By Jeffrey Blehar
Saturday, October 31, 2026
We are days from the November elections in a year that
otherwise looks bleak indeed for the Republican Party. And yet in Michigan’s
crucial Senate race — in a state with reliably Democratic DNA, a state that
despite its recent (and narrow) flips for Donald Trump in two presidential
years hasn’t sent a Republican senator to D.C. since 1994 — nominee Abdul
El-Sayed is facing unexpectedly sharp dissent from within the Democratic tent.
The rest of the statewide Democratic Party (reluctantly,
but obediently) got in line behind El-Sayed, who narrowly won the August 4 senatorial primary. And yet that primary was
bizarre indeed, one of two Midwestern primaries whose polling averages seem to
have been unusually skewed by progressive hopes versus on-the-ground
reality. (The other race was Francesca Hong’s in nearby Wisconsin.) El-Sayed had been
put up in the polling averages by something like ten points, only to ultimately
eke out victory by 13,792 votes.
And the loser of that primary, Representative Haley
Stevens, has clearly neither forgotten nor forgiven El-Sayed’s constant, fierce
attacks on her during his unusually churlish primary campaign — casting her as
a pawn of AIPAC, sinisterly serving Jewish interests instead of Michiganders.
(What Michigan Democrats truly care about, El-Sayed contends, is ending
genocide in Gaza by the illegitimate Jewish ethno-colonialist state of Israel.)
And Stevens has, to her credit, finally hit the breaking
point of her conscience. Perhaps the point was forced with a goad, because her
fiancé Jason Turkish gave an interview to the Detroit News announcing that he would be casting his
vote this year for Mike Rogers, because he put “country before party” and
cannot support a man who — with brash, condescending arrogance — denies the
right of a Jewish state to exist, makes false and cruelly cynical accusations
of Israeli genocide, and — oh, incidentally — has significant personal
and family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. As Turkish said, it’s “very simple.”
But though Stevens’s incredibly wholesome Michigan
accent might make you think otherwise, neither Stevens nor her fiancé is naïve.
If any more evidence were needed that Turkish wasn’t entirely freelancing, it
came in the form of Stevens setting the terms for a pre-election “unity event.”
The full text must be reprinted here to properly convey the level of Stevens’s
passive-aggression:
Rep. Haley
Stevens Welcomes Abdul El-Sayed’s Expected Condemnation of Antisemitic Campaign
Advertisement, Thanks Congressman Jim Clyburn for Coming to Michigan to Bring
Democrats Together
Nominee is
expected, for the first time in this campaign, to formally condemn the
eleventh-hour Rebellion PAC advertisement, produced by Cenk Uygur, the uncle of
his campaign surrogate Hasan Piker, that advances the lie that Israel is to
blame for everything Michigan families cannot afford; Stevens urges the press
to confirm that condemnation with him directly, and says the same standard
applies to his own words and to his campaign’s Tucker Carlson ad.
On Sunday morning,
I will go to church in Detroit with my dear friend and mentor, my colleague and
a national Democratic leader, Congressman Jim Clyburn. Democratic Senate
nominee Abdul El-Sayed will join us. Jim Clyburn is the son of a minister from
Sumter, South Carolina, who was jailed as a college student for demonstrating
against segregation and met his wife of fifty-eight years in that jail. He
became the first Black South Carolinian sent to Congress in nearly a century
and twice served as Majority Whip of the House, and in 2020 it was his voice
that won the hearts and minds of Americans and determined who would be the next
President of the United States. He is a living legend of the civil rights
movement. This summer he came to Michigan to stand with me. I did not win. On
Sunday he will stand in a Black church in Detroit for the party he has served
his whole life, and I will be standing there with him.
For days, Abdul’s
only answer to the Rebellion PAC advertisement produced by Hasan Piker’s uncle,
Cenk Uygur, was that his campaign was ‘not affiliated’ with it. That ad tells
Michigan families they cannot afford groceries because their money has to be set
aside ‘for killing Palestinians,’ and it blames our close ally Israel for
everything Michiganders cannot afford. The chief executive of the
Anti-Defamation League called it ‘a case study in antisemitism.’ A disclaimer
is not a condemnation, and everyone in my community knows the difference. I
have learned from Democratic Party leaders and emissaries, as reported in the
news media, that Dr. El-Sayed has heard the deep concerns of the Jewish
community and is now, for the first time in this campaign, formally condemning
that ad for what it is. That is why I accepted Congressman Clyburn’s invitation
to appear with Abdul on Sunday. I urge voters and the press to confirm it with
Abdul directly.
But the ad did not
invent its argument; it dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words
throughout this campaign: that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford
schools, health care, and child care. The standard here is simple. If those
words are wrong when a Political Action Committee supporting his campaign says
them, then they are equally wrong when Abdul says them, and Abdul has said them
from the start. I therefore expect him to apologize for those statements as
well. Abdul promises to get money out of politics. He can begin by getting
Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford. And it is
my hope and expectation that, out of the same respect for Michigan’s Black
community, he will take down his own advertisement featuring white Christian
nationalist Tucker Carlson, an insult to the congregation that will welcome us
on Sunday.
I say this with no
race to run and nothing to gain. The Jewish and African American communities of
my district deserve to see their leaders show up for them rather than fight
over them. Jim Clyburn has spent his life showing what that looks like. I am honored
to go to church with him.
Well then! Notice the clever blindside Stevens hits
El-Sayed with: not El-Sayed’s by-now partisan-coded associations with the
Muslim Brotherhood, but rather his explicit endorsement by politically toxic
anti-Americans like Hasan Piker, Cenk Uygur, and Tucker Carlson. (Lest you
think Carlson is a cheap inclusion on this list, he endorsed El-Sayed months ago, and for all the predictable
reasons.)
Will the rally happen? Probably not! Because at this
final moment, Abdul El-Sayed has refused to take demands. He responded
last night to Stevens’s public demands with his
own public remonstrance:
Our campaign is
and has always been focused on addressing the most critical challenges
Michiganders are facing: Skyrocketing gas prices, unaffordable groceries, and
the inability to see a doctor.
That focus is why
our people-powered campaign defeated a historic $70M in outside spending from
big corporations and AIPAC on behalf of Congresswoman Stevens. Now the stakes
are even higher—defeating Trump’s hand-picked candidate, taking back the
Senate, and defending our democracy.
That should be the
priority for all of us right now. So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent
on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the
task at hand: that’s beating Mike Rogers, holding Trump accountable, and getting
money out of politics, putting money in pockets, and passing Medicare for All.
Oh, how delightfully petty a response, and how revealing
as well. El-Sayed will not back down or be bullied about the one thing he truly
believes in and cares about, more than any easily abandoned promises of
Medicare-for-All: his loathing of Israel, a supposedly “genocidal” state.
On this rock he will stand and fight. And don’t kid
yourself: On this rock he may win.
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