Tram Nguyen Gets $500K in AIPAC-Linked Ad Money as TrackAIPAC Faces Scrutiny in Record MA-6 Race
By: Tony A.
AIPAC-Linked PACs and Big Tech Cash Flood MA-6 as Spending Tops $10M; Nguyen’s Gaza Flip-Flop Draws Scrutiny
ANDOVER – Democratic voters inundated with mailers and advertisements for the race to replace Seth Moulton in Massachusetts 6th District primary this Tuesday could easily be confused by the array of inconspicuously named Super PACs listed in the ads’ tiny “Paid for By” disclaimers.
The race is now the most expensive House race in Massachusetts history, blowing past the previous record set in the 4th District in 2020, which saw genocide enthusiast Rep. Jake Auchincloss elected with over $10,000,000 spent. The record was surpassed by June 30, according to the last FEC data, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions more, have been spent since in July and August.
One PAC is drawing significant scrutiny: Pro-Choice Majority Action (PCMA), dropping $500,000 for self-styled progressive State Representative Tram Nguyen in recent weeks.
As reported by Sludge, SunlightHub, and Drop Site’s Ryan Grim on Breaking Points, the PAC is funded largely by its affiliate PAC Elect Democratic Women Action Fund, which in turn receives most of its backing from AIPAC’s PAC, which it calls United Democracy Project.
The previously reported $450,000 has been supplanted with another $50,000 donation on Friday, bringing the total to half a million dollars.
Many commenters have questioned why AIPAC would support Nguyen, who recently reversed course and acknowledged Israel’s genocide in Gaza and backed an arms embargo. Pro-Choice Majority Action’s unsuccessful contributions against DSA-backed Democratic nominee Melat Kiros in Colorado had a more straightforward goal: retaining pro-Israel incumbent Dianna DeGette.
Some point to Tram’s previous ducking on the issue, and a jaw-dropping statement on Massachusetts Peace Action’s candidate questionnaire, claiming in January of 2026:
An arms embargo on Israel could result in genocide… [Hamas and Hezbollah’s] leaders have been upfront in their intention to remove all Jewish Israelis from the land.
Others have speculated in similar races across the country that AIPAC could have subversive aims to divide progressives in a crowded field, clearing the way for the establishment pick to succeed. That could be at play here, since longtime pro-Palestine candidate and Massachusetts’ first Arab-American State Representative Jamie Belsito is a top contender in the race.
It was in Breaking Points’ August 25 interview with Jamie Belsito that questions of AIPAC’s influence in the race reached a national audience, after Working Mass’s August 19 reporting on Dan Koh’s $180,000k received from overlapping donors with AIPAC.
Belsito told Grim she met with a representative of Elect Democratic Women (EDW) in DC early in her campaign and was told to take AI- and AIPAC-linked Super PAC funding to win the race. Belsito refused, and lo and behold, last month EDW endorsed Nguyen.
The district is now flooded with PAC-funded advertisements, with this reporter based in Andover receiving a mailer every day for the past week in support of Dan Koh—from AI-aligned Think Big PAC and DraftKings-buoyed New Leadership PAC—and ads for Koh and Nguyen regularly served on social media.
While the race is setting the record for most expensive U.S. House race in Massachusetts history, there has been an almost complete media blackout on the race. Former Biden/Marty Walsh assistant Dan Koh is the presumed frontrunner, no independent polling has been done in the district, despite the record spending. Koh staffers could get a handsome payout on Kalshi or Polymarket with consistently probable odds on this race, now at 90%, Nguyen having tanked there in recent weeks and the lights dimming for self-funded corporate exec bobblehead John Beccia as well.
Recent polls paid for by PR consultanting firms on behalf of Koh, Nguyen, and progressive challenger Beth Andres-Beck have all shown their candidate in the lead.
Koh, Nguyen, Belsito, and “You ‘Beccia have consistently taken top spots in those polls.
With pressure to rally the progressive vote around a single acceptable candidate, Nguyen was boosted by endorsements from Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley, AIPAC-backed Lori Trahan and the pro-Moulton Boston Globe Editorial Board in the last week, giving them a big boost from their previous number-one endorser, Massachusetts Speaker of the House Ronald Mariano.
Onlookers were then baffled by an unusual endorsement of Nguyen by watchdog platform TrackAIPAC on August 26, after TrackAIPAC had just endorsed Belsito on August 19, and just one day after TrackAIPAC posted on Instagram Sludge’s reporting on Nguyen’s $450,000 in AIPAC-linked PAC backing.
The post has since been deleted.
TrackAIPAC Shenanigans
Commenters on TrackAIPAC’s endorsement of Nguyen on Instagram ratioed the Nguyen’s campaign’s comments on the post. One commented:
This endorsement is being thrown in the face of pro-Palestine organizers in the district by the supporters of the Nguyen campaign, which was explicitly pro-Israel just a few weeks ago.
Others noted that the endorsement graphic lacked the “$0.00 from pro-Israel PACs” graphic that typically appears on TrackAIPAC’s endorsements.
Nathan Story, an independent journalist with Sunlight Hub who, through prolific public records requests, has tracked pro-Israel outside spending in elections throughout Massachusetts, said:
[TrackAIPAC] spoke with her; she pledged to support the positions they care about. My concern is whether she is being sincere in those positions, given how long it has taken her to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza.
TrackAIPAC is no mere watchdog, but a coveted endorsement this election cycle.
DSA, Working Class, and Grassroots Scrambling
Progressives and labor unions are, as often the case, split in this race.
With the urging of former Boston mayor and U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a one-time Laborers’ Union 223 business representative, Dan Koh—Walsh’s chief of staff at City Hall and the Department of Labor—has amassed endorsements from nearly all area labor unions. This, even as Koh gets millions in PAC support from Big Tech, AIPAC donors, and private equity managers.
DSA is also split. Boston DSA, which includes district neighborhood groups North Shore DSA and parts of Merrimack Valley DSA, did not endorse in the race, but issued a voter guide recommending against Koh and Nguyen and third moderate candidate John Beccia.
The race included three progressive candidates: Beth Andres-Beck, Jamie Belsito, and Mariah Lancaster. The local DSA support had been split among the three, with calls to consolidate behind one progressive gone unheeded.
On August 29, Lancaster dropped out of the race and endorsed Rep. Tram Nguyen, against Boston DSA’s voter guide recommendation.
In many parts of DSA (e.g. NYC-AOC, LA, Denver-Kiros, Michigan-McKinney), a candidate like Belsito with electoral experience joining and aligning with DSA would likely receive DSA’s backing. Nonetheless, amidst a split field of multiple candidates with largely paper memberships in DSA, as well as capacity concerns, Boston DSA declined to endorse a candidate.
Cluster**** or Tossup?
The North Shore and the inland Merrimack Valley, which make up the 6th District (some of the Merrimack Valley being in District 3), are prime organizing terrain for DSA in the region as the organization grows. The North Shore Neighborhood Group is the largest in the Boston chapter behind Cambridge, Somerville, and Allston/Brighton, all in the city center. The region has a significant working-class base and history, and its largest city, Lynn, has the highest proportion of Black residents north of Boston and one of the highest proportions of immigrants in Massachusetts.
With the split field, DSA organized to prioritize its capacity elsewhere in the Greater Boston area, and the tremendous outside spending flowing into the race, many will be happy simply that corporate “moderate” ghoul Seth Moulton will be ousted. But the district faces the specter of electing Genocide Joe Koh, or, in Nguyen, a career progressive-label politician with a knack for cozying up to power — either of which could become significantly harder to unseat as incumbents.
Races like these show the tremendous obstacles the disorganized left faces, with corrupt Beacon Hill leadership-backed “progressives”, the labor bureaucracy, big money, and big egos all going to bat. Meanwhile, the North Shore’s working class and poor keep getting poorer, yacht club members in Manchester-By-The-Sea and Marblehead grow richer, and ICE family separations continue daily.
Tony A is a contributing writer to Working Mass and a resident of Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District.
The post Tram Nguyen Gets $500K in AIPAC-Linked Ad Money as TrackAIPAC Faces Scrutiny in Record MA-6 Race appeared first on Working Mass.
Announcing our Fall 2026 Electoral Academy Dates
DSA members have put together campaigns that have won hundreds of seats for socialists, at all levels of government. We’re excited to grow that number, but we need the skills and strategy to do it.
Included in this series are Electoral 101, 201, and 202. Join us with comrades from your chapter to get your electoral program started on the path to victory!
Sept 19 – Electoral 101
The DSA Difference
The Electoral 101 is a great workshop for any chapter! With so many new members joining for the first time and so many coming back into the fold following our historic wins across the country this year, it’s a great time to learn about what the DSA Difference is! What separates DSA from other organizations in the left who engage in electoral politics? What makes for a good candidate? What is socialist electoral strategy? Answers to these questions and more await!
Electoral 101: The DSA Difference – Sept 19th 3pm ET
Oct 3 – Electoral 201
The Path to Victory
The Electoral 201 is all about the strategy! We know that it takes good planning to run a class struggle electoral campaign and win! But what steps are necessary to make informed decisions as a chapter? What makes for a good goal? What are the most important tactics? What is the path to victory? Join us on Oct 3rd at 3pm ET to find out!
Electoral 201: The Path To Victory – Oct 3rd 3pm ET
Oct 17 – Electoral 202
Building a Field Program
The Electoral 202 is about putting our plans into action! Launching and building an electoral campaign can be a daunting task! Luckily we have a ton of resources and advice to share! What are the most important tactics to focus on when building a field program? How do we shape the volunteer and member experience to build a DSA Difference campaign? Hope you’re ready to get in the weeds with a ton of information and skill sharing!
Why Democratic Socialism
The Price of Fitting In
The popification of politics: The reality that all trends, even political ones are cyclical
For Programmatic Unity
A World to Win
UAW Members Voting for International Officers
By Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter
United Auto Workers members are voting by mail ballot for their top officers, for the second time in the union’s 91 years. Ballots went out August 21 and are due back by October 5.
The contest will decide whether President Shawn Fain, who became famous for leading 2023’s Stand-Up Strike against the Big 3 automakers, will be able to continue the union’s about-face from its previous employer-friendly ways.
William Hughes, a member of UAW Local 249 at Ford Kansas City, said the election is about maintaining the union’s momentum in winning gains for the membership.
“During my 27 years in the union, I’ve never seen anything even close to the amount of gains that we’ve been getting in all these contracts — not just in the Big 3,” said Hughes. “I built seats before I came to Ford, and under no circumstances that I can recall would the parts sector ever strike these plants and try to really push for bigger contracts.”
Fain was first elected in 2023 on a platform of “no corruption, no tiers, no concessions.” He is running on a record of successful contract fights at the Big 3 and elsewhere, and a pledge to keep organizing parts suppliers and nonunion auto plants in the South.
His opponents have downplayed the gains made in the last three years, asserting that any president could have won them. Instead, they have focused on strife at union headquarters and unflattering reports issued by the federal monitor, Neil Barofsky, who was appointed in 2021 to oversee the union after massive corruption was uncovered and a dozen officers went to jail.
NEW SMILES
Fain’s strongest base of support is in locals where members have experienced the new willingness to fight management.
JoAnna McClenathan is a senior designer at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Connecticut and a steering committee member of the reform network UAW Member Action, which is backing Fain. She credits Fain for opening up bargaining and creating a new Department of Bargaining Strategies that helped her local score a “record contract” with 30 percent raises.
Fain set up that department to research employers and involve members in escalating campaigns. “During our contract fight last year, he came down and met with us, and he was a big reason we had the resources we did,” she said.
“We had essentially been bargaining behind closed doors since the 1980s. For so long, a lot of us in our local felt powerless: this is what they’ve given us, so we’re just going to vote for this. Last year, the rank and file was able to use our voice and become more engaged, and that’s due to the new strategy.”
Similarly at American Axle, an auto parts supplier in Three Rivers, Michigan, members are happy with the results of a two-week strike in June. They will be making $30 an hour by 2030, up from a top pay of $22.
“We’re starting to see a change in the parking lot,” said bargaining committee member Jon Krause. “People are now able to buy cars that can get them to work. Some are looking to buy their first homes. We’ve seen a few people smiling that we haven’t seen smile in years.”
Krause predicts Three Rivers members will vote for Fain’s United UAW slate.
Legal services worker Brian Sullivan, a member of UAW Local 2325, said workers in his industry have set their sights on bargaining sector-wide. They were inspired by Fain’s industry-wide strategy with the automakers, he said: “We want a UAW leadership that’s going to back us as we take similarly big swings.”
FIVE CHALLENGERS
Fain’s five challengers spent most of the union’s presidential debate July 30 attacking him. They are Rich Boyer, vice president for the Stellantis Department; Tricia Geiger, an international servicing rep; Stellantis worker Brian Keller; Mack Truck worker Will Lehman; and Greg Mooney, recording secretary from Local 2147.
Of the challengers, Boyer and Keller have the most name recognition. Keller won 14 percent of the vote in 2022 and spearheaded failed efforts to recall Fain last year. He finished fourth out of five candidates in his local union’s (Local 1248) delegate election this spring.
Boyer and Fain ran on the same slate in the last election, as did Vice President Mike Booth and Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, also now opposing Fain’s slate on their own slate, Integrity. Their differences have been the subject of long reports by the monitor.
Fain accused Boyer of failing to enforce the contract at Stellantis and of responsibility for a new attendance program that members hated, as well as trying to secure union jobs for family members — standard practice in the old UAW.
Boyer has consistently maintained that it’s the union’s job to enforce company attendance policies. In a video message to members about the 2023 contract ratification, he bemoaned the overuse of medical leave (FMLA) by people who “don’t want to do the work” and implied that plants would close if the union didn’t help fix attendance.
The union’s executive board voted to relieve Boyer and Mock (who had also tried to put a family member on the payroll) of some of their assignments. Fain and other board members said Mock was using her office to block projects and retaliate against staffers she disliked.
The monitor agreed with Boyer and Mock that their removal was “retaliation,” and they were reinstated. Earlier, the monitor had called Fain to lobby against the executive board’s December 2023 call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Fain angrily refused to back down, and he charges the monitor with having it in for him ever since. Barofsky accuses Fain of seeking favors for his fiancee and her sister.
“The truth when it comes to Boyer is that I didn’t want him running the Stellantis Department because he wasn’t doing a good job for our members,” Fain told The Nation magazine. “I wouldn’t let him hire family members into UAW positions, and I wouldn’t stand by while he bargained concessions with Stellantis and failed to enforce our contract.”
Boyer’s supporters say he is outspoken and a fighter. His main pledges in his campaign statement in the UAW magazine were to lower union dues to two hours a month, reduce the staff and salaries at union headquarters, and hire only from within the membership. Delegates at this summer’s convention voted to keep dues at 2.5 hours to build up the strike fund and provide resources for aggressive organizing and bargaining campaigns.
The dueling ugly accusations have fed member cynicism, the prevailing attitude before 2023. Fain’s opponents are largely focused on the “infighting” among the leadership. “I don’t like the way [Fain] treats people,” said Jennifer Miller, recording secretary at Local 1700 near Detroit, who backs Boyer. “I don’t like the arrogance of him. I don’t think he deserves credit for everything he says he’s done.”
In the last election, Fain, who was running against then-President Ray Curry, benefited from a powerful anti-incumbent sentiment, stemming from years of frustration with concessions, plant closures, and corruption at the union’s top levels. This time, he won’t have that advantage.
JJ Barbosa, a millwright at Stellantis’s Jeep plant in Toledo, has backed Keller, a prolific Facebook presence, in all three of his runs. He sees Keller as tenacious and consistent, and he is “disgusted that there are still tiers.” He says all the incumbents are guilty of “cronyism and nepotism.”
MOMENTUM
In interviews with members across the union, it was common to hear that they were impressed that Fain showed up at locals to talk with members and supported their contract fights.
Carlos Gonzalez-Rios, a 27-year worker at the General Motors engine plant in Buffalo, New York, said he met Fain twice. He rattled off a few of the gains he’s seen, including a pay increase of 25 percent. “We got COLA back,” he said. “We don’t have endless temporary workers for five or six years.”
He also cited the union’s win at Volkswagen in Tennessee, where workers voted to join the UAW and won a first contract earlier this year — becoming the first unionized foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the South.
What’s at stake in the election, Gonzalez-Rios argues, is whether this momentum will continue. “I’d rather go with the guy that’s been proven and has the leadership skills that brought us what we have right now,” he said. “And we still have issues that we are working towards — we want health care for all at GM after retirement.”
“I’ve held people accountable and that pisses some people off, I understand that,” said Fain during the presidential debate. “But running on a platform of ‘the monitor said this or that,’ that’s not going to deliver for the membership.”
CHANGING ALLIANCES
The union’s 400,000 active members and nearly 600,000 retirees will be electing all 14 positions on the union’s International Executive Board.
Fain’s United UAW slate, which is contesting 13 of the seats, includes candidates who ran against him in the last election as members of the “Administration Caucus” that had run the union since the 1940s and overseen multiple waves of concessions in recent decades. Some have been won over by the impressive contract results that Fain’s bold approach has achieved; others may be inclined to go with the one in power.
In early August, three ex-UAW presidents, Ray Curry, Rory Gamble, and Ron Gettelfinger, attempted to resurrect the old ruling caucus by releasing a letter backing Geiger, Mock, and other Fain opponents. Fain shot back, reminding members of Gettelfinger’s “sellout deal” in 2007 that cut wages in half for new-hires and created the two-tier system.
Four regional directors on Fain’s slate are running unopposed: Mark DePaoli in Region 1A, Mike Miller in Region 6, Tim Smith in Region 8, and Brandon Mancilla in Region 9A. The other five director seats and three vice president seats are all contested, as is the secretary-treasurer slot.
Candidates need a majority to avoid a run-off, and votes will be tabulated October 6.
Luis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.
Jane Slaughter is a former editor of Labor Notes and co-author of Secrets of a Successful Organizer.
This article originally appeared in Labor Notes.
UAW Members Voting for International Officers was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.