question move voters?
Mark Mellman: Well, one of the things that people were disturbed by, in our research, was the divisive nature of their rhetoric. Their attacks on Israel served to reinforce that image of divisiveness. If they refused to condemn Hamas in some way, it contributed to that image.
Americana: You’ve been challenging these candidates for a few cycles, but this is the first time incumbents have lost. What changed?
Mark Mellman: DMFI PAC had not challenged these incumbents in the past. We did go after Congresswoman Marie Newman, a strident anti-Israel member, last cycle and helped defeat her. [Newman was forced into a new district by redistricting and lost to a fellow House Democrat.]
But I think we’re seeing a couple different things happen. There was a point in time when people were angry with Democrats for not standing up strongly enough to Trump. In the early days, in 2018 and 2020, some progressives took advantage of that viewpoint. Now, I think things have flipped. People are still strongly anti-Trump, make no mistake, but they want candidates who are going to bring people together and produce results they’ve seen. They’ve seen Joe Biden and Kamala Harris demonstrate that. They don’t want to just shout into the void. They want to get something done. And these divisive candidates are seen as shouting into the void and not getting things done.
Americana: What was your plan, at the start of the cycle?
Mark Mellman: We wanted to defeat at least one of the anti-Israel members, and we wanted to prevent that small group of strongly anti-Israel members from expanding. We exceeded those goals.
Americana: And what’s your plan for 2026?
Mark Mellman: Well, we’ve just started thinking about that. We understand that the people left on the board are harder to beat, and we’re going to have to do something. We’re not just going to be able to come in in the closing weeks of a campaign and win — that’s something we learned earlier on, something we applied to this cycle with Bush and Bowman.
Americana: Both Bowman and Bush said, after their loss, that they’re going to continue challenging the influence of pro-Israel groups; Bush said she was coming to tear AIPAC’s kingdom down. What do you expect from them now?
Mark Mellman: Honestly, I think they’re going to find that being a former member of Congress is not a tremendous platform from which to influence the nation’s agenda.
Americana: There was a sort of split screen on Tuesday. Early in the day, you had people like Ari Fleischer saying that antisemitism was the reason Harris didn’t pick Gov. Josh Shapiro as a running mate; hours later you had Bush losing, in large part because of the Israel question. Where does the work you did this cycle fit into what Republicans are saying?
Mark Mellman: Look, first of all, I think those charges are ridiculous. Kamala Harris has chosen Jewish men to play vitally important roles in both her professional and personal life, for a long time. To suggest that she’s antisemitic is the height of absurdity. She had a lot of good choices for a VP, and she had to choose one.
I look at the Democratic Party as basically a moderate center-left party, and I look at the Republicans as absolute extremists. The problem is the voters don’t see it that way. The problem is voters look at the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and from their perspective, they see two equally extreme parties, and that is deeply problematic for the Democratic Party. What this year has shown is that the Democrats are rejecting their extremists, and Republicans are allowing them to take over their party. And that is a big difference. The Republicans are the party of extremism. The Democrats are not.
Americana: What is DMFI going to do, over the next 90 days, to press that case and elect Harris and Democrats?
Mark Mellman: We don’t talk about exactly what we’re doing until we do it, because that just helps our opponents. But we have real credibility when we go to the pro-Israel community and say: You can trust these candidates. This is a pro-Israel presidential ticket. This is a party that’s ridding itself of its anti-Israel extremists. This is a pro-Israel party that deserves support from pro-Israel Americans, and that’s a message we’re going to be carrying around the country.