The progressive left's bid to plant new "Squad" members in Congress collapsed across Illinois on Tuesday night, with far-left candidates losing in every contested Democratic primary where they challenged moderate or establishment opponents. Four districts, four defeats. The rout was comprehensive.
In Illinois' 9th district, left-wing influencer and journalist Kat Abughazaleh fell to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss. In the 8th, progressive candidate Junaid Ahmed lost to moderate former Rep. Melissa Bean. In the 2nd, progressive state Sen. Robert Peters came in a distant third. And in the 7th, CPC-backed labor leader Anthony Driver Jr. and progressive organizer Kina Collins finished third and fourth, respectively.
Not one insurgent broke through. Not one came close enough to claim a moral victory. Not one gave the Squad the reinforcements it desperately needed.
The marquee contest was Illinois' 9th, where Abughazaleh ran a conspicuously pro-Palestinian campaign against Biss. Axios noted that both candidates were opposed by AIPAC, which had backed pro-Israel state Sen. Laura Fine through its affiliate Elect Chicago Women, spending millions on her behalf.
Fine came in third anyway. AIPAC then pivoted in the final week, training its fire on Abughazaleh. The Chicago Progressive Partnership, meanwhile, ran ads boosting lower-tier leftist Bushra Amiwala, further fragmenting the progressive vote.
Biss, who carried endorsements from the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, won comfortably. AIPAC framed the outcome as a success despite its preferred candidate's third-place finish:
"While disappointed Laura Fine didn't prevail, the pro-Israel community is proud to have helped defeat would-be Squad members Kat Abughazaleh and Bushra Amiwala."
That's an interesting way to describe spending millions on a candidate who lost. But the bottom line is the same: the most aggressively left-wing candidate in the race went down.
The 8th district offered the clearest test of whether progressive infrastructure could manufacture a congressional seat. Junaid Ahmed had the full weight of the left behind him: Justice Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a local DSA chapter. Melissa Bean had AIPAC, crypto, and AI-affiliated PACs.
Bean won.
Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas tried to spin the loss as someone else's failure:
"It took AIPAC, AI, and Crypto coming together to spend millions whitewashing Melissa Bean's right-wing record in Congress to elect a former Congresswoman."
She added that the result "is a massive loss for AIPAC as they lose more and more influence within the Democratic Party." A curious interpretation of an evening in which AIPAC's opponents went 0-for-4. Rojas also claimed Justice Democrats spent "very little" in these races, which is either an admission that they didn't think they could win or an explanation for why they didn't.
The other two races barely qualified as contests. In the 2nd district, progressive state Sen. Robert Peters finished a distant third behind both AIPAC-backed Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller and former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. In the 7th, state Rep. La Shawn Ford edged out AIPAC-backed Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears Ervin, while the progressive candidates, Driver and Collins, were afterthoughts.
The 7th is the one district where AIPAC's candidate also lost, but the progressive wing didn't benefit. Ford won on his own terms, without the Squad apparatus behind him.
Illinois was supposed to be fertile ground. Dozens of insurgent Democrats are running in congressional races across the country this cycle, and the Illinois primaries were an early bellwether. The results suggest the Squad's brand of politics, centering campaigns on opposition to Israel, progressive litmus tests, and social media energy, does not convert to votes even in deep-blue territory.
AIPAC was candid about what it saw:
"Life looks pretty good."
The organization said Illinois voters "rejected far-left, would-be Squad members who centered their campaigns on attacking Israel." That framing is self-serving, but it's not wrong.
For House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Tuesday was a welcome development. Jeffries is most popular among the moderate and mainstream liberal wings of the Democratic Party, and every Squad expansion complicates his leadership. Every Squad loss simplifies it.
The progressive post-mortem is already writing itself. Rojas previewed it:
"No amount of shell PACs or covert funding can hide their toxicity from Democratic voters."
This is the pattern. The far left runs candidates on ideology and online enthusiasm. The candidates lose. The far left blames dark money rather than examining whether voters actually want what they're selling. Then they run the same playbook in the next cycle, expecting different results.
At some point, "we were outspent" stops being an explanation and starts being an excuse. Especially when your candidate had endorsements from two U.S. senators, a national PAC, and a sprawling grassroots organization, and still couldn't close.
The Squad isn't growing. In Illinois, the Democratic electorate made that clear.
