Arab American Candidates Win Two 2026 Primaries With Backing From New Super PAC Built to Counter AIPAC

On June 2, Adam Hamawy won the Democratic primary in New Jersey's 12th Congressional District with roughly 28 percent of the vote in a field of twelve candidates, positioning him to succeed retiring Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman. Two months later, on August 4, Abdul El-Sayed narrowly beat sitting Representative Haley Stevens, 48.7 percent to 47.3 percent, for the Democratic nomination to Michigan's open Senate seat. Both men were born in Egypt. Both ran on platforms that call for ending U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel.

Both were also backed by American Priorities, a super PAC formed February 12, 2026, and led by Hannah Fertig, a Jewish political strategist who worked on Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign. The group has pledged to spend more than $10 million during the midterms, drawing on a small pool of wealthy donors, many of them Muslim American technology and business figures. Its stated purpose, according to the reporting, is to shield candidates critical of Israel from the kind of spending AIPAC and its affiliated funds have historically directed against them. By July, American Priorities had put more money into New Jersey's 12th District than into any other race in the country, over $1.5 million backing Hamawy.

Hamawy is a retired U.S. Army combat surgeon who served in Iraq and is credited with saving the life of then-Lieutenant Colonel Tammy Duckworth, now a senator who endorsed him. In 2024 he volunteered to treat civilian patients in Gaza, an experience his campaign says shaped his pledge to end U.S. arms transfers to Israel. He raised $1.4 million by primary day and picked up endorsements from the full Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib.

"We were told that an outsider couldn't win. That we couldn't compete. Well, I think we competed," Hamawy told supporters on primary night.

The race was not clean. Opponents surfaced Hamawy's history as a defense witness in the 1995 terrorism trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian-born cleric convicted in a plot tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Rival candidate Adrian Mapp, mayor of Plainfield, called Hamawy a "radical extremist" over the association. Hamawy's campaign called the attack guilt by association aimed at Muslim and Arab candidates, and said he condemns Abdel-Rahman's violence outright. He won anyway. If elected in November, he would become New Jersey's first Muslim member of Congress.

Both Hamawy and El-Sayed face Republican opponents on November 3, Hamawy against Gregg Mele in a safely Democratic seat, El-Sayed against Mike Rogers in a race expected to help determine control of the Senate. Whatever the outcomes, the primaries mark a concrete data point in a fight that has mostly played out in dollar figures and FEC filings until now: a dedicated financial vehicle, seeded largely by Muslim American donors, spending seven figures in a single House primary specifically to counter the pro-Israel lobby's traditional advantage in Democratic contests.