GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A tense confrontation between a Black voter and Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, over his commitment to a key voting bloc shows the nominee still has some work to do to unite the Democratic base ahead of the November election.
“What makes you different, and how do we know that we trust what you say? Because, historically, the Democrats shit on Black people,” JD Chapman, 46, the head of a youth-mentoring group, asked the progressive Senate candidate last week at a crowded dive bar in Western Michigan.
El-Sayed responded by recounting his family’s story immigrating from Egypt and his experience growing up in Michigan, something he said “doesn’t happen without the advocacy and the organizing of Black folks in church communities across the country.” He shared how his education in civil rights history shaped his perspective on systemic oppression and informed his career in public health, crediting civil rights heroes like W.E.B Du Bois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. for paving the way for his campaign to become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
“I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Black folks,” El-Sayed said.
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But the professorial-sounding answer didn’t satisfy Chapman, who began walking toward the exit. That prompted Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, the first Black senator from Delaware, who was campaigning with El-Sayed, to step in. Democrats, she said, need to win as many seats as possible in the Senate to enact policies that can help Black Americans.
“We can’t do it if we don’t have the numbers,” she explained to Chapman. “If we don’t do it, hold us accountable. Vote us out.”
El-Sayed Responds to Questions About His Commitment to Black Community
The pointed exchange illustrates questions El-Sayed continues to face in one of the most hotly contested battlegrounds that could determine control of the Senate next year. Republicans are seeking to portray him as a radical Islamist, launching ugly attacks over his Muslim faith and name. There are doubts among some Jewish Democrats regarding his stance and past comments about Israel, some of which he’s apologized for. And there is lingering skepticism about his candidacy among Black voters, many of whom supported the moderate Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary in August.
“Politicians come and go; they always pandering for our votes at election time, and then they just forget about us once they get elected, especially in West Michigan. I’m sick of that shit,” Chapman, who said he voted for Stevens, told The Washington Sun after the exchange.
He said he may not vote in November, and whether he does will depend on how El-Sayed navigates the cultural differences between Arab and African American voters in Michigan.
“I’ll specifically be paying attention to his engagement with the people on the ground in Detroit, where he’s from” Chapman said.
Progressives view El-Sayed’s candidacy as a blueprint for other insurgent candidates across the country. If he can win in a presidential battleground state like Michigan with a populist message of taking on corporate elites, eliminating money in politics and passing a universal health care program like Medicare for All, others can too. But there are still those in the Democratic establishment who consider El-Sayed, a former public health official who has never held an elective office, a risky bet, one that could result in their party losing a winnable seat in what is expected to be a blue wave election.
Polls show a close race, with El-Sayed narrowly edging out his Republican opponent, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, who also ran for Senate in 2024.
Democratic Surrogates Flood the Zone to Help Unite Base
Democrats have sought to present a united front despite their divisions. A parade of high-profile names have or are scheduled to campaign on behalf of El-Sayed in the early 2028 presidential nominating state. They include former Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, former Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
And later this month, former President Barack Obama will rally with El-Sayed in Detroit, a city that boasts a large African American population. Democrats will need to maximize voter turnout there, as well as younger voters in the state’s college towns, to beat Rogers in November.
“It’s all hands on deck,” Whitmer, who backed Stevens in the primary, said last week during her first joint appearance with El-Sayed at a restaurant in Grand Rapids. “We got to get Dr. El-Sayed elected to the U.S. Senate because Michiganders need someone who’s got to fight to make our lives better. That’s the North Star here.”
Democrats are bullish about the fact that El-Sayed has drawn notably large crowds during his campaign stops in red-leaning areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula this week, where he’s focused on talking about health care access, the impact of President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada and tribal sovereignty. He’s also picked up the support of some former Rogers supporters who are seeking to put a check on Trump in Washington.
Chris Holman, 77, told The Sun he’s been friends with Rogers for more than 30 years, but he intended to vote for El-Sayed in November.
“I’m looking at it as a vote against Donald Trump,” Holman, an independent and an entrepreneur who owns a business news website in Michigan, said last week as he waited to hear from El-Sayed at a town hall in Lansing. “I feel mostly like the people that Trump allows to be around him are kind of bobbleheads, and that’s a very dangerous thing.”
The only chance Rogers has in the race, Holman said, is to try and tie El-Sayed to “things he’s absolutely not tied to, Muslim Brotherhood and all that, and Hamas and all that stuff, and that’s just like ridiculous stuff. And I know he knows it, but you know, you got to remember it’s about getting elected.”
Republicans have spent millions on ads that seek to tie El-Sayed to past comments made by Hasan Piker, a controversial Twitch streamer who is an El-Sayed supporter, in which he said that “America deserved 9/11.” Rogers also alleged last week in a contentious debate that El-Sayed and his family have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a charge that El-Sayed has denied.
Appearing alongside Rogers at an event in Highland Township, Michigan, on Friday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) went even further, alleging that El-Sayed “sleeps in a [Osama] Bin Laden jersey,” a comment that drew a chuckle from Rogers.
El-Sayed shot back with his own insinuation in a post on X: “That’s rich coming from someone who wears his bed sheets out at night.”
The anti-Muslim rhetoric is a particular concern for some Democrats who worry El-Sayed isn’t doing enough to reach out to Hindu voters in Michigan, who make up a small but potentially influential share of the state’s population in a tight race.
“If this ends up close, as close as the primary was, Abdul will regret not engaging Hindu community,” warned Bhavik Lathia, a political strategist from Michigan who served as a battleground mobilization director for Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. “Because of India-Pakistan tension, the Hindu community is as susceptible or more to Islamophobic messaging coming from the Rogers campaign.”
Rogers Faces Backlash to Trump’s Policies
Rogers, meanwhile, has come under heavy fire from El-Sayed and other Democrats over his support for Trump’s unpopular economic and foreign policies. He has sought to distance himself from the Iran war and Trump’s trade war in Canada, despite his past comments advocating for both. But when asked by a reporter last week about Trump’s tariffs, he continued to defend them, saying they’ve been an “overall positive” for the auto industry in Michigan.
“If it’s good for Michigan, I’ll be fighting for it. If it’s bad for Michigan, I’ll be working with the president and my friends in the Senate to say we’ve got to change whatever that might be,” he said at a packed barn in Oakland County, where hundreds of supporters donned cowboy hats and rallied for the state’s Republican candidates.
Rogers, who served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also told The Sun he disagreed with Trump’s decision over the weekend to import millions of barrels of diesel fuel from Russia. The move was intended to bring down high prices at the gas pump, but one that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say will only aid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine.
“You just don’t want to give that guy an inch,” Rogers said of Putin.
Still, Rogers can’t break with Trump entirely. He needs the president’s supporters to turn out and vote for him in November. And much of that strategy depends on trying to brand El-Sayed as an extremist and a radical.
But El-Sayed argued that Rogers is the one facing a “base problem” by failing to motivate Trump supporters ahead of November’s elections. Michiganders, he said, care more about bringing down the cost of gas and groceries than his name or his religion.
“My name did not raise your gas prices,” El-Sayed said, eliciting applause at a crowded town hall in Lansing. “My faith is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries. My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t see a doctor.”
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