The Republican Jewish Coalition called Democratic leaders “cowards” after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) pledged to help Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed defeat former Republican congressman Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed has said that Israel is “bloodthirsty,” guilty of “genocide” and an “illegal apartheid regime.”
Sam Markstein, national political director and spokesman at the RJC, told JNS that “Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democratic Party are complete and total cowards.”
“Abdul El-Sayed is the most antisemitic candidate for the U.S. Senate in America, and yet, their party leadership is rallying around him,” he said. “November is a clear choice between Democrat crazy and Republican common sense.”
Schumer’s support for El-Sayed comes more than a year after the Jewish senator published Antisemitism in America: A Warning, a book about the resurgence of anti-Jewish hatred in the United States.
“In Michigan specifically, this is a choice between Mike Rogers, who will stand with Michigan’s Jewish community as he has always done, and Abdul El-Sayed, who will defend the people who come after us,” Markstein told JNS, citing Rogers’s pro-Israel record.
“Where Democrats failed, Republicans will clean up their mess,” he said.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, the two Democratic senators called on Democrats to unite behind El-Sayed to block U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“Abdul El-Sayed has run an energetic campaign that inspired thousands of Michiganders across the state, with a clear focus on lowering costs and standing up for working families,” they wrote. “Democrats are united by a common purpose: putting a check on Donald Trump by defeating his Republican enablers and taking back the Senate.”
“We look forward to working with Abdul and Democrats across Michigan to win this seat in November,” they wrote.
A group called Democrats for Mike Rogers encouraged Democrats “of all faiths and backgrounds” to “oppose extremism” and vote for Rogers instead of El-Sayed. “Country over party,” the group stated.
