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Sara Hernandez, a candidate in the race to fill state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo’s seat in District 26, has received donations from people with ties to the influential pro-Israel group AIPAC.
Hernandez and four other candidates are running to represent a district that includes Boyle Heights, the city of Vernon and parts of unincorporated east Los Angeles. Durazo is not running for re-election, and is instead running for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors seat held by Hilda Solis, who is terming out.
The donations were highlighted in a video released on social media earlier this week by one of the other candidates in the race, Maebe Pudlo, who called on Hernandez and other candidates in the race to “adamantly reject” such funding.
“AIPAC has entered the race,” Pudlo states in the video, posted Tuesday, Sept. 9.
Pudlo released a video this week saying that Hernandez’s donors have AIPAC connections.
Pudlo lists several people including Michael Tuchin, a lawyer at KTBS Law LLP who was listed as president of AIPAC in a 2024 press release and in a 2022 tax filing. Tuchin gave $5,500 to Hernandez in March.
Other donations listed include one from Jesse Sharf, a lawyer who gave Hernandez $1,250 in June. Sharf’s page on the website for the law firm Gibson Dunn, where he is a partner, he states that he is an active member of the Los Angeles chapter of AIPAC, and the former chair the chapter’s real estate division.
Another donor included in the video, Howard Welinsky, is a founding member of the Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, donated $2,000 in March. Welinsky told The LA Reporter he advocates in support of AIPAC.
Richard Pachulski, an attorney at the firm Pachulski Stang Zial and Jones LLP, was another donor mentioned in the video. He gave $11,800, and is described as a close friend of Tuchin’s and donates to AIPAC.
Hernandez has since responded to Pudlo’s statements with her own video in which she disputed the idea that her campaign is AIPAC-funded. In the video posted Friday, she said she has not received funding from AIPAC.
Hernandez responded to Pudlo’s video in her own video posted Friday to Instagram
Three of the donors listed by Pudlo are “longtime personal friends who have given their own personal money,” Hernandez said.
“That does not make me a candidate who accepts AIPAC money,” Hernandez said. “This is not, by any means, an AIPAC-funded campaign.”
Hernandez’s post also included a written statement saying that “while I’m horrified by the scale of suffering in Gaza and condemn the restriction of humanitarian aid and instances of indiscriminate targeting of civilians – I’m not running for Congress.”
That statement echoed a statement from a Hernandez campaign representative provided to The LA Reporter on Thursday, Sept. 11. Lucy Martikyan, general consultant for Hernandez’s campaign, wrote that Hernandez is “deeply disturbed by the scale of suffering in Gaza and condemns the actions of the Israeli government in restricting aid and its indiscriminate targeting of civilians.”
Welinsky said in an interview Friday he disagreed with that part of Martikyan’s statement on behalf of Hernandez. “I will take it up with her (Hernandez) directly,” Welinsky said. “Frankly there needs to be a much broader statement.”
Welinsky then referenced continued attacks from Hamas since Oct. 7, 2023.
“I advocate mostly in Sacramento for higher ed, and mostly in Washington for Israel for AIPAC,” Welinsky also told The LA Reporter.
Welinsky said he had a good experience advocating on community college issues, while she was on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees. Welinsky said he donated to Hernandez because he wanted to support someone he found to be “very smart.”
“My relationship in supporting Hernandez is in the higher ed channel,” Welinsky said. “And I just happen to be someone who is pro-Israel.”
“This has nothing to do with AIPAC,” Pachulski said in an interview with The LA Reporter. “I’ve known Sara for years, but if you check, I traditionally don’t donate to local and state causes. I just don’t. It’s not my thing. Most of the stuff I do is federal.”
“She is a great candidate,” he said, adding that what state elected representatives do is “completely irrelevant” to Israel.
Pachulski said he is close friends with Tuchin, and both of them are restructuring attorneys. He also said he donates to AIPAC and is not a board member of AIPAC.
Pachulski said the $11,800 amount he gave, which was higher than many of the other donations, was something he had “thought long and hard” about.
He said he did it because of the candidate, and because of his connections to the district. He does not live in the district, but rather closer to UCLA, he says, but he is chair of the board for the Karsh Center, a social services organization, and had been president of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple — both in the district Hernandez is running to represent.
Pachulski said he decided to respond to The LA Reporter, after his son sent him Pudlo’s video. He called the video “monumentally wrong” and “incredibly irresponsible.”
“If you want to use me as the poster child of something, at least call me and tell me, ‘This is what I think,’ and I can say, ‘You know something, that is true, but it’s irrelevant for the decision.’” Pachulski said. “In this case, it’s not untrue that I give to AIPAC. I’m not going to deny that. But that has nothing to do with a state race.”
The LA Reporter also reached out to Tuchin. When The LA Reporter called Tuchin’s listed phone number at KTBS Law LLP, the person who answered said “hello,” and then when asked if their name was Michael, he said yes. The LA Reporter then identified herself as a journalist. The call dropped soon after. A second attempt to call Tuchin’s number went directly to voicemail.
The LA Reporter has not received a response to an email message sent to Tuchin, and had not gotten a call back after leaving a message with Tuchin’s receptionist earlier in the week.
Meanwhile, Pudlo took issue with any characterization of her video as an attack on Hernandez. Hernandez’s general consultant had said in response to Pudlo’s video that it was “no surprise her campaign is facing political attacks.”
Pudlo insisted “this is not an attack on Sara Hernandez, but rather a call in for her to return the campaign donations from the president and high level board and committee members of AIPAC.”
Sarah Rascon, another candidate in the race, stopped short of giving a reaction to the donations to Hernandez, saying only that she was focused on her own campaign “not watching what the other candidates are doing.”
“In response to what you just shared, I think it’s good that funding is transparent and this is public information,” Rascon said. “It takes money to get your word out, but … not all money is good money.”
When asked whether Rascon felt she would consider a donation from Tuchin “good money,” she didn’t give a direct answer. “I’ll let the voters decide that,” she said.