Jews, Israel and AIPAC have become a central focus of the final days of the Michigan Democratic primary election for Senate, as Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) accused her opponent Dr. Abdul El-Sayed of Jew-hatred on Thursday.
“Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” Stevens wrote.
Stevens was responding to comments that El-Sayed, a medical doctor who previously served as the health director of Detroit and Wayne County, made in an interview with the blog MuslimGirl.
“When AIPAC watches this, come for me,” El-Sayed said. “I know you keep coming, but you picked literally the least capable candidate in America.”
“I tell you what people don’t want. They don’t want money in a foreign government,” he said. “They want money here.”
Tuesday’s Senate primary election in Michigan is the latest test of whether pro-Israel Democrats can win contests against the anti-Israel left, after a wave of primary defeats for House seats in New York, Colorado and other states.
Unlike some of those candidates, El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, does not identify as a democratic socialist but has been endorsed by prominent socialists, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), for backing a slew of progressive policies over the more moderate Stevens.
He has also made opposition to Israel a focal point of his campaign in the state with the highest proportion of Arab-Americans and one of the largest Muslim populations in the country.
He has accused Israel of “genocide,” called for a total arms embargo on the Jewish state, including of defensive systems like Iron Dome, and said that an attack in March on a Detroit-area synagogue, which the FBI said was inspired by Hezbollah, was part of a cycle of Israeli violence.
“We can and must condemn the attack on Temple Israel and we can and must condemn the violence 6,000 miles away,” El-Sayed said at the time. “Hurt people hurt people.”El-Sayed cited an Israeli airstrike that killed members of the attacker’s family in Lebanon the week before. The Israel Defense Forces identified the attacker’s brother as a commander in Hezbollah who was killed in the airstrike.
AIPAC has spent some $30 million in the race supporting Stevens, reportedly the most that the pro-Israel group has ever spent in a race.
In total, nearly $60 million has been poured into the race in advertising for Stevens, while only a fraction of that has been spent supporting El-Sayed.
Despite Stevens’s advantage in spending, polls suggest that she trails El-Sayed by double digits heading into Tuesday’s election.
An Emerson College poll released on Thursday suggests that 57% of likely Democratic primary voters support El-Sayed against 41% who favor Stevens.
The anti-Israel mood propelling candidates like El-Sayed in the Democratic electorate has alarmed many Democrats.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, said at a roundtable event with the Anti-Defamation League on Thursday that she would not attend her party’s state nominating convention in August over concerns about Jew-hatred.
“I don’t feel safe going,” she said. “I feel like my presence is not going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at, and I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying.”
At the Michigan Democratic Party convention in March, Stevens was drowned out by a huge number of anti-Israel party activists booing and chanting “shame on you” at the pro-Israel congresswoman.
“I didn’t think, ever, that this could happen in the modern-day United States of America,” Nessel said on Thursday, of the broader climate of antisemitism in the country. “It is.”
If El-Sayed wins the nomination, polls suggest that he would have a more difficult battle than Stevens would to win the general election in November.
A Glengariff Group poll conducted on behalf of the Michigan Education Association and Business Leaders for Michigan, which was released on July 28, has Stevens with a narrow lead over the Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, a former congressman.
The same poll has Rogers leading over El-Sayed among likely Michigan voters by more than 10 percentage points.
Stevens made an electability pitch to voters in the same post on Thursday in which she accused El-Sayed of antisemitism.
“Abdul, we were both on the ballot in 2018,” she wrote. “I was capable of winning my competitive primary and general election. You lost.”
“You’re part of the complainer class, looking for their next book or podcast deal,” she said.
