The Illinois primaries have seen gobs of spending, both in the highly-watched Senate race and further down the ballot in competitive open House seats.

Groups affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have poured millions of dollars into key contests, potential 2028er and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has found himself at odds with several prominent Black leaders in the state, and generational fights continue to plague the Democratic Party post-2024.

Here’s what POLITICO is watching today.

Can AIPAC avoid another fumble?

AIPAC faced backlash from moderate Democrats last month after inadvertently boosting a progressive candidate in New Jersey who said Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. It’s hoping not to make the same mistake again.

The group is facing a major test of its political muscle in Illinois as Democrats increasingly scrutinize Israel and AIPAC itself. It’s spending heavily in several House races, most notably in the contest to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the 9th district.

But Democratic strategists have warned that the group’s attacks on Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss — the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who has criticized Israel — have created a late opening for progressive insurgent Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian-American who’s an even more vocal critic, rather than effectively boosting the AIPAC-preferred candidate, state Sen. Laura Fine. AIPAC has made a sharp pivot in the final stretch of the campaign, turning its focus squarely on Abughazaleh instead.

“There’s been a strategy shift,” said a person directly familiar with AIPAC’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Our primary goal in Illinois is to prevent potential ‘Squad’ members from being elected to Congress.”

The big question for Tuesday will be whether that change in strategy happened too late to avoid another embarrassment for AIPAC.

Will JB’s involvement help or hurt him?

Pritzker has been vocally supporting, and heavily funding, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s campaign for Senate against Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly. That move has rankled some prominent Black leaders.

“A sitting governor shouldn’t be heavy-handing the race,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke, whose caucus is supporting Kelly, told Punchbowl earlier this month. “Quite frankly, his behavior in this race won’t soon be forgotten.”

The worry from Black Democrats is that Kelly and Stratton — both Black women — could end up splitting the Black vote, with Pritzker’s endorsement driving that wedge further. That may help Krishamoorthi win the race and kill their chances of electing a Black woman to the Senate this cycle.

Krishnamoorthi has led most public polls of the race and had a big cash advantage early on, allowing him to get up on TV earlier than his opponents. Pritzker’s money has helped Stratton close the gap, while Kelly sits in third in most public polls.

“People are conflicted as to whether or not they should go with the best candidate who they like, or do they go with what the polls are saying as the most viable candidate,” former Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who supports Kelly, said in an interview last week. “That’s the tension and the conflict that I’m hearing kind of across the board, but particularly among Black Illinoisans.”

What do all the races say about the future of the Democratic Party?

Both the Israel debate and racial tensions — as well as the growing generational divide in the Democratic Party — have dominated Illinois’ primary contests.

Tuesday’s results will be another early test, following Texas earlier this month, for where the party is headed as it still grapples with across-the-board losses to Republicans in 2024.

How do the outside influences fare?

More than $35 million has been poured into TV ads on Illinois races, according to AdImpact, with tech interests leading the way: pro-AI and pro-Crypto industry groups have combined to spend more than $15 million. It’s a dizzying sum that has shocked many veteran Illinois political strategists who are long accustomed to bruising campaigns.

Some candidates have openly courted — and practically begged for — support from these groups. Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. — who is running to reclaim the IL-02 seat he once held — used AI in an ad to enhance former Rep. Bobby Rush’s voice (D-Ill.) after it was damaged from treatment he underwent to battle throat cancer.

The groups’ huge spending to get allies in Congress could shape the heated policy debate over how to regulate two fast-growing industries. How well their chosen candidates fare will help guide their future spending later this year.

Who turns out?

Turnout among Hispanic voters was a strong point for Democrats in the Texas primary, not to mention several special elections in recent months, driven by backlash to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement along with continued economic uncertainty.

We will see whether that continues in Tuesday’s primaries, particularly in Chicagoland — which was shaken by a deportation blitz of its own last fall but where most of the primaries are for safe blue seats.

There’s also the question of turnout in primaries where support for Israel has been a major issue. A Senate primary should bring voters to the polls across the state, but POLITICO will be watching for how much higher turnout is in the 2nd, 7th, 8th and 9th districts to gauge how much Democrats’ intraparty disagreements about the issue — and the flood of outside money that has come with that — uniquely drives voting.

Alec Hernández and Jessica Piper contributed to this report.

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(Alamy)

3 min read16 min

A Labour MP is working up a new law to improve hotel security after a woman was sexually assaulted in a Travelodge in 2022 by a man given a key card to her room by hotel staff.

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The plans, set to be introduced as part of a Ten Minute Rule Bill, would introduce industry standards to ensure the safety of individuals staying in hotels.

It would also include a requirement for those requesting access to specific hotel rooms to be named on the booking, while hotels found not to be meeting safety standards would face fines, with any money collected to be put towards helping victims. 

The proposals are being led by Matt Bishop, Labour MP for the Forest of Dean and a former police officer. 

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While ministers had previously said that they would look at introducing new guidance amid outrage over the case, many MPs feel that any changes need to be legally binding.

PoliticsHome understands that the government is willing to work with Bishop on the plans.

A Ten Minute Rule Bill allows a backbench MP to invite Parliament to support legislation they have drafted. In the end, most do not make it into law. However, those with the support of the government have the best chance of being successful.

In February, Kyran Smith was jailed for seven-and-a-half years for sexually assaulting a woman in a Travelodge in Berkshire in December 2022.

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Smith had attended the same party as the woman and had later acquired a key card to her room after claiming to hotel staff that he was the victim’s boyfriend, which was a lie.

The BBC reported that the company had initially offered the woman a £30 refund, which the victim described as “insulting”. 

Bishop, who has taken a special interest in the case along with Labour MP Jen Craft, wrote to Travelodge CEO Jo Boydell last week demanding a meeting about the case.

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The two MPs met with Boydell on Monday afternoon, along with ministers Alex Davies-Jones and Jess Phillips. Boydell is set to meet a larger group of MPs on Wednesday, PoliticsHome understands.

Boydell has apologised to the victim and said that Travelodge had done an internal review of its security policies and made “immediate changes to ensure that an additional or replacement room key is only issued with explicit permission from the person, or people, staying in the room”.

Last week, Keir Starmer told Prime Minister’s Questions that the case was “absolutely shocking”.

“My thoughts are with the victim who had the right to be safe, and was failed in the most appalling way.”

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Roux restaurant, 2010 (Aardvark / Alamy)

3 min read7 min

Politicians making a meal of it. This week: Lord Young’s lunch with Christopher Hope

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There are few things more dangerous in politics than a self-evident truth. One of those things, though, is Christopher Hope armed with a tape recorder. The day in 2010 that Lord Young of Graffham encountered both of these phenomena at the same moment, his political fate was sealed.

Young, an entrepreneur who served in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, had been brought back as a government adviser by David Cameron, who was looking for a touch of the old Maggie magic. Hope, a reporter for the Telegraph, had known Young from his days as a business reporter, and had suggested an interview, only for No 10 to decree that the Mail should have it instead. A little miffed, Hope called Young and suggested they have lunch instead.

They went to Roux on Parliament Square, which was very much the place to take contacts you liked. It offered small, delicious courses in the modern-European style, with amuse-bouches and an excellent wine list. If the atmosphere was clinical rather than cosy, that was appropriate for what was – fundamentally – a place of business, somewhere hacks with generous expense allowances tried to turn scallops into scoops. Personally, I was a fan of the venison in port.

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Hope and Young ordered, and the conversation was so friendly that the reporter had an idea. “I pulled out my Dictaphone and said: ‘How about we do an interview now?’” Hope, now political editor at GB News, recalled. “He was making quite important and interesting points.”

One of these was that, well: “For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession – this so-called recession – started.”

Young’s point was a straightforward one: if you keep your job in a slump, your pay is likely to drop less than your costs. You might find you have a bit more cash spare to spend on, for instance, a slow-cooked duck egg starter. At the time, he was 78, so his mind had naturally gone back to the words of Harold Macmillan – a Tory prime minister who was also admired by Cameron.

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His big message to the Telegraph was that the economy would soon bounce back from the Great Financial Crisis. “I have a feeling and a hope that when this goes through, people will wonder what all the fuss was about.”

When Hope reported all this back at the office, “the political editor said that sounded like a story”. The news desk was worried that the Conservatives might deny Young had said the words, but someone had an idea. In the exciting new world of online journalism, it was possible to put video – and audio – on websites.

Which was why, the following morning, the rest of us were able to listen on the radio to Young uttering his opinions, accompanied by the gentle chink of cutlery in one of London’s finest restaurants. It’s this audio detail, as Young talks about “people who think they have a right for the state to support them”, that may have been the final blow. You could almost hear Marie Antoinette eating roast pigeon at the next table.

Cameron, as was his wont, swiftly fired the errant adviser, before bringing him back in a little later. After all, Young’s main crime was tactlessness.

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Although… almost two decades on from the Great Financial Crisis, Britain’s economy still hasn’t returned to its previous levels of growth. People born as Young uttered those words are still feeling its effects. This is the problem with self-evident truths: sometimes they’re wrong. 

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CHICAGO — The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is making a nearly $22 million bet in Illinois that its money, if not its policy views, can still hold sway in Democratic politics.

In three of the four Illinois House races it’s targeting, AIPAC appears to be using shell PACs to largely conceal where that money is coming from rather than spend from its main super PAC vehicle, United Democracy Project. Like in other recent contests, their ads focus on anything but Israel.

But AIPAC appears at risk of inadvertently helping the candidate most hostile to its views in the race to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky — just as it did in New Jersey last month. The group has taken a sharp tactical shift in recent days, pivoting from attacking a Jewish candidate who has criticized Israel and focusing instead on a Palestinian-American candidate who has been more outspoken.

Interviews with a dozen Democratic elected officials, candidates and strategists — including both supporters and critics of Israel — revealed growing concerns about AIPAC’s interventions. Strategists warn that AIPAC’s attacks on Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, created an opening for progressive social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian-American who is a vocal critic of Israel and appears to have late momentum in the race, over AIPAC’s preferred candidate, more moderate state Sen. Laura Fine. In the past week, the group has pulled down all of its anti-Biss messaging, but it could prove too late.

“There’s been a strategy shift,” said a person directly familiar with AIPAC’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Our primary goal in Illinois is to prevent potential ‘Squad’ members from being elected to Congress.”

Tuesday’s primary will be the first test of AIPAC’s political muscle in the 2026 primary season after amassing nearly $100 million in its warchest, even as polls show more and more Democrats have negative views of Israel — and of the group itself.

“AIPAC may deliver another candidate who is plainly not on their agenda and … the concerns about their interventions within the primary electorate are only going to intensify,” said David Axelrod, a longtime Chicagoan and former senior adviser in President Barack Obama’s administration. “These ads are not branded as AIPAC for a reason, so there’s a recognition that they are a controversial presence in Democratic primaries.”

AIPAC recently spent $2 million to sink former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) in a special election primary. Malinowski, a pro-Israel moderate who would not support unconditional aid to Israel, lost to Analilia Mejia, a progressive organizer who has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza. The move infuriated centrist Democrats, who saw it as a spectacular self-induced fumble — and are worried it may be happening again.

“No one wants to see another New Jersey 11 … and everyone should be concerned about it happening,” said one Democratic donor adviser close to AIPAC who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.

The organization has become increasingly controversial on the left for its full-throated support of Israel’s war in Gaza and is facing a new layer of hostility in the wake of Israel’s joint attack with the U.S. in Iran. Among Democrats, 62 percent think America is too supportive of Israel, compared with just 22 percent who think the support is about right and 8 percent who think it’s not supportive enough, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week.

Democratic candidates and strategists expect AIPAC to intervene in a range of House primaries in the coming months, as well as the Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota. They’re watching to see how the group’s interference plays with voters amid the backdrop of the war.

“You’re going to see more of this unfortunately” across the country, said former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a noted Democratic strategist now weighing a run for president, of the influx of outside spending — from AIPAC to crypto groups. “Illinois is literally the first stop on the way to an ugly future, where billionaires will be the dominant players and candidates will be pawns in their world.”

In Illinois, an AIPAC-aligned super PAC called Elect Chicago Women, had spent heavily against Biss on TV and digital ads, while also spending more than $4 million on TV ads and mailers boosting Fine. In recent days, another AIPAC-aligned group, Chicago Progressive Partnership, put out ads attacking Abughazaleh and propping up another progressive in the race, Bushra Amiwala, in an apparent effort to split the vote.

Local strategists noted the abrupt shift when the Biss attacks stopped earlier this month.

“It looks like they’re changing their tactics” after the New Jersey backfire, said an Illinois Democratic lawmaker, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “Is there evidence that [AIPAC] is adapting and taking lessons from the last election? Yes.”

Biss, for his part, predicted there would be “backlash” to AIPAC’s moves in Illinois in future primaries.

“They’ve chosen to make clear that it’s unacceptable to them to have members of Congress who don’t believe in a no strings attached blank check of military aid to the current Israeli government, no matter what they do in Gaza,” Biss said “So that’s what people in the district and around the country will be interested to see what the outcome is.”

Abughazaleh sees the shift to attack her as a sign that AIPAC is “panicking” to control the race. “They’re realizing that they didn’t take us seriously, and that people aren’t looking for the status quo. So they are panicking,” she said in an interview.

Fine has opposed adding conditions to U.S. aid to Israel, though she has expressed general frustration at the role of “dark money” and the lack of transparency from political action committees, saying it’s “a big problem in our political system.”

AIPAC’s super PAC declined to comment on its involvement in Illinois, including its use of pop-up super PACs to filter funds to candidates. AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa said in a statement, “Our members are focused on building strong bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel partnership in the 120th Congress.”

The group is also spending heavily for its preferred candidates in the races to fill seats left open by Reps. Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi, who are running for the Senate, and Danny Davis, who is retiring.

AIPAC’s allies are not confident about their chances in Kelly’s district. The group is backing Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, but former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has been bolstered by more than $1 million in spending from a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC. Plus, he has sky-high name recognition, especially in the wake of the recent death of his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

Pro-Israel Democrats feel more confident their preferred candidates can win in two other races.

Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin has benefited from nearly $5 million in positive ads from AIPAC’s main super PAC, United Democracy Project, in a crowded 13-candidate primary for Davis’ seat. State Rep. La Shawn Ford has strong name recognition in the district and Davis’ endorsement, but he has struggled to keep up with fundraising.

In Krishnamoorthi’s district, moderate former Rep. Melissa Bean has benefited from nearly $4 million in supportive messaging from the “Elect Chicago Women” group that’s also supporting Fine in the 9th.

AIPAC’s critics argue that the group’s moves in Illinois, particularly concealing the funding sources of its super PACs, demonstrate that “they themselves understand how toxic they are,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the progressive J Street group, which bills itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace.”

“In every part of their political work, they’re doing this surreptitiously,” he added.

Jessica Piper and Andrew Howard contributed reporting. 

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During the ceremony, there was an extended “in memoriam” tributes section, specifically remembering screen legends Rob Reiner, Catherine O’Hara and Diane Keaton.

However, Jane Fonda has now admitted that she thinks she should have been invited to take part in the segment to help pay homage to Robert Redford too.

At an Oscars after-party, Jane was asked by Entertainment Tonight how she felt about Rachel McAdams’ on-stage tribute to Diane Keaton.

“Oh I didn’t see that!” she admitted. “But oh god, her passing really hit me hard. We lost a lot of talented people [in the last year].”

She then added: “I wanna know, how come Streisand was up there doing that for Redford? She only made one movie with him – I made four! I have more to say!”

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The host then prompted Jane to “say it now”, to which she quipped: “I was always in love with him! [He was] the most gorgeous human being, and such great values, and he did a lot for movies, he really changed movies, and lifted up independent movies.”

The pair appeared together in 1966’s The Chase, 1967’s Barefoot In The Park, 1979’s The Electric Horseman and, more recently, 2017’s Our Souls At Night.

He also made an uncredited small appearance in 1960’s Tall Story, in which Jane shared the screen with Anthony Perkins.

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Following his death in September of last year, Jane said: ““It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone. I can’t stop crying.

“He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”

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