AIPAC’s Only General Election Target Is an L.A. Progressive
In California’s 34th District, antiwar advocate David Kim has come close to unseating Rep. Jimmy Gomez twice. Now AIPAC is attacking Kim, and a crypto PAC is joining them.
Co-published with The American Prospect.
In July of 2023, just five days after he launched his third consecutive campaign for Congress in California's 34th congressional district, David Kim got a request he wasn’t prepared for. AIPAC—the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—wanted to meet. The organization had sent the message through a trusted emissary, a high-profile businessman in the local Korean community who was an acquaintance of Kim’s and a sometime political ally.
Kim told his friend that the meeting wasn’t necessary. He understood AIPAC’s position on the question of Israel, Palestine, and Washington, and it was at odds with his own view. Thanks, but no thanks.
Kim and AIPAC, of course, would meet again.
AIPAC and its allied Super PAC have spent some $100 million dollars this year to install a Congress friendly to Israel amid its brutality in Gaza and Lebanon. But it’s always done so with a conceit that fealty to Israel takes precedence over party politics. AIPAC endorsed 233 Republicans and 152 Democrats over the course of the 2024 election cycle, and maintains the pretense of being a bipartisan organization. But most of its spending this cycle came in primaries targeting progressive Democrats who were insufficiently supportive of Israel.
When it comes to the general election, AIPAC has only gotten financially involved directly in a single race, and it’s David Kim’s.
The attempt to beat back one last progressive is happening in a district in Los Angeles spanning downtown, Koreatown, and Boyle Heights, where Kim, a children’s court public attorney, is mounting yet another challenge to incumbent Rep. Jimmy Gomez. Both are Democrats, an artifact of the “top-two” primary system in California, where the two leading vote-getters in the March primary advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.
Gomez prevailed 53-47 over Kim in 2020 and by an even closer margin in 2022, winning by about 3,000 votes. Kim has generally run to Gomez’s left in the previous two races.
AIPAC and its allied super PAC have spent some $100 million this year to install a Congress friendly to Israel amid its brutality in Gaza and Lebanon.
It is here that AIPAC has made its last stand. United Democracy Project, the Super PAC for the organization, started spending on ads and mailers earlier this month, both supporting Gomez and opposing Kim. The total ad buy could approach $1 million, according to Politico. Kim believes the AIPAC spending is on track to hit $3 million by Election Day, he said.
“AIPAC’s so-called bipartisanship is just a facade to obscure that they are a right-wing lobby funded by right-wing billionaires,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director at Justice Democrats. “Nothing is a greater threat to AIPAC's power than Democratic voters having elected leaders that actually reflect the will of the people.”
In keeping with past examples, the anti-Kim United Democracy Project ad has nothing to do with Israel-Palestine policy, and instead attacks Kim for changing his political party affiliation (though he has run as a Democrat the past two elections against Gomez), for having “refused to back President Biden, and repeatedly disrespected Nancy Pelosi.”
A “red box” on Gomez’s campaign website highlights the party-switching issue; supportive PACs often use red box information from candidates to inform their advertising. Kim has responded to this charge by saying that he registered as a Republican 20 years ago because he was the son of conservative Christian parents. “I’m a progressive, fighting for the people, and I’m proud of how accepting my community has grown,” Kim says in the post on X.
Interestingly, the race also reveals another example of an alliance between pro-Israel and pro-crypto forces. Continuing a trend that has been seen in races throughout the country, the same day that United Democracy Project began its ad buy, Protect Progress, which is affiliated with the leading pro-crypto Super PAC Fairshake, dropped half a million dollars into the race supporting Gomez. The ad buy makes Gomez the eighth-largest House recipient of Protect Progress expenditures in the 2024 campaign.
Gomez voted for the FIT21 bill that crypto moguls see as a litmus test for their issues. That bill, which passed the House with 71 Democratic votes, would have taken regulatory control over crypto from the Seucrities and Exchange Commission and given it to the smaller, more business-friendly Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Kim said that he understands why AIPAC is targeting him and going after Gomez, but he is still surprised to stand alone among all of the congressional races in the country. “I’ve been very vocal, unwavering in our stance calling for a permanent ceasefire [and] arms embargo,” he said. By contrast, he characterized Gomez as “somebody who’s been kind of a puppet since October 7.”
Kim said that Gomez talks a progressive game in his progressive district—where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by a count of 81-17—but doesn’t follow through. “The incumbent acts as a faux progressive. He says the magic words of ceasefire but has not once added his name to any of the House ceasefire resolutions,” Kim said, criticizing him for voting to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and for attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address. “He went in and clapped for Netanyahu and then came out and sent a tweet saying Netanyahu should resign.”
Gomez did call for Netanyahu’s resignation in July of this year. Last November, he urged a “cessation of hostilities” in Gaza. AIPAC notes in its endorsement of Gomez that he has taken two trips to Israel with sister organizations of the PAC, trips that hundreds of members of Congress have taken in the past.
Kim has favored an embargo on military aid to Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached, and prosecutions of illegal West Bank settlers at an international criminal court, among other foreign policy positions. He has the support of several antiwar and progressive organizations, including IfNotNow Los Angeles.
Both AIPAC and Gomez’s House campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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