Radical Islam Is the Wedge Issue in Michigan’s Democratic Senate Primary

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, April 09, 2026

 

CNN asks this morning whether Democrats are ready to embrace a “moderate” with a track record of “winning in Trump country,” like Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin. It’s a good question. But if Slotkin’s own pandering is any indication, the answer is no:

 

 

If there’s one thing that really jazzes Republican voters in “Trump country,” it’s buying into Iran’s portrayal of Hezbollah terrorists as indistinguishable from the legitimate government of Lebanon (despite even the Lebanese government’s objections).

 

The Islamic Republic is trying to make the ongoing destruction of Hezbollah by Israeli forces a feature of the unrelated cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran. Slotkin’s attempt to advance that effort is a sop to Michigan’s small but disproportionately influential Muslim population, the representatives of whom appear to have a lot of time for radical Islam.

 

Don’t take my word for it. “I’m just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly,” said far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in leaked audio in which he struggled to figure out how to handle the elimination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the outset of the war. He settled on accusing Trump of going to war to distract from the Epstein files, thereby avoiding any deep reflection on the death of a figure who has directed operations in which Americans were targeted and killed. But why? Because, as he reminded his campaign staffers, “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today.” It’s therefore best to avoid “comment on Khamenei at all,” El-Sayed insisted.

 

The radical Senate candidate’s fear of offending his constituents who might be “sad” over the death of an anti-American Islamist despot has become a scandal in the race to replace outgoing Democratic Senator Gary Peters. And it’s not Republicans who are making El-Sayed’s suspect affinities into a wedge issue. Rather, it’s one of his fellow Democrats in the race: Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator, and Representative Haley Stevens. And that fight is unfolding via a proxy battle over the political utility, or lack thereof, of the left-wing podcasters who cosplay as communist cadres.

 

In an attempt to ingratiate himself with the most radical elements in progressive politics, El-Sayed has leaned heavily into his relationship with the incendiary left-wing podcaster Hasan Piker. His opponents are attempting to hang El-Sayed’s poor judgment around his neck. Stevens dismissed Piker — an agitator who has said the United States deserved 9/11, and Israel got what was coming to it on October 7, 2023 — adding that “someone who’s campaigning with someone like that is not going to win in Michigan.” McMorrow went further. Piker “says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers,” she observed, “which is not entirely different from somebody like Nick Fuentes.”

 

The radical left quickly turned on McMorrow, who has for years been elevated to “rising star” status by the Democratic Party’s political elite, calling her, in left-wing broadcaster Emma Vigeland’s formulation, “Mallory McCuomo.” The epithet conveys McMorrow’s contemptible centrism, which stands in unfavorable contrast to El-Sayed’s revolutionary virtues. But she is no centrist. The fact that she’s picked this fight at all — even as Stevens keeps her head down and increasingly outpaces both El-Sayed and McMorrow in the polls — is illustrative of the establishmentarian sentiments that were apparent in CNN’s profile of Elissa Slotkin. The Democratic Party’s decision-makers know radical Islam is a loser outside Dearborn’s confines.

 

But as Slotkin’s pandering suggests, Michigan Democrats are threading a needle. Their delicate maneuvers are likely to confuse general election voters by smudging the bright line they know they must somehow draw.

 

If there’s a winner in this fight, it may be Mike Rogers, the former Michigan Republican congressman and longtime chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who’s the likely GOP nominee for Senate. Rogers does not mince words when it comes to the threat posed by Islamist elements abroad or on the home front. And with Michigan now transforming into ground zero for active terrorist threats inside the United States, the general Michigan electorate may not be willing to countenance nuance when it comes to dealing with Islamists.