First! We have a new deal for you: subscribe to Sludge and The Lever in a bundle, and get two muckraking newsrooms for the price of one. 🎉
We're both independent and reader-supported—now you can get full access to both, $100 for a whole year, and help keep us following the money. You'll get The Lever’s premium podcast episodes, plus every new story in full the moment it's published. We depend on subscriptions from readers like you to produce this original reporting on shadowy political influence, so sign up for our new bundle and get full access ahead of the midterms.
Some of the Democratic Party’s top pollsters and consultants have collected more than $7 million since 2021 from AIPAC’s super PAC and its closest Democratic ally, as the AIPAC group now spends to defeat the party’s Senate nominee in the key battleground state of Michigan.
Last week, the United Democracy Project (UDP) dropped $95,000 on mailers targeting Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in his matchup against Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, after spending at least $30.6 million opposing him and supporting his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens. The group has foreshadowed unloading much more cash to defeat El-Sayed in the weeks ahead. At a Michigan debate last week, Rogers welcomed AIPAC’s support.
At least 20 Democrat-tied firms have worked for UDP or its close ally Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) since 2021, including Impact Research, the polling firm founded by Joe Biden’s campaign pollster John Anzalone, as well as Global Strategy Group (GSG) and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (GQR).
Several of the firms are also working this cycle for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the campaign arm of the Senate Democrats, and the mammoth Senate Majority PAC (SMP) super PAC. The trio of Impact Research, GSG, and GQR have been paid millions of dollars this cycle by the DSCC and SMP—for example, the DSCC paid Impact in May 2025, after it had already collected over $100,000 this cycle from UDP. Similarly, the DSCC paid GSG over $131,000 in December, over a month after the firm received its first payments from UDP since 2022.
