Progressive gains in Illinois 9th District race challenge Israel lobby

Whichever of the two progressive candidates wins the buzzworthy Illinois 9th District primary, the result will register as a meaningful precedent for a Democratic Party that is slowly recalibrating on Israel. The race to replace Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who first won the seat nearly three decades ago, has narrowed to three frontrunners. Two of them, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and first-time candidate Kat Abughazaleh, are running from the left, supporting Palestinian statehood and opposing unrestricted U.S. arms transfers to Israel. The third, state Sen. Laura Fine, is running on her legislative record and happens to be the candidate boosted by the Israel lobby. Fine is polling third and sinking.

The most recent poll from March 10 has Biss at 24 percent, Abughazaleh at 20 percent and Fine is at 14 percent. Her net favorable rating collapsed by 23 points in just over two weeks, dropping to minus-22 in early March — making her the least popular of the three leading candidates in a district where she is a state senator. AIPAC-affiliated “shadow” PACs like Elect Chicago Women have poured upward of $5 million into the race, funded ads promoting Fine and attacking her rivals; one ad flagged Abughazaleh’s support for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign when she was in high school. Yet the barrage seems to have had the opposite effect, in part because the progressive candidates have made the outside spending itself a major campaign issue.

By most conventional measures, Fine ought to be competitive here. She supports universal health care, Medicare for All and abolishing ICE, and has a 13-year record in the General Assembly. That résumé, in another cycle, might have been enough to........

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