Unlike McMorrow and El-Sayed, who both oppose weapons shipments to Israel, Stevens is firmly in the pocket of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: She raised more money from AIPAC than she did in small-dollar unitemized contributions. This would be an electoral albatross in any state, given Americans’ nearly two-to-one opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But in Michigan, the state with the largest number of Arab American voters, who famously abandoned Democrats in the last election, choosing Stevens is an even riskier bet. And yet, that’s exactly the bet that Democrats like Schumer and Gillibrand are seemingly making.
Similar stories are playing out in the battle for the House. A prime example is California’s 22nd district, currently represented by GOP Congressman David Valadao, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the country. This is a heavily Latino district that swung to Trump after Biden won it by 13 points in 2020. And Randy Villegas, who launched a campaign against Valadao earlier this year, would seem to be a perfect fit for it. A working-class educator and local elected official, Villegas is the son of Mexican immigrants, and speaks compellingly about the issues his community faces. Though he “hesitates to put any labels” (like progressive or leftist) on himself, he is clearly running as an economic populist. “I think we need to have candidates who are willing to say that they’re going to stand up against corporate greed, that they are going to stand against corruption in government, and that they are going to stand against billionaires that are controlling the strings right now,” he said in April. And he’s demonstrated his viability, raising a quarter of a million dollars in the last quarter without taking any corporate PAC money.
So how did the DCCC respond to Villegas’s momentum? By convincing State Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains—arguably California’s most conservative Democratic legislator, whose blatant shilling for the fossil fuel industry earned her the moniker “Big Oil Bains”—to get in the race. Bains announced her candidacy in mid-July, several months after the San Joaquin Valley Sun reported that the DCCC and some California House Democrats were recruiting her.
