Date: Wed, Oct 29, 2025
Subject: AIPAC $$, low profile or anonymous, for candidates who don't want the AIPAC label seen as toxic
AIPAC donors flood Fine’s campaign
Over 270 donors, many of whom have backed dozens of Republican politicians and the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobbying group, donated over $300,000 to State Sen. Laura Fine’s congressional campaign since May, campaign records show.
Hundreds of Fine’s donors who drove almost half of her campaign fundraising had previously supported several candidates, both Republican and Democratic, through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, including Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.).
One donor, a physician from Fort Myers, Florida, donated $500 to Fine’s campaign on Sept. 18, just three days after a fundraising email from AIPAC calling her opponents, Kat Abughazaleh and Daniel Biss “dangerous detractors” from AIPAC’s mission. The donor had previously donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans, including over $20,000 to two of Donald Trump’s largest super PACs in 2024.
Of the over 740 individual donations Fine received since launching her campaign, over 270 came from donors with strong links to AIPAC, which has often been criticized for targeting critics of the Jewish state, previously supported candidates directly through AIPAC, Evanston Now’s analysis of hundreds of records shows.
Fine’s donations, as listed in both her July and October FEC filings, were not earmarked as being made through AIPAC and are displayed as individual donations. Evanston Now crosschecked hundreds of the donors and their donation histories, compiling a list of candidates her donors had previously supported.
Among the list are groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC and, in over a dozen instances, controversial figures like Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who introduced a bill in Congress that would allow Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revoke U.S. passports of citizens critical of Israel.
Many of the donors had supported Democratic candidates, too, sometimes donating to both Republicans and Democrats at the same time, so long as the candidates were pro-Israel. Some of the Democratic candidates include Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan, who’s now running for U.S. Senate, Rep. Wesley Bell in Missouri and dozens supporting Rep. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, also running for Senate in 2026.
As of Sept. 30, Fine had raised over $660,000 in total, with over 90% being from large-dollar donors ($200 or more).
Of the large dollar donorations, Evanston Now found that about a third came from out-of-state, totaling about $196,000 from just over 180 individual donations.
All but about $10,000 of Fine’s out-of-state contributions came from donors who had previous ties to AIPAC, records show.
An analysis of the over 700 donations shows that nearly all of the donations from AIPAC-linked donors followed a pattern, beginning on Thursdays in late July, picking up significantly in late August through the end of September.
On Aug. 28 alone, Fine raised over $26,000 from 26 separate donors, nearly all of whom were out of state and all of whom had heavily supported AIPAC-supported candidates in the past.
Exactly a week later, on Sept. 4, Fine raised another $35,350 from 26 more donors, all past-AIPAC donors.
The pattern continued again a week later on Sept. 11, with 26 more donors, and a week after that on Sept. 18, with over 30 donors. On Sept. 25, Fine raised money from over 40 donors and finally, on Sept. 30, the final day of the quarter, she raised over $45,000 from over 50 separate, mostly out-of-state, AIPAC-associated donors.
On Sept. 29, one day before the deadline, Michael and Cari Sacks, one of AIPAC’s largest donors through its super PAC, United Democracy Project, dropped $14,000 into Fine’s campaign.
Jerry Bednyak and his wife Alexis, who live in Glencoe but in the 10th Congressional district, also donated $14,000 to Fine’s campaign. They’re also among AIPAC’s top donors.
Her campaign raised $14,000 from Douglas and Michelle Gessner of Glenview, who live in the district and are longtime bipartisan donors through AIPAC, including checks to Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Darin LaHood, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and several others.
Fine’s campaign, when previously asked about the email describing Biss, the son of an Israeli Jew, and Abughazaleh, who’s of Palestinian descent, as “dangerous detractors,” noted dozens of Fine’s legislative achievements but did not answer questions about her support of AIPAC, its message or its donors.
In a response to questions just after this story was first published, Fine’s campaign wrote that the state senator from Glenview is the “most proven leader to represent the values of this district,” sharing a link to her legislative accomplishments but still not answering questions regarding AIPAC.
Abughazaleh, who leads the field of nearly 20 in total fundraising, has long been critical of the Israeli government, blasting AIPAC’s email as an attack on her, calling it a “right-wing organization which funnels millions of dollars of Republican money into Democratic primaries all for the express purpose of defending Israel’s illegal and immoral actions in Gaza and the West Bank.”
“So hell yes, I am a detractor from AIPAC’s mission of funding, celebrating, and profiting off of the deaths of Palestinian civilians,” Abughazaleh added.
One of Fine’s donors, who has a history of supporting Republicans through AIPAC, a Highland Park woman, also donated to $1,000 Biss’ campaign in early June, records show.
Other notable local donors to Fine’s campaign include former mayoral candidate Jeff Boarini.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s wife, Loretta, also donated $1,000 to Fine’s campaign.
In-state? Out-of-state?
Among the top seven candidates in fundraising to date, four sit with 30% of large-dollar donations from out-of-state donors, records show.
Biss and 50th Ward Democratic Committeeperson Bruce Leon, who’s bankrolling over 90% of his campaign funds, have even less out-of-state money from large-dollar donors, both around 11% to 12%.
Notable donors to Biss’ campaign include Jennifer Pritzker, Brooke Skinner and Laura Ricketts, owners of the Chicago Cubs, @properties CEO and co-founder Thaddeus Wong and CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners Paul Finnegan.
Biss also accepted $8,250 through JStreet, a Democratic “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group that has previously supported donations to Schakowsky’s campaigns.
Abughazaleh’s fundraising is complicated, almost the direct opposite of her top competitors, with over $1.1 million of her $1.5 million raised through small-dollar donations (less than $200), meaning they’re not viewable in detail through the FEC.
Her campaign said over 1,200 of her over 30,000 individual donors are from the in-district, providing an anonymous list of 1,261 small-dollar donors.
Of Abughazaleh’s large-dollar donors, which make up about $390,000 of her campaign contributions through Sept. 30, 75% are out-of-state.
Her top donors include Mohammed Davoodi, CEO of Soteri, William Connell, a trustee of Lake Forest College and Ben Collins, her partner and CEO of the satirical newspaper The Onion.
She’s also received donations from former presidential and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang and actor Mark Ruffalo, records show.
https://evanstonnow.com/aipac-donors-flood-fines-campaign/