Endorsements come with caveats over Israel differences
The Democratic establishment has mounted a last-ditch show of solidarity with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s US Senate race, with independent senator Bernie Sanders rallying with the nominee in Grand Rapids and former president Barack Obama appearing beside him in Detroit the same weekend President Trump escalated attacks on him. New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toured the state with El-Sayed days earlier.
The party backing marks a turn for Democrats, who split bitterly over El-Sayed’s nomination in August after he narrowly beat a moderate pro-Israel candidate backed by much of the central party machine. It comes in a race that could help decide which party controls the Senate, with a Marist poll last week putting El-Sayed at 50% and his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, at 48% among likely voters. El-Sayed was trailing by nearly two to one in ad spending as of early October.
In what The Guardian described as the latest in a wave of Islamophobic rants, Trump at a rally in Port Huron on Sunday erroneously branded El-Sayed a “jihadist” and “Muslim Brotherhood member” while invoking 9/11. The president has repeatedly called El-Sayed “Mohammed” this month, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has aired ads using his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.
El-Sayed, who was born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrants, has dismissed the attacks as a distraction. “He knows my name is Abdul. He says it every day,” he said in a statement, accusing the president of trying to “use my name and my faith to distract us” from the cost of gas, groceries and healthcare.
A former Detroit and Wayne county health official, El-Sayed is running on a platform that endorses Medicare for All and calls for taking corporate money out of politics, taxing billionaires and corporations and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has also called for ending US military aid to Israel while calling its war in Gaza a genocide.
Obama’s Saturday appearance in Detroit — on the first day of early voting and his first public show of support for El-Sayed since the August primary — was the clearest sign of the shift, with a protest held by the white nationalist and 6 January rioter Jake Lang taking place outside. The former president likened the attacks on El-Sayed’s name to those he faced himself. “I remind them his name was Barack,” he said.
Obama, whose 57% favorable rating in a CNN poll conducted in May is the highest of any living president, also rejected the idea that El-Sayed is radical. “What is so radical about wanting everybody to have healthcare?” he asked, saying El-Sayed would “finish the job we started” with the Affordable Care Act. He acknowledged that he does not agree with El-Sayed, who has criticized some of his decisions as president, all the time. “We are not going to agree on every detail of every issue,” Obama said. “You know who else doesn’t agree with everything I do? Michelle Obama.” Obama also urged Saturday’s crowd to back the full ticket.
Both Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have transferred $1m to the El-Sayed campaign, and former vice-president Kamala Harris appeared with him in Detroit last month. Senator Elissa Slotkin, who spoke at the same rally, told the crowd she was counting on El-Sayed as a partner in confronting Trump’s agenda in Congress, though she has also said they “don’t agree on everything — and that’s OK.” She has previously argued that condemning the leftwing streamer Hasan Piker, with whom El-Sayed has campaigned, should not be hard.
Others have been more guarded. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who has now endorsed El-Sayed, said his views on Israel are “much different than mine,” and former congressman Sander Levin endorsed him despite what he called “significant disagreement” on the same subject. Representative Hillary Scholten said she would not campaign with anyone who associates with Piker.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey gave a similarly noncommittal answer on CNN on Wednesday, when anchor Boris Sanchez played a clip of a Black pastor saying some voters fear that El-Sayed would prioritize issues abroad such as Gaza over Michigan’s needs. Booker spoke about his family roots in Michigan and about “winning back the Senate” without mentioning El-Sayed by name. When Sanchez pointed out that this was not “a ringing endorsement,” Booker remained stone-faced, and the segment continued.
Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed defeated in the August primary by less than a point, was backed by groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent close to $30m on her — the lobby’s largest investment in a single race. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday whether she was still fully behind El-Sayed, she said she was “on the team.” “You didn’t mention Abdul El-Sayed in that last answer,” Bash noted. Stevens replied that she had urged El-Sayed to give a speech addressing Black voters’ concerns, and that it had not happened. In the primary, Stevens beat El-Sayed in Wayne county, home to majority-Black Detroit, taking about 51% of the Democratic vote to his 45%.
El-Sayed and Stevens are set to campaign together on Sunday, two days before election day, in what would be their first joint public appearance in months. Rogers, meanwhile, is courting Jewish voters, traditionally more likely to back Democrats, by telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that El-Sayed is “anti-Jew,” a charge El-Sayed rejects.
Whether a cautious and caveated embrace by the Democratic establishment is enough for El-Sayed will be settled on Tuesday, in a state Trump won by less than two points in 2024. If El-Sayed wins, he would be the first Muslim US senator. To get there, he has already pulled a skeptical party machine toward his side, according to The Guardian.