JTA — If AIPAC has any regrets about pouring more than $2 million into opposing a candidate who calls himself pro-Israel — and then lost to an anti-Israel opponent — it isn’t saying so. In fact, the pro-Israel group’s affiliated super PAC suggests it would do it again.

“We are going to have a focus on stopping candidates who are detractors of Israel or who want to put conditions on aid,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for the United Democracy Project, said in an interview.

The target of the UDP’s recent spending was Tom Malinowski, a former congressman who lost a special primary election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District. Malinowski, who calls himself pro-Israel and has been endorsed by the liberal Zionist organization J Street, has said he’d be open to placing conditions on some US aid to Israel.

AIPAC pummeled Malinowski with $2.3 million in negative ads — but not about Israel. Instead, the ads tarred him from a progressive angle; one emphasized his vote on a 2019 bill that included increased funding for ICE, the immigration enforcement agency.

By one measure, AIPAC’s expenditure could be seen as a success: The candidate it opposed, seen as a favorite, did not score an easy win on Election Day. But in another crucial way, the effort appears to have backfired by throwing open the door for Analilia Mejia, a progressive grassroots organization leader who is far more critical of Israel.

Malinowski on Tuesday conceded the race to Mejia, who was the national political director for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. Tahesha Way, the former lieutenant governor of New Jersey who is thought to have been AIPAC’s preferred candidate, finished in a distant third.

Critics, including AIPAC supporters, have slammed AIPAC’s strategy in the race.

“They could not have gotten a worse result than what they got,” said Alan Steinberg, a journalist in New Jersey who was an EPA administrator under George Bush. “I’m a very pro-AIPAC person, very supportive of AIPAC, but this is one of the worst strategic errors that they........

© The Times of Israel