More than $150m was spent against El-Sayed, OpenSecrets reports
Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s US Senate seat on Tuesday, capping a campaign that Guardian columnist Moustafa Bayoumi argues should change how the Democratic Party talks about Israel. Bayoumi writes that El-Sayed’s victory shows Democratic voters care about Gaza, that Palestinian demands for freedom are increasingly connected to American demands for freedom, and that old smears against Palestinians and their supporters are “fast losing potency.”
The campaign’s signature slogan — “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all” — focused on issues aimed at Michigan voters, Bayoumi writes. But from the outset, he says, El-Sayed faced what he describes as some of the worst Islamophobic and racist attacks in years, driven in large part by his outspoken support for Palestinians.
Over the final months of the race, Trump called El-Sayed a jihadist and a terrorist sympathizer while mocking his name, at times referring to him by his middle name, Mohamed, according to the column. “I will be Senator Mohamed to you, bro,” El-Sayed replied.
During the final televised debate between Michigan’s Senate candidates, Republican Mike Rogers asked El-Sayed: “Are you for America, or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” El-Sayed called the question “shameful” and answered: “I’m proud of our constitution that guarantees all of us the right to pray as we choose to pray.” Bayoumi writes that Rogers’s television ads were worse still.
More than $150m was spent against El-Sayed, according to OpenSecrets, the nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics, with pro-Israel groups including Aipac behind much of it. In August, Rogers was said to have asked Aipac not to advertise on his behalf; in October, Aipac itself said it would no longer make endorsements or fund campaigns. Bayoumi writes that Aipac and Israel-supporting politicians seem all too aware of the toxic associations the organization’s name now brings to political races. Money continued to flow regardless: the Intercept reports that the group keeps channeling funds into races through its super Pac, United Democracy Project, which donated heavily against El-Sayed. In Bayoumi’s reading, Aipac is rebranding rather than dropping out of politics.
Bayoumi directs his argument at the party’s top leadership. He identifies Hakeem Jeffries — who he writes will “almost certainly” become the first Black speaker of the House in US history — as one of Aipac’s biggest recipients going back years; the radio host Charlamagne Tha God has called Jeffries “Aipac Shakur.” Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate majority leader, said in a conversation with the New York Times last year: “my job is to keep the left pro-Israel.”
The column catalogs the incoming Democrats who won while proclaiming support for Palestine: New Jersey’s Adam Hamawy, a doctor who joined a medical mission to Gaza in 2024; New York’s Darializa Avila Chevalier, a doctoral student active in campus politics supporting Palestinian rights; California’s Randy Villegas, who has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and took no money from corporate or pro-Israel groups; and Aber Kawas, the first Palestinian American elected to the New York state senate, among other down-ballot winners. “Is there a showdown coming?” Bayoumi asks, arguing that the pro-Israel positions of the party’s old guard are diametrically opposed to the values of its new members.
Public opinion is moving as well: six in 10 Americans now hold unfavorable views of Israel, and among Democrats the figure is eight in 10, according to the Pew Research Center, as cited in the column. Bayoumi argues that US support for Israel continues to disrupt and distort American politics even as, in his framing, the US government continues to walk in lockstep with Israel.
The recalibration extends across party lines. Bayoumi writes that even Donald Trump has acknowledged that support for Israel is increasingly a political liability in American politics. Vice-President JD Vance wrote on social media that “the real reason we [Republicans] lost is the war” in Iran, which Bayoumi notes was begun and carried out in partnership with Israel. Trump, just before the election, announced that he would end military aid to Israel by the end of the year.
“We were giving them $4bn,” he said. “But it gets cut off at the end of the year.” Experts have said such moves won’t change the deeply integrated military relationship between the two countries. Of the political pressure, Trump said: “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad talking point.”
For Trump, Bayoumi writes, support for Israel has become a matter of poor optics rather than “destructive and inhumane policies.” Democrats, he argues, carry a different obligation: to listen to their constituents, understand why they were elected, and take a stand out of principle.
El-Sayed signaled the direction in his victory speech Tuesday night. “We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid or genocide or war,” he said, to raucous applause. With Congress controlling government expenditures, Bayoumi writes, Democrats will soon hold a significant role over how US money is spent — and, he concludes, “Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer better be listening.”