Sen. Bernie Sanders is pressing Democratic leaders to block super PACs from their primary elections, a move aimed squarely at AIPAC after the group spent heavily to defeat a far-left Senate candidate in Michigan.
Sanders sent a letter on Aug. 8 to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and DNC Chair Ken Martin, demanding the party shut outside spending groups out of its nominating contests. The Vermont independent framed the push as a fight against a "corrupt system" that lets billionaire-funded organizations pick Democratic nominees and then turn around and bankroll Republicans in the general election.
The letter's central target is AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group. Sanders claims AIPAC and its affiliated groups poured more than $30 million into Michigan's Democratic Senate primary to defeat Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left candidate backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sanders says the same group now plans to spend "tens of millions more" supporting Republican Mike Rogers in the November general election, a sequence he called "absurd."
Sanders posted the letter on social media, writing:
"It is insane that the Democrats allow super PACs like AIPAC to spend millions in their primaries, only for those same special interests to help elect Republicans in the general election. My message to Democratic leaders: Ban super PACs from Democratic primaries NOW."
In the letter itself, Sanders went further. He told Schumer, Jeffries, and Martin that the problem extends beyond the dollar amounts.
"What is particularly obscene is not only the outrageous amount of money coming into Democratic primaries from billionaire-funded super PACs, but the reality that these special interests have no particular desire to see Democrats win. It is absurd that they spend tens of millions of dollars to try to determine who the Democratic nominee is and, if they fail, then proceed to support the Republican candidate in the general election."
He closed by urging the three leaders to "take action and make clear that the Democratic Party will no longer maintain this corrupt system."
None of the three recipients, Schumer, Jeffries, or Martin, have publicly responded to the letter. AIPAC has not responded either.
The silence is notable. Sanders is not a Democrat. He caucuses with the party and uses its primary infrastructure, but he has spent decades criticizing the party's leadership from the outside. His demand puts Schumer and Jeffries in an awkward position: agree with Sanders and alienate a major donor network, or ignore him and hand the party's progressive wing another grievance heading into the midterms.
The scale of super PAC spending this cycle gives Sanders's complaint at least a factual foundation, even if his proposed remedy raises its own questions. Corporate super PACs have already spent a record $517 million this election cycle, Fox News reported, shattering the record set in 2024.
Sanders himself co-introduced the Abolish Super PACs Act in May alongside Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. The bill's current status in Congress remains unclear, and it has drawn no visible momentum toward a committee vote. The letter to Democratic leaders represents a narrower, more immediately actionable demand: use party rules, not legislation, to keep super PACs out of Democratic primaries.
Sanders has not been shy about confrontation in recent months, and his willingness to publicly pressure his own caucus leadership reflects a broader fracture inside the Democratic coalition over money, Israel, and the party's ideological direction.
That fracture showed up at the DNC's spring meeting in New Orleans, where the committee voted to pass a resolution condemning the surge in outside spending in Democratic primaries. But the resolution was a statement, not a rule change. Larry Cohen, co-chair of Our Revolution, the progressive group Sanders founded, made clear that words were not enough.
"It's necessary that we actually have the party do something on this issue, not just say something."
Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-chaired Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, went further, calling on every 2028 Democratic presidential candidate to pledge against super PAC spending in primaries. AP News reported Khanna said, "We should eliminate any super PAC in a Democratic primary."
The Michigan Senate race is the flashpoint. El-Sayed, the far-left Democrat who survived the primary despite AIPAC's spending against him, has drawn sharp criticism from his Republican opponent. Rogers called El-Sayed an "extremist" who wanted to "empty prisons and put murderers and sex offenders back on our streets."
Rogers also accused El-Sayed of pledging support to the Muslim Brotherhood, campaigning "with people who refuse to condemn terrorism," and advocating for "the largest tax hike in American history, costing families already struggling to make ends meet over $3,000 more per year." Rogers said El-Sayed is "leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism" whose "agenda would make our communities less safe and our state less affordable."
Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, has said El-Sayed "represents the politics of the future" for America. That framing, a contest between a self-described progressive future and a Republican warning about public safety and radical ideology, makes Michigan one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
The socialist insurgency in Michigan's Democratic primaries extends beyond the Senate race. Democratic incumbents have already lost seats to far-left challengers in the state, a sign that the party's progressive base is increasingly willing to replace its own candidates with more ideologically aggressive ones.
AIPAC's position inside the Democratic coalition has deteriorated rapidly. The group was historically bipartisan, but many Democrats who were once close to AIPAC now view it as aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. By March, multiple Democratic 2028 presidential contenders were already shunning AIPAC donations, a signal that the group had become "politically toxic" in Democratic fundraising circles.
Sanders's letter exploits that shift. By framing AIPAC as a group that spends to pick Democratic nominees and then funds their Republican opponents, he is making a political argument that resonates with the party's base, even if the underlying legal and structural questions are more complicated. Super PACs are protected by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and a party rule banning their participation in primaries would face immediate legal challenges.
The deeper tension is one Democrats have avoided confronting directly. Intra-party divisions over Israel have grown sharper since the war in Gaza, and the money question, who funds Democratic candidates, and what those funders expect in return, has become impossible to separate from the policy question.
Sanders's demand is simple on its face: ban super PACs from Democratic primaries. But the demand carries a second, unstated message aimed at Schumer and Jeffries, choose between the donor class and the activist base, because you cannot keep both.
Whether Democratic leaders will act on that demand, or simply let it sit unanswered, will say more about the party's direction than any resolution passed at a spring meeting. The far-left wing of the party is not waiting for permission. It is already reshaping Democratic primaries from the ground up, with or without super PAC money on the other side.
When a party's loudest voice on campaign finance is a man who is not even a member of that party, the leadership vacuum speaks for itself.
