Facing a barrage of extreme attacks from Donald Trump and his allies, the Democratic establishment is finally rallying around progressive Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s candidate in the closely-watched US Senate election in Michigan. But the endorsement is not always full-throated, and often even omits his name.
At a rally in Port Huron on Sunday, the US president launched the latest in a wave of Islamophobic rants against El-Sayed, erroneously branding him a “jihadist” and “Muslim Brotherhood member” while invoking 9/11.
But prominent Democrats have lined up to support El-Sayed. That same weekend, the independent senator Bernie Sanders rallied with him in Grand Rapids, and former president Barack Obama stood beside him in Detroit. Days earlier, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toured the state with him.
This last-ditch show of solidarity marks a turn for a party that split bitterly over El-Sayed’s nomination in August, which he narrowly clinched by beating a moderate pro-Israel candidate backed by much of the central party machine.
The Michigan Senate race – which could help decide which party controls the entire chamber – is a close, according to polls, which have typically given El-Sayed a small lead over his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
Senior Democrats have increasingly traveled to Michigan to back a nominee that many of the party’s leaders did not back in the primary – while making clear they are not fully aligned.
In a bid to close the gap, Republicans have doubled down on their incendiary attacks. Trump has repeatedly called him “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 such 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 the Medicare for All proposed system of universal healthcare, and calls for taking corporate money out of politics, taxing billionaires and corporations and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He has also called for ending US military aid to Israel, while calling its war in Gaza a genocide.
A Marist poll last week put El-Sayed at 50% and Rogers at 48% among likely voters. He was trailing by nearly two to one in ad spending as of early October.
Obama’s Saturday appearance in Detroit was the clearest sign of the shift by the Democrat party heirarchy. He joined El-Sayed on stage on the first day of early voting – his first public show of support for El-Sayed since the August primary – while a protest held by the white nationalist and 6 January rioter Jake Lang took 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.
But Obama acknowledged that he did 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,” he said. “You know who else doesn’t agree with everything I do? Michelle Obama.”
Both Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have transferred $1m to the El-Sayed campaign. 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. Yet she has also said she and El-Sayed “don’t agree on everything — and that’s OK”, and 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 leaderChuck Schumer, who has now endorsed El-Sayed, said his views on Israel are “much different than mine”, while the 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, who has historically been pro-Israel, 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 to him this was not “a ringing endorsement”, Booker remained stone-faced, and the segment continued.
But the coolest response came from Haley Stevens, the pro-Israel congresswoman El-Sayed beat in August by less than a point. She had been backed by groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) , which spent close to $30m backing her – the lobby’s largest investment in a single race.
Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday whether she was still fully behind him, 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%. Obama urged Saturday’s crowd to back the full ticket.
El-Sayed and Stevens are set to campaign together on Sunday – two days before election day – it emerged last night, 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.
