Abdul El-Sayed Wants to Be the First Pro-Palestine Senator From Michigan

Abdul El-Sayed didn’t want to talk about his opponents. Running for Senate in the swing state of Michigan, he’s been pitching his progressive agenda against the familiar antagonist Democrats have in Donald Trump — not against the other two viable candidates competing to become his party’s nominee.

“It’s not about them,” El-Sayed told The Intercept. “It’s just about the opportunity that Michiganders need and deserve — to elect a Democrat who is pretty clear on what our ideals ought to be.”

Echoing the same promises he made when he ran unsuccessfully for governor seven years ago — providing universal health care, getting money out of politics, and supporting the working class — El-Sayed entered the race as the progressive darling and quickly snatched up the endorsement of his longtime ally Sen. Bernie Sanders. He’s been hailed as Michigan’s analog to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. And he has an inarguably stronger edge now than when he lost his last statewide race to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2018.

Despite the positivity, El-Sayed has entered a tough contest for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination. He’s up against Rep. Haley Stevens, a fourth-term congresswoman who has been endorsed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Mallory McMorrow, the state Senate majority whip. While Stevens has the establishment backing — and the attendant American Israel Public Affairs Committee cash — McMorrow is competing with El-Sayed to claim the progressive mantle.

All three major Democratic candidates so far have largely shied away from openly attacking each other. All three have vowed to build a better economy and stand up against the Trump administration. But on some key issues like health care and foreign policy, the candidates split. El-Sayed wrote the book on Medicare for All. McMorrow supports creating a public option. Stevens, who last week opposed the government funding bill that put ACA benefits in limbo, supports expanding the Affordable Care Act.

But perhaps their largest divide relies on a hinge point in the looming 2026 midterms: the state of Israel and its genocide in Gaza.

El-Sayed was the first of the Michigan Senate candidates to call Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide. McMorrow at first avoided the term, then started using it last month, as the Trump administration closed in on a ceasefire deal. And while some pundits are eager to argue that foreign killings are not kitchen-table issues, the genocide was a defining force for voters in parts of southeast Michigan last year, where some lifelong Democrats opted not to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris over their ire at their party’s complicity in Israel’s violence.

“I think Gaza was a Rorschach test on your values,” El-Sayed said in an interview at a local cafe in the bustling college town of Ann Arbor. “Do you actually believe the things that you say you believe?”

“The Democratic Party is somewhat in flux on some of the issues that will be key in Michigan,” said Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, a political science professor at Wayne State University, putting it lightly.

“Given the size of the Arab American population in the state, the situation in Gaza will be an issue in the Democratic primary, and Democratic voters, the polls show, have moved very dramatically in the last year or so away from support for Netanyahu,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said.

As the world watched two years of genocide unfold in Gaza, the party convulsed, sending politicians scrambling to adapt to their constituents’ plummeting opinions of the state of Israel.

“The Democratic Party is somewhat in flux on some of the issues that will be key in Michigan.”

McMorrow appears to be among them. In late August, she updated her campaign site to include a statement on Israel’s assault on Palestine, according to archived versions of the webpage, which made no mention of Gaza as late as August 19. Her site currently calls for Hamas to return the remains of hostages and disarm, and for Israel to allow the flow of humanitarian aid and stop its ceasefire violations. Her campaign did not answer questions about what prompted the change.

“My view on this is we have completely lost the humanity of this issue,” McMorrow said at a campaign event on October 5, when she first began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. “It is talked about as like a third-rail litmus test without acknowledging these are human beings. They’re people. And our position should be that there is no individual life that is worth more than another individual life.”

In public, McMorrow has disavowed AIPAC and sworn she would not take the Israel lobby’s contributions. On a recorded McMorrow donor call obtained by Drop Site News, her campaign manager says that the campaign has been open to “every organization” that wants to discuss Israel policy, and supporter and former local official Rob Kalman says that McMorrow has privately produced an “AIPAC position paper.”

AIPAC, which claims that siding with Israel is “good policy and good politics,” asks candidates to privately share their positions on Israel before they hand out an endorsement. Drop Site reported that candidates go through a “series of litmus tests” that include support for the Taylor Force Act, which has halted U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority; a willingness to say that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Iran; support for outlawing boycotts of Israel; and opposition to any conditions on aid to Israel.

A spokesperson for McMorrow denied to Drop Site that Kalman spoke for the campaign. The McMorrow campaign did not respond to questions about the reported donor call when reached by The Intercept.

Stevens, meanwhile, has received $678,000 from the AIPAC PAC so far this year, according to FEC filings. Arguably, AIPAC kept Stevens in the House in a recent race. In a previous House primary bid against Andy Levin, a progressive Jewish congressman who advocated for Palestinian rights, the Israel lobby spent over $4 million in favor of Stevens — $3.8 million of it from the United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC. (On Tuesday, Levin endorsed El-Sayed.)

Earlier this year, McMorrow publicly asked the Israel lobby to stay out of the race altogether. El-Sayed, for his part, said: “Have at it.”

“I’ve been very consistent about my principles and my values, and I think in a lot of ways, the community has come to understand,” El-Sayed told The Intercept. “I lead with principle, and I’m willing to say hard things to people when I disagree with them.”

In the 2024 presidential primary, El-Sayed supported the Uncommitted Movement, which criticized the Biden administration and Democratic Party’s complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza, but he ultimately endorsed Kamala Harris in the general election.

Trump ended up winning 42 percent of the vote in the Arab-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan; Harris trailed behind by about 6 percentage points. Jill Stein — who took a firm pro-Palestine stance in her campaign — received a whopping 18 percent, compared to 0.8 percent statewide.

Sarbaugh-Thompson anticipates the genocide in Gaza will be a contentious issue in this race even if it becomes less prominent in the national picture, given Michigan’s sizable Arab population of over 300,000 people. Nationwide, a Gallup poll found in July that Americans’ approval of Israel’s campaign reached 32 percent — the lowest rating since Gallup began polling on the question in November 2023.

Asked about her stance on Israel and Palestine, Stevens’s campaign referred The Intercept to an X post calling for food aid to enter Gaza and for Hamas to return the hostages. The spokesperson did not answer questions about whether Stevens will recognize the conflict as a genocide. Her campaign site does not include a section on her stance on Israel, nor on her priorities overall.

“There is a word for annihilating 60,000-plus people.”

“There is a word for annihilating 60,000-plus people, which is almost certainly an underestimate, 18,500 of them children,” El-Sayed said. “The idea that it’s a litmus test to use the actual word for the thing says everything you need to know about where the Democratic Party is.”

Still, he did not criticize any of his opponents by name.

Abdul El-Sayed addresses supporters at a rally with Bernie Sanders in Kalamazoo, Michigan on August 23, 2025. Photo: El-Sayed for Senate campaign

The Midwestern niceness for now reflects savvy politics, according to David Dulio, a professor of political science at Oakland University in southeast Michigan. He praised the strategy, noting that now is the time to focus on building war chests and fostering connections. But the contest could get tense quickly.

“Michigan is going to be front and center on the national stage,” Dulio said, pointing out that with the open Senate seat and 13 House races, the state could help determine the balance of power in both chambers of Congress next year. All of its state executive branch roles will be open too.

But to Adrian Hemond, a Michigan political strategist and CEO of campaign consulting firm Grassroots Midwest, El-Sayed and McMorrow are only hurting themselves by not criticizing each other.

“At some point he’s going to have to really step out and differentiate himself, especially from Mallory McMorrow,” Hemond said of El-Sayed, and it should be “sooner rather than later.”

If both El-Sayed and McMorrow are still in the race come August, Hemond forecasts they will split the progressive vote — and Stevens will come out in front.

At the moment, the establishment pick appears to have a narrow lead in the race. A poll published this month by Rosetta Stone put McMorrow and Stevens head-to-head at 25 percent to 26 percent, respectively, and El-Sayed at 20 percent.

But of the three experts The Intercept interviewed for this story, all agreed that with the better part of a year to go until the primary, anything could happen. One piece of evidence? Abdul El-Sayed.

El-Sayed rose to prominence seven years ago when he surged in the polls toward the end of his 2018 gubernatorial race against Whitmer. A year out from the election, he was virtually unknown and polling at 4 percent, but he walked away with 30 percent on primary day. That left him still behind Whitmer, who won with 52 percent of the vote, but ahead of Michigan businessman and now-U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar’s 18 percent.

“By the time we got into the thick of that race, there was a perception of inevitability about her winning the primary, and so even some people that might have considered a vote for Abdul El-Sayed just got on the Whitmer bandwagon because … it seemed like she was going to win,” said Hemond.

He noted the Michigan governor is a masterful communicator, making her a tougher opponent than Stevens, who is more of a “policy wonk.”

Around the same time in this race, El-Sayed was already head-to-head with Stevens. Whichever candidate prevails will likely go up against Mike Rogers, a former Army lieutenant and FBI special agent who served in the House from 2001 to 2015. Last year, Rogers ran against Elissa Slotkin — and lost by just a third of a percentage point.

El-Sayed’s hope is that he can get ahead by addressing an issue he sees as the core of Washington’s problems: money in politics. He is the only candidate in the race who has never taken funding from corporate PACs in his career, though McMorrow notes she has not taken any this cycle. In previous state-level races, McMorrow took nearly $80,000 from PACs including those associated with General Motors, DTE Energy, and Rock Holdings.

Beyond AIPAC, Stevens has received contributions this year from Fortune 500 corporations and unions including Ford Motor Company, General Motors, UnitedHealth, Walmart, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

A campaign spokesperson said Stevens has received grassroots support from across Michigan, and 93 percent of her donations are under $100. The spokesperson said Stevens supports campaign finance reform such as eliminating dark money from elections, reducing influence of super PACs, banning members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks, and overturning the Citizens United decision, the infamous 2010 Supreme Court ruling that found limits on independent political spending by corporations and unions to be unconstitutional.

In the first nine months of 2025, Stevens’s campaign solidly outraised her opponents at $4.7 million. Of the two progressive candidates, McMorrow has a slight edge at $3.8 million compared to El-Sayed’s nearly $3.6 million.

The influence of corporate power is one of many problems that plagues Democrats as well as Republicans, leaving voters with the impression that neither major party offers an opportunity for meaningful change. While the opposition party usually benefits from backlash toward the party in power, a CNBC poll conducted in April found that the Democratic Party appears to have the lowest approval rating for either party going back to at least 1996, with just 22 percent of respondents saying they feel very or somewhat positive, compared to 36 percent for Republicans.

“The Democratic Party has an opportunity for redemption, and I think it’s going to be because its voters decide to rethink what the party is,” El-Sayed told The Intercept. “I’m expecting that, you know, this race, it won’t just be we eked it out. I think if we succeed, it will be a phenomenon, and it’s going to be because we turned out voters that nobody saw coming.”

Among them could be Rich Perlberg, a 75-year-old retired local newspaper publisher and self-described moderate Republican who told The Intercept at El-Sayed’s campaign event that he was longtime friends with the Rogers family before MAGA politics drove a wedge between them.

“I knew [Rogers] was conservative and very politically minded, but I always thought he had a core of decency and principle. So I’ve been really disappointed with how he’s acted since he left Congress,” Perlberg said.

Rogers sharply criticized Trump’s “chaotic leadership style” after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot but has since aligned himself with the MAGA party and received the president’s endorsement for both of his Senate campaigns.

“Once he saw that Trump wasn’t going away, and apparently he’s still got designs on greater things, he changed his tune totally,” Perlberg said. “So he’s saying and doing things that I know, at least I hope in his heart, he doesn’t believe, but that’s almost worse.”

The Rogers campaign did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

EL-SAYED’S TEAm has been eager to compare him to another Muslim insurgent who pushed ahead on a positive message and whose candidacy seemed to scare the Israel lobby. After Zohran Mamdani won a crowded Democratic primary for New York City mayor, El-Sayed’s campaign pushed out a campaign email celebrating Mamdani’s win — and drawing a few parallels.

“Another Muslim American public servant unapologetically standing up to corporate power — and prevailing, despite his campaign being originally called a ‘long shot,’” the email read. “As someone who knows firsthand what it means to be the candidate with a funny name and a bold vision for justice, I’m feeling this one in my bones.”

An outraged MAGA party leapt in the opposite direction. The National Republican Senatorial Committee used Mamdani’s victory to raise alarm about El-Sayed and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a progressive running for Senate in Minnesota.

Despite the parallels, El-Sayed notes he is not Mamdani, and Michigan is certainly not New York City.

While both areas shifted toward Trump in 2024 compared to previous cycles, New York City remains an overwhelmingly Democratic stronghold with a diverse electorate. This time last year, Michigan handed Trump 15 electoral votes. More than immigration, foreign policy, or any other hot-button issue, the economy was by far the largest deciding factor in the 2024 general election. An AP VoteCast poll found 41 percent of Michigan voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the nation.

Mamdani and El-Sayed’s races call for vastly different expectations — a hyperlocal agenda for a citywide executive compared to a federal legislator with broad national influence, including foreign policy.

But they have both relied on expanding the electorate by pushing economic issues and turning out voters who might not otherwise have connected with a candidate.

“My point has always been that if you talk about the future that young people see themselves in, they will show up,” El-Sayed told The Intercept. “And there was a validation point in New York, and I think we’re going to build an even bigger one here in Michigan.”

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