09/27/2026
Abdul El-Sayed wants to win the Michigan U.S. Senate race his way—as an unabashed progressive populist and a fierce critic of Israel—and he’s testing what kind of Democrat can prosper in a swing state, Helen Lewis argues. https://theatln.tc/CiQ09OQ5
“To some skeptics, El-Sayed’s pointed attitude toward Israel reflects the wider paranoia into which populism can lapse—the ‘everyone is against us’ tendency,” Lewis argues. But at the same time, AIPAC poured $32 million into the primary in hopes of a win for El-Sayed’s opponent, Representative Haley Stevens.
During the primary, he ran “as much against AIPAC as he did against Stevens,” Lewis argues. But this decision and his association with Hasan Piker have also troubled some prominent Jewish Michiganders. A group of Jewish Democrats are now pledging to support Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent.
Meanwhile, “the immense prejudice directed at El-Sayed himself has received surprisingly little attention,” Lewis argues. “Michigan Democrats just voted to send a TERRORIST to the Senate,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, declared on X on August 6. Donald Trump also posted a picture of himself with Melania next to one of El-Sayed and his wife, Sarah Jukaku. “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s,” read the caption.
El-Sayed, however, doesn’t want to dwell on the bigotry that this contest has revealed. “Michiganders are really open-minded and bighearted,” he told Lewis. Still, as much as Democrats in Michigan may put a premium on niceness, “El-Sayed has been unlucky in his opponent,” Lewis writes. Rogers “comes off as generic in the exact way that is most unhelpful to opposing campaigns.” He’s also held very few events and stayed out of the media. El-Sayed has requested that the pair have five debates; Rogers has already skipped the first.
“If El-Sayed wins, the Sanders wing will take his victory as confirmation that the left can be competitive outside deep-blue areas,” Lewis argues. “If he loses, the centrists will tell the progressives to get back in their box.”
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📸: Sarah Rice / Bloomberg / Getty
