Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she would give $1 million from her political war chest to help elect Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, former Detroit health director and the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s Senate seat.
Both are anti-Israel, and the Republican Jewish Coalition has referred to El-Sayed as “the most antisemitic U.S. Senate candidate in America.”
The money comes in the final weeks of a Senate race rated as a tossup by the Cook Political Report.
“The Michigan Senate race is neck and neck,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Friday in a fundraising email, in which she solicited new donations for her campaign committee.
“This election will come down to the wire and the result will be consequential for our entire country,” she wrote. “Every vote, call, door and dollar between now and Nov. 3 will affect the outcome of this race, and I don’t want to wake up on Nov. 4 wishing I did more to combat the smears aimed at Abdul.”
Ocasio-Cortez has the money to spend. Her campaign bank account balance stood at $17.4 million at the end of September, after she raised $4.8 million over the last three months. More than half of her fundraising from July 1 to Sept. 30 came in amounts of $200 or less.
“This money comes from small pieces of the more than two million individual donations made by people across the country this election cycle,” she wrote. “It is not my contribution. It is our contribution.”
El-Sayed is running against former Republican congressman Mike Rogers in a race that could determine which party controls the Senate next year. The seat is held by retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).
