Race is seen as Republicans’ best chance to flip a Senate seat
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. — Vice President JD Vance attacked Abdul El-Sayed at a Monday rally hosted by the super PAC MAGA, Inc., telling the crowd that El-Sayed should “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth.”
“Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth because she’s way out of your league,” Vance said at the rally, which was held to boost El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers.
The attack follows a social-media exchange earlier this month in which Vance criticized El-Sayed for comments that efforts to ban Shariah law stemmed from white supremacy. Vance said at an earlier event that he would like to go back in time to tell his grandfather, who he called Papaw, that those positions were not the Democratic Party his grandfather knew. “That’s not my Papaw’s Democratic Party, my friends,” Vance said.
El-Sayed responded on X: “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…”
Vance said Monday he was especially sensitive to the comments because Usha Vance gave birth to the couple’s fourth child five weeks ago. In an interview with Fox News last weekend, the second lady said El-Sayed’s comment “made me laugh.” “Because yes, I never met JD’s Mamaw and Papaw,” Usha Vance told Fox News. “But I do know and love the children that they raised, his mom, his aunt and uncle. And they have never been anything but incredibly loving.”
Vance used the Monday rally to accuse El-Sayed of being divisive. “When you have people who say ‘my ethnic group deserves something, and yours doesn’t,’ or ‘that ethnic group is good and this other ethnic group is bad,’ that is how you erode the very foundations of commonality,” Vance said.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Vance’s remarks.
Earlier on Monday, El-Sayed had criticized Vance during a press conference, noting that the vice president attended Ohio State University, a longtime football rival to the University of Michigan. El-Sayed also attacked the Trump administration’s trade war with Canada, a country that shares a border with Michigan. “I think Michigan is going to remind JD Vance why he should send his ass back to Ohio at the end of this day, at the end of November when we deliver a victory for Michiganders in this ridiculous trade war we have no business fighting,” El-Sayed said.
Before taking the stage in Sterling Heights, Vance met with the rabbi and security guards of Temple Israel, the synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., that was attacked in March, according to a Vance spokesman. The visit came days after El-Sayed apologized to Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus for comments he had made after the March synagogue attack. El-Sayed had condemned the attack but connected it to Israel’s actions in the Middle East, saying “hurt people hurt people,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Vance was in Michigan campaigning for Rogers, the former congressman running against El-Sayed in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races. The seat is currently held by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who is retiring. The race is seen as Republicans’ best chance to pick up a Senate seat in a year where President Trump’s poll numbers are dragging down the party, according to The Wall Street Journal.
El-Sayed, a former public-health official and progressive endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), has generated controversy within his own party. Democratic leaders have rallied around his campaign since he narrowly won the primary earlier this month. Vance also campaigned Monday for Mike Bouchard, a Republican and Army veteran running in a competitive House seat north of Detroit against prosecutor Christina Hines, a Democrat.
The vice president’s Michigan trip is the latest turn in a race that has accelerated since the primary. Earlier reporting tracked El-Sayed’s apology to Michigan Jewish Democrats over his synagogue-attack comments and the campaign’s decision to stake its general-election message on family-themed ads responding to Republican attacks on El-Sayed’s name and religion. Vance’s decision to campaign personally in the state reflects how central the seat has become to both parties’ calculations.