Mike Rounds
R · U.S. Senate, South Dakota · Tier 1
Tier 1, “Firmly pro-Israel”
A reliable pro-Israel conservative running for re-election. He voted for the 2024 supplemental with Israel aid (February and April 2024), voted with the unanimous Republican bloc against every Sanders arms-disapproval resolution and criticized Biden for briefly pausing arms to Israel, but his own legislative brand runs through Armed Services as much as domestic policy — defense, banking, agriculture, water — and his Israel work sits inside the defense half of it: two 2020 resolutions he sponsored alone to expedite precision-guided munitions to Israel, a 2021 bipartisan letter, co-led with Kirsten Gillibrand, seeking $500 million for US-Israel missile-defense cooperation, and a joint push with Rosen ahead of the October 2023 Iron Dome transfer. AIPAC endorsed him this cycle, and money has reached his campaign through its PAC. Asked about that money in an October 2026 South Dakota Searchlight interview, he said it comes from “American citizens here in the United States who feel very strongly that Israel is an ally of the United States,” adding, “I happen to agree that Israel is an ally of the United States”; the Searchlight reported that he said the U.S. should continue to support Israel’s war in Gaza, likening Israel’s response to October 7 to the U.S. response to 9/11, and he said of Israel: “We work with them, we provide them with weapon systems.”
A 1 for arms-supply leadership. He wrote two sense-of-the-Senate resolutions (S.Res.640 and S.Res.669, 2020) saying the Secretary of Defense should “take further measures to expedite deliveries of precision-guided munitions to Israel,” co-led with Kirsten Gillibrand a 2021 bipartisan letter seeking $500 million for U.S.-Israel missile-defense programs, and with Jacky Rosen led the October 2023 Armed Services push that got two U.S. Iron Dome batteries sent to Israel. His votes match: for the 2024 supplemental with Israel aid, against every Sanders resolution to block arms sales, and against advancing the 2026 request for a State Department report on Israel’s human-rights practices; he also criticized Biden’s 2024 arms pause. He has voiced no concern for Gaza’s civilians beyond arguing, as he urged Biden to resume the paused bomb shipments, that Israel should “clean this mess up and get out. And the sooner that happens, the better for people that live in Gaza” (May 2024). Counter-case: a 1/2, since the resolutions drew no cosponsors and predate the genocide, and his brand is defense policy broadly.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).