U.S. Representative Valerie Foushee’s campaign said this week that the North Carolina congresswoman will not accept any money from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for her 2026 reelection bid.
That’s a major shift for Foushee—AIPAC, along with its members and affiliated super PAC, became her single largest benefactor in 2022 when it poured over $2 million into her campaign and made the race the most expensive Democratic congressional primary in state history.
“You all know that I took the money from AIPAC, but check to see how much I’ve taken since that time, and check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted for as it relates to the people of Gaza,” Foushee said at at a town hall in Carrboro this week in response to an audience member asking if she “regrets” accepting money from AIPAC or joining a congressional trip to Israel in 2024 to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When asked by the INDY if Foushee would turn down AIPAC money, a campaign spokesperson said, “AIPAC has not contributed to her campaign since February 2024. AIPAC has not offered financial support in the last 18 months but if offered the Congresswoman would decline. She will not accept AIPAC contributions during the 2026 campaign.”
Campaign finance reports show that AIPAC most recently donated $8,300 to Foushee’s campaign in February of 2024. But in August 2024, a Raleigh resident donated $180 to AIPAC and earmarked the contribution for Foushee, which required AIPAC to pass it on to the candidate. After INDY asked about the August donation, Foushee’s campaign spokesperson said that it was “an individual contribution given through the AIPAC site” but that Foushee “is no longer listed on the AIPAC website as an endorsed candidate able to receive individual contributions.”
In 2022, AIPAC dollars helped Foushee, a longtime fixture of Orange County politics, beat primary challenger and Durham County commissioner Nida Allam, the first Muslim woman elected to office in North Carolina.
At Tuesday’s town hall, Foushee also spoke in more detail about her 2024 meeting with Netanyahu (organized by AIPAC for her and eight other congress members), which she said she doesn’t regret because it was an “opportunity to share with him, face to face, how I felt.”
“Thank you for that question,” Foushee told the audience member. “You just don’t know how many times I’ve been waiting for someone to ask that publicly so I can answer it publicly.”
The congresswoman initially only publicly addressed the trip after INDY broke the news that she was involved.
“We shared our concerns with how the war was being run,” she said at this week’s town hall. “We shared how we were not pleased with what was going on … and I think we made it very clear to him that at least the representatives in that room would not vote for any more appropriations to go out. … Yes, for those of you who read in the INDY that I was sitting straight in front of him, I was, because that’s just where my seat was. But you will note, and you can go back and look, that nine hours after we left that meeting, negotiations for a ceasefire resumed. Now they did not hold, but they did resume.”
Foushee’s messaging on the war has also changed somewhat since an April 2024 statement when she primarily emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself.
A few months after her trip, she skipped a congressional address by Netanyahu, saying the Israeli government needed to be held “accountable for its actions when necessary.”
The representative has also recently signed on to a letter urging the secretary of state to provide better oversight of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, the American nonprofit currently responsible for distributing aid.
“Starving civilians are being met with gunfire at aid sites—it’s inhumane and unacceptable,” Foushee posted online last month. “I continue to call for a ceasefire to ensure the flow of aid to the region and safe return of the remaining hostages.”
After the town hall, Foushee announced via social media that she had signed on to cosponsor the “Block the Bombs” act, originally introduced in the spring, which would prohibit the president from selling certain weapons to Israel (“We simply cannot continue to provide the Israeli government with weapons when they are not being used in accordance with international law to maximize the protection of civilians in Gaza,” she wrote).
Foushee’s ultra-blue district contains Carrboro and Durham, which were the first municipalities in the state to pass resolutions calling for a ceasefire (Boone has since become the third). The representative has been named and shamed by council members and protesters alike as they’ve tried to push the buttoned-up political veteran into a louder advocacy role regarding Gaza.
Despite that apparent displeasure with Foushee, no one emerged to primary her in 2024.
Since 2022, though, her district has been redrawn to cut out several corners of Alamance, Caswell, Granville, and Person Counties, where Foushee garnered thousands more votes than Allam. The district, in addition to all of Durham and Orange, now also contains portions of Chatham and Wake counties. That may change the path to victory in any potential 2026 primary, for which candidate filing starts this December.
During the town hall, Foushee also said that she has long supported anti-gerrymandering measures like independent districting for congressional seats but supports blue states like California that are considering redrawing their congressional maps to favor Democrats in response to Texas Republicans’ aggressive seat grab at the behest of President Trump.
“I don’t advocate for anybody breaking the law, but what I do believe is that once the rules of engagement have been announced, that everybody gets to play by the same rules,” she said to applause. “And if [Republicans are] going to use redistricting to beef up your numbers in the House, then those blue states should use the same rules.”
And to close the town hall, Foushee urged her constituents to keep contacting her office.
“The more I hear from you and I can see that there’s consensus, that’s how I’m going to vote,” she said. “But just like some Republicans can be replaced in 2026, if I’m not serving you the way you feel that you need to be served, then you get that opportunity to make sure I don’t return in 2026.”
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].