How Michigan Became the Most Expensive Democratic Primary Ever

Mother Jones illustration; Monica Morgan/Getty; Evan Cobb for The Washington Post/Getty Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Next Tuesday’s contest in Michigan between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens holds a dubious distinction: No Democratic congressional primary in history has ever attracted so much super PAC cash. The overwhelming majority of the outside money has gone toward ensuring that Stevens, a moderate, pro-Israel Democrat, defeats El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed champion of Medicare for All and Israel critic. More than $60 million of outside spending has poured into the Senate contest, according to records from the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. The vast majority has come from super PACs that—unlike El-Sayed’s and Stevens’ own campaigns—can accept unlimited donations. Brendan Glavin, the director of insights at OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics, said the level of outside spending in Michigan far exceeds the top Senate races from 2024. “We’re taking this huge leap up,” he explained. “It’s really exploded.” Only this year’s Republican Senate primary in Texas, where John Cornyn lost to Ken Paxton despite a large funding advantage, appears to have attracted more outside money. The biggest spender by far in Michigan is the United Democracy Project, a super PAC backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that works to elect pro-Israel candidates. UDP has spent more $30 million backing Stevens, according to FEC records—twice as much as it has ever spent on a single race. (The super PAC hit its previous high in 2024, when it spent more than $14 million to defeat former Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a Democratic House primary in New York.) Additional records show that Stevens has also benefitted from a super PAC that in the past has received donations from companies including Chevron and a subsidiary of the tobacco giant Philip Morris. The race in Michigan—an open seat that Democrats need to hold to take back the Senate—started out as a competitive three-person contest that initially included Mallory McMorrow, a state senator backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who tried to occupy the ideological lane between El-Sayed and Stevens. But despite strong fundraising and early polling, McMorrow struggled to remain competitive and dropped out in early July. It means that Michigan primary voters now have an unusually clear choice to make. El-Sayed has the endorsement of key players on the left like Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and the United Auto Workers. Stevens is understood to be the favorite of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and was recently endorsed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. At a national level, the results on Tuesday will be closely watched to see if populist outsiders like El-Sayed can continue to topple favorites of the Democratic establishment from coast to coast. It will also be a measure of whether AIPAC can still upend Democratic primaries in which voters increasingly oppose its agenda. If El-Sayed wins, the general election will then test how left-wing candidates perform in swing states. El-Sayed, a 41-year-old Rhodes scholar and doctor, worked as the head of Wayne County’s department of health before running for Senate. In 2018, he unsuccessfully ran for governor in Michigan. After the race, he hosted a podcast for Crooked Media and further established his left-wing credentials by writing a book on Medicare for All that included a foreword by Sanders. In this year’s Senate race, El-Sayed is not being outspent due to poor fundraising. His campaign raised more than $14.5 million through July 15, according to FEC records. Stevens’ campaign raised less than $12 million by the same date, despite her being a sitting member of Congress. Stevens’ advantage comes entirely from super PACs and other outside groups that can spend independently to support her. The outside spending has become a major issue in the race. At a May debate, Stevens made national news for dodging a question from a moderator about what AIPAC does or doesn’t get from backing her campaign. El-Sayed returned to the theme at a July debate when he asked Stevens what she had “given away” for AIPAC’s support. Stevens replied that no one owns her vote and then claimed that anyone spending on her behalf was doing so because of her record of “fighting for Michigan.” El-Sayed talked more about AIPAC’s role in the race in an interview earlier this month with my colleague Najib Aminy. “AIPAC is the biggest spender in this race by far, and that’s pretty insane,” he said. “And they’re not spending to keep our money here, they’re spending to send our money there … it’s just another example of why we have to get money out of politics.” The Senate race is not the first time that UDP has backed Stevens. In 2022, the group spent more than $4 million to help her defeat Rep. Andy Levin in a Michigan House primary. Although Levin is Jewish and Stevens is not, he was deemed too critical of Israel by AIPAC despite having served as the president of his synagogue. Since her 2022 victory, Stevens has remained an ardent supporter of Israel, a nation that she has said “comes to me in my dreams.” El-Sayed, on the other hand, has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and campaigned with the left-wing streamer Hasan Piker. UDP’s unprecedented spending is a recognition of the threat that El-Sayed poses to its agenda. But the super PAC is also aware that focusing on Israel is not the best way to win. Like in other races, its ads in support of Stevens appear to make no mention of Israel. The full extent of pro-Israel funding being deployed against El-Sayed may significantly exceed the more than $30 million spent by UDP so far. In October 2025, Delaware corporate records show a new entity called the Center for Democratic Priorities was incorporated in the state. The Center for Democratic Priorities quickly spent $6.5 million backing Stevens, the New York Times has reported. But the ads did not explicitly tell Michiganders to vote for Stevens. Instead, one ad touted Stevens’ efforts to “hold ICE accountable.” Michael Beckel, an expert on money in politics at the nonprofit Issue One, explained that, due to the vagaries of campaign finance law, groups like the Center for Democratic Priorities can skip reporting to the FEC by avoiding direct endorsements and running ads more than 30 days before an election. As a result, it is even harder than usual to know who funded the group. But there are potential identifiers. In 2024, a super PAC called Blue Wave Action sprang up to help elect Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) in his House primary in Detroit. After the election, FEC records showed that most of the $2.4 million that Blue Wave Action received came from UDP and a related pro-Israel group. As the Detroit Metro Times has reported, federal records show that a “John Jones” filed paperwork for both Blue Wave Action and the Center for Democratic Priorities. Federal Communications Commission filings I reviewed strongly suggest that the same John Jones worked with both groups: Jones signed paperwork for both groups using Docusign; both signatures have the same string of 15 identifying numbers and letters that are unique to an individual’s account on the digital signing service. Who John Jones is has been a mystery but FCC records contain significant clues. Advertising agreements that Jones signed for Blue Wave Action in 2024 list the group’s address as a UPS Store in East Lansing and also include a Gmail address for him. According to open source records, the email address is tied to the LinkedIn page of a John Jones who previously worked on government affairs for Sprint and now handles fundraising for a Christian school in Lansing. Jones did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and phone. A colleague at the Christian school where he works was surprised to hear that he may be involved in the Michigan race. His wife, Sandi Jones, who co-owns a Michigan lobbying firm, told me that she did not think the Gmail address listed on FCC records belongs to her husband. But there is reason to doubt whether that is correct. Among other things, the avatar for that Gmail account is a photo of a man who appears to be her husband, the same account has written Google reviews for businesses near the Jones’ Michigan home as recently as this month, and the East Lansing UPS store listed as Blue Wave Action’s address in 2024 is about 15 minutes from their home. Who funded the the Center for Democratic Priorities remains unclear. AIPAC has denied being behind it, but there is no way to verify that from public records. Down to the common name of its director, the group appears designed to be as opaque as possible. The second largest spender in the Michigan race is another innocuously named super PAC called A Stronger Michigan. FEC records show that the group has spent more than $17 million supporting Stevens—more than El-Sayed’s entire campaign had raised as of mid-July. A Stronger Michigan, which did not register with the FEC until June, is based at a residential address associated with Jeff Murray, a Virginia-based lobbyist who has represented groups ranging from the Boy Scouts to the tobacco giant Altria. Murray has longstanding ties to Center Forward, a nonprofit that backs moderate Democrats and Republicans that is the source of nearly all the donations disclosed by A Stronger Michigan. (A related super PAC called Center Forward Committee has spent about $1 million backing Stevens in addition to the money routed through A Stronger Michigan.) As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Center Forward does not have to disclose its donors. But it is possible to put together a partial picture of its funding from other public records. The group, for example, has received millions of dollars from PhRMA, a trade group that represents drug manufacturers. The related Center Forward Committee, formed by Murray in 2014, lists only three corporate donors this election cycle: Chevron, a subsidiary of Philip Morris, and UnitedHealth Group. But those donations do not show where the specific funds given to A Stronger Michigan to support Stevens came from. Murray did not respond to a request for comment. The outside spending picture for El-Sayed looks much different. The biggest individual donor to Fighting for Michigan—El-Sayed’s main outside backer—is the candidate’s father-in-law, a nephrologist at a Detroit hospital who had given $300,000 as of July 15. Overall, the super PAC has expended about about $2.8 million—less than one tenth of what has been spent against El-Sayed by the United Democracy Project alone. When it comes to the role of AIPAC and UDP, El-Sayed sees the results next Tuesday as being about about much more than a single Senate seat. “If I prove that you can win statewide, taking on AIPAC and winning, that is catastrophic because of what it says about the future of the party,” he said. “It is existential to oppose it. I think this race is going to change a lot of minds, and it’s going to scramble a lot of expectations.” Additional reporting by Najib Aminy.