'Cuckoo Bananas': Why Did A Political Group Support Its Opponent? | WHOLE HOG POLITICS

A special primary election for New Jersey's 11th U.S. Congressional district shows how many factors can come into play for even a single House seat.

Former House member Tom Malinowski, who represented the suburban district in northern New Jersey from 2019 to 2023, lost the Democratic Party's primary by a narrow margin to Analilia Mejia, a progressive.

Chris Stirewalt, political editor for The Hill, spoke with Malinowski about the race, and the role that a super-PAC associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) may have played in influencing its outcome.

Stirewalt suggests that, at least on the surface, AIPAC's strategy seems counterintuitive — or, as he put it, "cuckoo bananas" — since Malinowski's position tends to at least be closer to the group's positions on U.S. support for Israel than Mejia's. Host and guest kicked around some ideas that might explain their reasoning.