By Ryan Grim and Lily Franks – Drop Site News
In a last-minute bid to prevent an AIPAC-backed Oracle lobbyist from seizing a congressional seat on Tuesday, Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy is dropping her endorsement of a fellow local county commissioner in the hopes of consolidating around Quincy Bareebe, whom many now consider the most competitive challenger to Oracle’s Adrian Boafo. Maryland’s primary will be held on Tuesday, June 23.
While national focus has been on the pro-Israel money being spent in New York’s primary contests, AIPAC and crypto interests have combined to drop some $12 million so far backing Boafo, a spending binge highlighted Sunday morning by the Washington Post in an article that could prove damaging. Bareebe also has the support of former Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted after AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups spent a then-record-breaking amount of money against him, at least $23 million in a single race.
Dubbed “AIPAC Adrian” in a rap song released recently in the district by Progressive Maryland, Boafo is a former aide to Rep. Steny Hoyer, who for decades was one of Israel’s most outspoken advocates in Congress and the lead organizer of a biannual congressional delegation to the country, funded by AIPAC.
Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world and the owner, along with his son, of CBS, CNN, TikTok, and many other media properties. While Hoyer aide Boafo went on to work for Ellison, another longtime lieutenant, Brian Romick, has become a prominent figure in the pro-Israel advocacy world. After nearly three decades on Hoyer’s staff he became president and CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, which is backing Boafo.
Prince George’s County makes up a major chunk of the 5th congressional district, and Braveboy was Councilwoman Wala Blegay’s most prominent local backer. (She is also backed by Rep. Ro Khanna of California.) Braveboy called Blegay Sunday to break the news to her, two sources familiar with the call told Drop Site. The call, to put it mildly, went poorly. A second call from Braveboy went better, and led to a meeting between Blegay’s staff and Braveboy’s staff on Monday, focused on the possibility of Blegay dropping out and consolidating behind Bareebe. While the loss of Braveboy’s support effectively ends her campaign, Blegay has yet to do so.
“Special interests are trying to turn elections into auctions, but I can’t be bought,” said Bareebe in a statement announcing Braveboy’s support. “I’m honored to have the County Executive’s support and I’m confident that in the end, the voters will heed the warning of Senator [Chris] Van Hollen and reject the mountains of cash outside interests are dropping across the District.” Van Hollen has been critical of Boafo’s reliance on AIPAC and crypto money, but hasn’t made an endorsement in the race.
Blegay, who raised less than $400,000, led the push for a Gaza ceasefire resolution in the county, but her campaign never attracted the kind of funding or outside support needed to challenge Boafo’s millions in the crowded field. Rushern Baker III, a former county executive who also served in the Maryland General Assembly, told Drop Site he remains confident. “We feel really good about where we are in the race,” he said.
Bareebe, meanwhile, was able to self-fund her campaign. The founder of a local home health care company, which serves the elderly and children with chronic conditions, she loaned her campaign nearly $6 million, according to the most recent financial disclosures. Beyond her own money, she has raised less than $200,000. Bareebe has said the “Block the Bombs Act,” which restricts some weapons shipments to Israel, would be among the first she would co-sponsor as a member of Congress.
Braveboy’s decision came after new internal polling showed Bareebe ahead by 3 points over Boafo in Prince George’s County, which makes up roughly half the district. Boafo was raised in the county, and Blegay serves as an at-large county councilwoman, meaning she represents the entire county. A poll done by the Bareebe campaign a month ago showed Bareebe down by 10 before she began spending to boost her name recognition and link Boafo to AIPAC and crypto interests. The ads appear to have worked to turn the campaign around.
Hoyer was first elected in 1981—13 years before Boafo was even born—and his long tenure bottled up political ambitions in the southern Maryland district for decades. His retirement uncorked an absurdly crowded race of 24 competitors, many of them credible public officials and several of them with progressive bona fides that made consolidation behind a single candidate difficult.
Many progressive organizations as a result stayed out of the race or didn’t spend much money. The Working Families Party got behind Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his service on January 6th and became an MSNBC celebrity for the public criticism he leveled at Republicans for siding with the rioters. Dunn lost a congressional race in a nearby district in 2024, with AIPAC spending millions to beat him, despite Dunn having no record one way or the other on Israel-Palestine issues.
“Harry believes we must hold all America’s allies, including Israel, to the same standards, and doesn’t believe we should hold particular allies to unique thresholds,” a spokesperson for Dunn’s campaign told Drop Site News when asked if he supported conditioning aid to Israel. The campaign did not answer follow-up questions seeking clarification.
During his long tenure, Hoyer opposed efforts to restrict the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel, supported Trump’s 2018 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, praised Trump’s attack last year on Iran’s nuclear sites, and generally has been among Israel’s most reliable allies in Congress.
Boafo, a former Maryland state delegate, worked as Hoyer’s campaign manager from 2019 to 2021. Since 2021, Boafo has served as senior director of government affairs for the tech giant Oracle, whose chairman Ellison is the largest donor to Friends of the IDF, a nonprofit that raises money to send aid and medical supplies to the Israel Defense Forces. Oracle and Ellison have donated millions to the organization, including $10 million in 2014 and $16.6 million in 2017. During Boafo’s tenure, Oracle’s business with Israel included establishing a $319 million data center in Jerusalem, a four-year project with the Israeli Air Force, and a partnership with the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
In a public conversation with Progressive Maryland Executive Director Larry Stafford—who wrote the lyrics to “AIPAC Adrian”—Boafo denied ever having lobbied for data centers, while declining to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. His claim on data center lobbying is contradicted by his own 2026 lobbying filings. Progressive Maryland has endorsed Blegay.
Two years ago, Dunn lost his primary race in Maryland’s 3rd district to Sarah Elfreth, who received millions in AIPAC support. Neither Dunn nor his opponent, Elfreth had been particularly vocal about Israel’s genocide in Gaza when they campaigned in the spring of 2024. Then, with less than six weeks to go until the May 14 primary, United Democracy Project, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC, began pouring what would ultimately amount to more than $4 million in independent expenditures into Elfreth’s campaign.
When asked at a candidate forum later that month, both Elfreth and Dunn indicated that they would support an amendment to an Israel and Ukraine package that would condition aid on compliance with international law.
Elfreth’s campaign later clarified that she understood Israel to be acting in compliance with international law and therefore “believed she was expressing support for a position that would not affect aid to Israel.” With just over two weeks left in the 2024 race, the liberal Zionist group J Street weighed in, announcing its endorsement of Dunn.
Stafford, executive director of Progressive Maryland, said the group was focused in its messaging more on exposing Boafo’s ties to big money than on lifting any particular candidate down the stretch. “Unlike any other instance of AIPAC and other large money interests interfering in Maryland politics, this particular person [Boafo] had no chance of winning if not for crypto and AIPAC throwing out these large sums of money for them,” he said, adding that voters unaware of that backing “are maybe unwittingly voting for a set of interests that have purchased the seat he’ll be occupying.”