The mailers arrive in Jersey City mailboxes with a photograph that tells a lie through its teeth. There is Rob Menendez, the incumbent congressman, standing shoulder to shoulder with Ravi Bhalla, the former Hoboken mayor who ran against him in a bitter 2024 primary.
They appear collegial, almost friendly. The caption touts Menendez as the authentic voice of New Jersey’s 8th District, but Bhalla never agreed to be in the photograph. He never endorsed Menendez. He never authorized the use of his image.
The Democratic primary challenger, Mussab Ali, the former Jersey City Board of Education president, has pledged to not accept corporate PAC money in the race but that has not stopped the incumbent from cashing in on dirty money.
The super PAC that paid for the mailer is not some local civic group. It is Protect Progress, a dark-money vehicle funded by the cryptocurrency industry — the same industry that was President Donald Trump’s biggest source of money during the 2024 election.
The cryptocurrency industry was pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into political action committees and supporting Trump’s successful run, then major crypto executives contributed millions to his inauguration events.
Another crypt-PAC spent a quarter of a million dollars boosting Menendez’s first campaign in 2022 using money from a man now serving 25 years in federal prison for fraud.
That man is Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, whose super PAC, Protect Our Future, spent $250,000 on Menendez a week before he became the Democratic nominee in 2022.
At the time, Bankman-Fried was celebrated as a crypto visionary. Today, he is a convicted felon serving a 25-year federal prison sentence after stealing roughly $8 billion from customers who trusted him with their savings.
Menendez took the money anyway. He said nothing then. He says nothing now. He joined more than 200 Republicans who voted to pass the so-called Genius Act, which ensures that the weakest regulatory agency is assigned to monitor the crime and gambling associated with the fake money.
The crypto industry has not forgotten his silence and support.
This election cycle, Protect Progress has already spent $215,000 on Menendez’s behalf, part of a coordinated national effort by digital asset billionaires to install allies in Congress who will advance President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda. Fairshake, the industry’s top super PAC, along with its affiliates, has drawn tens of millions of dollars from Coinbase, Ripple, and venture capitalists such as the Winklevoss twins, who launched their own PAC to push Trump’s promise to halt stricter regulation and make the United States the global capital of cryptocurrency.
Trump has delivered on that promise. And now the industry is delivering for his friends, like Bob Menendez Jr.
But crypto is only half the story.
The other half arrives in the form of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in the United States. AIPAC has endorsed Menendez, just as it endorsed his father, disgraced former Sen. Bob Menendez, who was convicted in January 2025 on federal corruption charges after accepting bribes to act as a foreign agent for Egypt and Qatar.
When dozens of prominent Democrats called on the elder Menendez to resign following his second federal indictment, AIPAC stood by him. “Like all Americans, he deserves the presumption of innocence,” said Marshall Wittmann, the group’s spokesperson.
AIPAC’s political action committee had already endorsed the senator for reelection, and it was an early supporter of the Junior Menendez’s political career.
That connection never waivers while Israel waged its military campaign in Gaza, an operation that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian children, destroyed entire neighborhoods, and drawn accusations of war crimes from international human rights organizations.
Menendez did not object, and he has been richly rewarded by AIPAC, whose sole criterion for support is a candidate’s commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Nothing else matters. Not election denial. Not racism. Not homophobia.
AIPAC has endorsed more than 100 Republican members of Congress who refused to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. It backed Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman who promoted the racist and antisemitic “great replacement theory,” the false claim that immigrants are being brought to the United States to outvote white people.
It backed Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania congressman who pushed the same theory during a foreign affairs committee hearing. It backed Buddy Carter, who attended a QAnon-linked rally promoting conspiracy theories about Democrats and child sex trafficking rings. It backed Kat Cammack, who appeared on QAnon-related channels. It backed Burgess Owens, who promoted Infowars content, including false claims about election fraud and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
AIPAC has endorsed Rick Allen, who refused to debate a fellow Republican at an Islamic community center, calling it a “suspect venue.” It has endorsed Mark Green, who once said “transgender is a disease.” It has endorsed Steve Scalise, who opposed ending anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the military. It has endorsed Randy Weber, who publicly prayed for forgiveness after the legalization of same-sex marriage.
AIPAC has again endorsed Congressman Rob Menendez Jr., and like its cryptocurrency counterparts, it is expected to invest heavily to protect the incumbent from his progressive Democratic primary challenger.
Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, called the endorsement of politicians who “undermine democracy” “morally bankrupt and short-sighted.” Abe Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, called it a “sad mistake.”
AIPAC’s response has been unwavering: “This is no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends.”
And so AIPAC has come for Rob Menendez, just as it came for his father. The group has poured money into his campaigns, reinforcing a political dynasty that voters in New Jersey’s 8th District have begun to question.
The congressman’s father was convicted of corruption. The congressman himself has accepted six figures from AIPAC and its affiliated donors. His primary challenger has made this a central issue of the campaign.
“Rob Menendez refuses to admit that he was wrong to accept AIPAC money,” Ali said. “Our district deserves a representative who rejects authoritarian corruption. He must return AIPAC’s money and pledge never to take it again.”
Ali has also pledged to accept no corporate PAC money, a promise Menendez has not made. The contrast is stark. One candidate answers to the voters. The other answers to Coinbase, crypto billionaires, and a lobbying organization that embraces election deniers as long as they support Israel.
The 8th District includes Jersey City, Newark, and Elizabeth — cities where working families are struggling to pay rent, afford groceries, and keep their children healthy.
Those struggles are not priorities for the super PACs flooding the district with glossy mailers. Protect Progress does not care about the cost of insulin. AIPAC does not lose sleep over the lack of affordable housing.
They care about digital asset regulation and the U.S.-Israel relationship. Everything else is noise.
“The people of the district deserve a congressman who answers to them, not to Coinbase or the crypto billionaires trying to buy this seat,” Ali said. “When a dark-money super PAC uses photos of local leaders without their consent to flood our district with mailers, that tells you everything you need to know about who Rob Menendez really works for.”
Menendez campaign manager Ryan Eustace said the congressman has no control over independent expenditures, but everyone knows that enterprising political operatives skirt around laws that prohibit coordination.
“Mussab knows that Rob has no involvement or responsibility for what an independent expenditure does,” Eustace said. That is true under federal law. It is also a convenient shield.
But voters are not stupid. They see the mailers. They know where the money comes from. They remember Sam Bankman-Fried. They read about AIPAC’s embrace of election deniers.
And on June 2, they will decide whether the 8th District belongs to the people who live here in New Jersey or to the dark-money networks treating their neighborhoods like political real estate.
The Democratic primary is not merely about ideology. It is about whether a congressional seat can be purchased.
The crypto industry and AIPAC are betting that it can. Mussab Ali is betting that the people of Jersey City, Newark, and Elizabeth still believe in something else: no kings, no crowns, no heirs — only representation.
In 2017, Ali, a Pakistani-American activist and educator, became the youngest person elected to the Jersey City Board of Education.
At twenty, Rutgers-Newark student Ali became the nation’s youngest Muslim elected official, winning a Jersey City school board seat in 2017.
He ran for the school board after Donald Trump falsely claimed thousands of Muslims in Jersey City cheered the Twin Towers’ collapse, a lie that revived memories of the discrimination his immigrant parents faced after 9/11.
After an initial loss, Ali won in 2017 and later became board president, securing Eid as a school holiday, halal lunches, dress code reforms, and a $70 million budget fix.
He co-founded a youth leadership nonprofit, then graduated from Harvard Law School, where he served as student body co-president.
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