At his first in-person town hall as St. Louis’ congressional representative, Rep. Wesley Bell faced angry constituents who demanded answers about his campaign financing. The event drew approximately 300 people.
Bell only made it through a few questions, and his answers were repeatedly interrupted by demonstrators who wanted to know why he accepted money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee PAC and donors. AIPAC is a lobbying group that many thought had tipped the election in his favor after its affiliated PACs spent millions of dollars in the Democratic primary that unseated incumbent Cori Bush. Bush had strongly criticized Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip.
The scene was a classic confrontation of First Amendment values — the freedom of the congressman to be heard without being shouted down, the freedom of protesters and voters to dissent and the impact of big money on political races after the 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unchecked campaign contributions from corporations, labor unions and outside groups.
But instead of unfolding as a textbook example of the First Amendment helping people understand one another, the meeting ended with police scuffling with and removing the protesters.
“Liar, liar pants on fire,” the crowd chanted, drowning out Bell’s answers to constituent questions. Outside, other protesters who couldn’t make it into the packed town hall, were chanting too.
The demonstrators demanded St. Louis politicians stop taking from AIPAC and its PACs. Across the street from the town hall, two large banners were erected, one with the phrase “AIPAC Sell Outs Out of U.S. Government,” and the other “Wesley Bell Corporate Sell Out,” alongside a figure showing the money from the AIPAC-affiliated PACs.. The protesters tie the campaign spending by groups supportive of Israel to what protesters and some human rights experts describe as genocide in Gaza.
Bell told the demonstrators that he supports the U.S.-Israeli relationship and said that Hamas is a “genocidal terrorist” group. He also said that AIPAC should be able to participate in American politics because they are a group active in Washington, where they are a powerful force.
This opinion aligns with the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United which opened the door to unlimited spending by corporations, unions and outside groups, leading to the rise of super PACs.
A citizen video taken after Bell had left the stage shows police and a security guard confronting protesters. The footage captures police hitting protesters, shoving them and wrestling one to the ground. One security guard shoved approximately three women out the door.
From a First Amendment point of view, the protesters may have overstepped their protected speech rights in repeatedly shouting down Bell. The First Amendment does not give protesters the right to shout down officials at a meeting. Police can enforce reasonable time, place and manner restrictions to enable the meeting to go forward. The large political expenditures that fueled Bell’s victory, are another facet of First Amendment protections of speech.
Among lobbyists and political donors in the U.S., AIPAC and its affiliated PACs is a big source of money. St. Louis citizens and political experts point to its influence on a 2024 congressional primary that led to the ousting of a progressive politician for a moderate one.
While AIPAC has been a top donor for decades after its founding in 1954, last year its Superpac contributed record breaking amounts to unseat two members of the Democratic “Squad.” The Squad is a band of progressive politicians in Congress and AIPAC rallied against two of its members up for primary challenges — Cori Bush (D-St. Louis) and Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) — after they expressed their support for Palestine, criticizing Israel’s military attack in the Gaza Strip which has now continued for more than two years following the initial Oct. 7 2023 Hamas attack. Bush lost to Bell and Bowman lost to moderate Democrat George Latimer in the most expensive House primary in U.S. history.
In 2024 alone, AIPAC and its affiliated superpacs spent $51,848,113 ranking it among the top 20 U.S. political groups, according to nonprofit campaign funding tracker OpenSecrets.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $8.6 million on the Bush/Bell race, far more than any other outside group, concluded the Open Secrets group that tracks big campaign contributions. As a super PAC, UDP can spend unlimited amounts of money advocating for or against federal candidates — even though it doesn’t give directly to candidate campaign committees.
In the 2023-24 election cycle AIPAC’s PAC and UDP together spent about $130 million, according to the FEC.
Bell, the Democratic congressional representative for Missouri’s 1st congressional district, was the top individual beneficiary of these funds with $2,555,095 spent on his behalf.While the organization itself cannot officially contribute to candidates, their affiliates and associated donors can pay for televised ads and field operations for a favored candidate.
The impact of Citizens United
Fifteen years after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, campaign finance is in the spotlight in a new way, supercharged by social media, for millions of young Americans who are concerned about the influence of lobbyists and big-money donors.
In addition to AIPAC, tech billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $250 million backing President Donald Trump’s re-election bid.
Before Citizens United, there were limits in place governing how much donors could spend on a political campaign, Southern Illinois University Carbondale Professor J. Tobin Grant said. But in the court’s decision, it determined that spending is a form of free speech, dismantling some of these regulations.
“The end result is that you have a lot more people spending in campaigns,” he said. “There’s still limits on direct contributions to campaigns (…) so it doesn’t look like you’re buying favor, but if a group or person or an individual wants to spend their own money, spread their own message, that’s really wide open and so the long story short is that it really opened up the amount of spending in campaigns, and allowed a lot more voices and people to be involved in campaigns.”
Brendan Glavin, director of insights for OpenSecrets, said Political Action Committees are organizations that aggregate donations from groups and individuals to then donate to a specific cause or candidate. In addition to PACs, funding from “super ACs” can also influence U.S. elections.
“A super PAC is an independent group that is not allowed to make contributions directly to a candidate, but can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence an election, as long as it’s done independently of the candidate,” Glavin said. “It can’t coordinate that activity with a candidate.”
Super PACs are a direct result of the court’s Citizens United decision, Glavin said.
“There’s no contribution limits associated with super PACs. So if you give money to a candidate, or you give money to a traditional PAC or even a party — although the party limits are very high now — (…) they do still have limits on all this,” he said. “There is no limit on a super PAC, and that’s what allowed Elon Musk to spend 270 some million dollars on the 2024 election. And he was the number one individual donor for the election.”
Since the 2010 Citizens United decision, there has been an “explosion in spending” by these super PACs, Glavin said.
“The party leadership in each chamber have their own super PACs now,” Glavin said. “So the rise of those groups and that spending has become an integral part of fundraising and spending in campaigns over time, to the point now where many competitive congressional races the money spent by outside groups can easily outpace the money that the candidates themselves are spending.”
This has changed the dynamic of political fundraising to the point where a new term has emerged — Megadonors.
“Musk is not the only one who’s out there pumping large amounts of money into these races,” Glavin said. “There are at least 25 people who gave more than $20 million during the 2024 election.”
The influx of these megadonors and their ability to pour millions into each election cycle has completely altered how money is spent in political campaigns, he added. This is particularly apparent to Americans who watch cable news, where now, it’s nearly impossible not to see a political ad during election season if you live in a contested area.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton benefited from more Citizens United money than Trump. But in 2024 Trump reaped far more benefit than Kamala Harris, thanks mostly to Musk.
The Brennan Center for Justice, which follows the impact of the decision, put it this way: “The Court’s decision and others that followed shaped the 2024 election to a greater degree than any that came before it. Most notably, Donald Trump substantially trailed Kamala Harris in traditional campaign donations, which are subject to legal limits and must be disclosed. Yet he was able to compensate for this disadvantage by outsourcing much of his campaign to super PACs and other outside groups funded by a handful of wealthy donors.
“While such groups had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads in previous cycles, this was the first time they successfully took on many of the other core functions of a general election presidential campaign, such as door-to-door canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Their activities unquestionably would have been illegal before Citizens United.’
Impact of social media
Grant, from SIU, says social media has also changed the campaigning landscape.
In contested primaries, both social media and fundraising are key.
“If you’re a challenger, or it’s an open seat, particularly if you’re not well known, that first several $100,000 that you raise is critical. It gets your name out and makes sure that you’re a strong candidate,” Grant said.
Social media can act as a sort of equalizer in elections when one candidate has less funding or name recognition than another.
“Social media is one of these things that ends up democratizing this a little bit,” Grant said. “You don’t have to be buying TikTok advertising to have a presence, right? Or on Instagram to have a presence. And so it gives you these platforms outside of that.”
One special interest group that leveraged its funding and influence, but is now being pushed back against on social media, is AIPAC.
In a spending spree, it poured millions into Bowman and Bush’s primaries after the two declared their support for Palestine. This made the two progressives the only Democratic incumbents unseated in last year’s election cycle, ABC News reported.
Super PACs can spend millions against a candidate while spending millions for their favored candidate in the same race. A Super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, United Democracy Project, spent millions against the two candidates they opposed — $9,865,477 against Bowman and $5,242,242 against Bush, according to OpenSecrets.
Most primaries are quiet, but can flare up and see large donations from outside interests when there are internal conflicts within a party, Glavin said.
In addition to AIPAC-affiliated PAC donations, in Bowman’s New York primary, $24.8 million was spent by various groups, “making it the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history,” according to a BBC analysis.
After defeating Bush and Bowman, the two Democrats who took their congressional seats — Bell and Latimer respectively — went on a trip to Israel organized by an AIPAC-affiliated group
AIPAC did not respond to requests for comment on this story, but issued the following statement after Bell’s win:
“AIPAC congratulates Wesley Bell for his consequential victory over an incumbent anti-Israel detractor. Once again, a progressive pro-Israel Democrat has prevailed over a candidate who represents the extremist fringe that is hostile to the Jewish state.”
While AIPAC is non-partisan and supports both Democrats and Republicans, many progressive Democratic groups are pulling away from the group.
More than a dozen progressive organizations signed a letter addressed to House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries calling on the party to cut ties with AIPAC, according to The Guardian. These organizations included the Center for Popular Democracy Action, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, New York Communities for Change and New York City Democratic Socialists of America, it reported.
In addition, a mix of everyday St. Louisans, activists and advocacy groups took to social media to criticize AIPAC’s involvement in Bush’s primary.
Bell did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. AIPAC also did not comment.
Bush did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story, but she recently announced her intent to run against Bell the next time he is up for election.
In a speech after losing the primary, Bush addressed AIPAC directly for its role in her defeat.
“AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down.”
Kallie Cox is a St. Louis-based journalist and a graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale. They are a contributing writer for the Gateway Journalism Review and a member of the Trans Journalists Association.
