AIPAC's millions wasted again: Dramatic victory for progressive candidate in California
The special election to replace the resigned Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell did not yield a particularly surprising result. Aisha Wahab, the first Muslim in the California Senate, defeated moderate Democrat Melissa Hernandez.
Aisha Wahab, a Democratic and progressive state senator from the California State Senate, scored a significant political victory this week by defeating moderate Democrat Melissa Hernandez in the special election to replace Congressman Eric Swalwell. Swalwell, it will be recalled, resigned suddenly last April amid allegations of sexual misconduct. According to reports by the AP news agency and The New York Times, Wahab will fill his seat until the end of the term.
Wahab was considered the leading and clear candidate to represent California's 14th District after garnering 43% of the total vote in the primary held in June. However, the election results this week were much closer than expected, and the race remained open and tense for two days while local election officials continued the work of counting votes until Thursday.
In the final days of the race, a number of political action committees, two of which are directly linked to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, poured millions of dollars into an aggressive advertising campaign on television and social media, aimed at the district's voters in the San Francisco suburbs. AIPAC's umbrella organization alone spent about 2.5 million dollars, mainly on spots attacking Wahab. The spots did not mention the State of Israel at all, but chose to attack her through accusations of softening legislation against sex offenders against minors.
Neither candidate made foreign policy a central issue in the campaign, but the race became another link in a chain of competitive Democratic primaries between the progressive wing and the party establishment, which serve as a proxy war over attitudes toward Israel. Her victory joins AIPAC's stinging loss in Michigan this month, where the lobby spent 32 million dollars in an attempt to defeat candidate Abdul El-Sayed. This is another sign of the weakening of its influence despite the enormous expenditures.
Wahab, 39, the first Muslim in the California Senate, was asked in April whether what is happening now in Gaza is "genocide," and she immediately replied in the affirmative. On the other hand, Hernandez, 51, replied to the same question that Israel has the right to defend itself following the Hamas terrorist attack in October 2023, but noted that "the destruction in the Gaza Strip has gone too far."
Wahab, who also received the support of Jewish organizations such as J Street, claimed in an interview she gave to Politico magazine that the negative campaign against her stemmed entirely from "prejudice and pure racism." This coming November, the two will face off in the battle for the position.
