When Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee was asked last August at a town hall in Carrboro, North Carolina, whether she regretted benefiting from millions of dollars in AIPAC funding that helped elect her to Congress in 2022, she stiffened. “You all know that I took the money from AIPAC, but check to see how much I’ve taken since that time, and check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted for as it relates to the people of Gaza,” Foushee said. Her campaign subsequently announced that she hadn’t received AIPAC funds since 2024 and would not accept them in her 2026 campaign. She even signed on as a co-sponsor of the “Block the Bombs” legislation that seeks to deny certain offensive weapon sales to Israel.

We’ve seen countless recent examples of candidates swearing off “AIPAC funding” and then receiving it in some clandestine form, like through coordinated donors or vaguely named shell super PACs. But this rare rebuke from an incumbent member of Congress has thus far stuck, largely due to grassroots organizing in the Durham-area Fourth Congressional District. Rep. Foushee is in a tough primary fight against Nida Allam, a local official who finished second to her in 2022. And surprisingly, with just a couple of weeks to go until the March 3 primary, it’s Allam who is benefiting from independent expenditures, this time by a factor of more than 10-to-1, according to campaign finance data.

PACs that have gotten behind Allam, a member of the Durham County Board of Commissioners and the first Muslim elected official in the history of North Carolina, include the progressive campaign organization Justice Democrats, the young candidate PAC Leaders We Deserve, and American Priorities, a new PAC that my colleague Whitney Wimbish reports is committing to spending several million dollars to counter AIPAC in select congressional primaries.

Now, there might be more money to come. A poll currently in the field in the district, which has been seen by the Prospect, asks voters about artificial intelligence. This could be a prelude to significant Big Tech super PAC support for Foushee, whom House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) appointed to co-chair a new commission on “AI and the innovation economy.” However, like the pro-Israel funding, support from Big Tech firms would also carry hazards in the district, where residents are fighting the building of a new data center amid fears about job losses from AI and rising energy prices.