Rep. Summer Lee will win an expensive race for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, CNN projects, defeating challenger Bhavini Patel, who hammered the progressive freshman over her response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
After condemning Hamas’ deadly October 7 raid, Lee emerged as one of the few early voices calling for a ceasefire, which fueled attacks from pro-Israel groups and Patel, who accused her of ignoring the district’s Jewish community and undermining President Joe Biden’s policy in the region.
But Lee, who faced a heavier barrage of outside spending when she first ran for the seat in 2022, stressed her record of delivering federal funds to the Pittsburgh-area district, her abortion rights advocacy and GOP billionaire Jeffrey Yass’s funding of a super PAC that spent more than $570,000 against her.
Lee, a member of the House “squad” of progressive lawmakers, was initially believed to be a top target for pro-Israel groups such as United Democracy Project, the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Democratic Majority for Israel – both of which spent big against her two years ago. But the congresswoman’s popularity in the district and the lack of name recognition for Patel, an Edgewood Borough council member, mostly kept them off the airwaves. The Yass-backed Moderate PAC tried to make up the difference, but its ad spending was nearly canceled out by outlays from a coalition of progressive groups, led by the Working Families Party, Justice Democrats and Emgage PAC.
Lee’s victory, and her mostly comfortably road to renomination in a safely blue seat, is a major boost to progressive Democrats, who are bracing for a flood of outside spending by pro-Israel and establishment-backed groups determined to claw back the gains made by the hard-charging, diverse new crop of young leftists elected to Congress over the past six years.
The absence of a major investment from the pro-Israel organizations, which spent more than $3 million trying to deny Lee the nomination in 2022, made for a more balanced competition this time. Lee’s campaign also outspent Patel’s by a more than 4-to-1 margin, according to data from AdImpact. It was a mark of Lee’s strong standing among progressives – led by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, two close allies – and Patel’s inability, in the end, to excite even moderates who opposed the incumbent.
Lee also came under fire from Patel over her support for the “uncommitted” write-in campaign among Democrats looking to warn Biden that his continued backing of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza could cost him general election votes. But the attacks mostly fell flat, in part because Biden gave Lee an approving shout-out during a recent campaign event in Pittsburgh. Progressives also argued that Lee voters would be crucial to juicing Democratic turnout in November in the battleground state.
“President Biden needs to win Summer Lee voters. He needs to win progressives,” Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi told CNN before the primary. “And Western Pennsylvania is a progressive stronghold now.”
Lee’s campaign hammered Patel over Yass’ involvement in the race, even though Patel repeatedly denounced the GOP megadonor. One pro-Israel strategist told CNN that Yass’ involvement had been a factor in the strategist’s group staying on the sidelines.
“To go in as a well-known, right-wing Republican billionaire with a personal PAC and try and affect this race, frankly, taints everybody who might be interested in helping Patel and defeating Summer Lee,” the pro-Israel strategist said.
Asked why he thought the pro-Israel groups were not joining his cause, Ty Strong, the president of Moderate PAC, said Patel’s lack of name recognition and internal polling numbers “scared a lot of people away,” particularly those who “did not want to give (Lee) another feather in the cap.”
“If someone had more name recognition or was a staffer in the White House or had a little bit more of a history in the Democratic Party, if there was a picture of Patel standing next to Joe Biden, I think she would’ve gotten a lot farther,” Strong said of the challenger, adding that the PAC was still able to “move the needle” by criticizing Lee’s record and offering an alternative.
Lee and her supporters, though, pleased to have warded off a similar onslaught to 2022, insisted that even the specter of AIPAC’s involvement could throw off the fundamentals of a campaign.
“Whether or not AIPAC or someone like them gets in your race, it’s destabilizing,” Lee said. “It makes candidates think differently about how they’re going to run and who they’re serving, whose values they’re going to represent.”
Patel was especially pointed in her criticism of what she described as Lee’s absenteeism among her Jewish constituents after the October 7 attacks in Israel.
“You know what I would be doing after October 7? I would’ve come straight back home; I would’ve been present in my community,” Patel said. “There were rallies and visuals that were organized here at home. She was nowhere to be found.”
Lee called that charge an “intentional mischaracterization” of her work.
“There’s a difference between campaigning and being actually present. And the reality is that she’s campaigning right now,” Lee said of Patel. “The assertion that we weren’t present or that we did not do our due diligence to earnestly represent them is a mischaracterization. And she knows that we’ve done that.”
Biden and former President Donald Trump will easily win their respective presidential primaries in Pennsylvania, CNN projects – a largely anticlimactic outcome with both having already secured enough delegates last month to clinch their party nominations.
Polls have shown a close general election race in battleground Pennsylvania, which has been a key part of Democrats’ so-called blue wall of must-win Great Lakes states in recent elections. In 2016, Trump became the first Republican in nearly three decades to win Pennsylvania, before Biden flipped the state four years later.
In the 3rd District in Philadelphia, Rep. Dwight Evans will easily win the Democratic nomination for a fifth full term, CNN projects, defeating Tracey Gordon, a former city register of wills. No Republican has filed for the deep-blue seat.
