Voters are faced with the thorny question of electability: who can win this purple state in November and potentially push Democrats toward a US Senate majority?<\/p>\n
A<\/span>t Chad Green\u2019s house in Davison, Michigan<\/a>, a brood of baby chicks roamed around the idyllic green lawn as US senators pitched a couple dozen voters on why they should turn out for the hopeful one, Abdul El-Sayed.
Green, a retired federal firefighter, hosted a similar small gathering for Mallory McMorrow, who was running for the US Senate<\/a> before she dropped out of the race in early July, narrowing the contest to El-Sayed, a progressive insurgent campaigning for universal healthcare, and US representative Haley Stevens, who has branded herself as a workhorse.
Green, 54, sees himself as a more moderate Democrat, and originally aligned with McMorrow. After she dropped out, he looked into El-Sayed and Stevens, and resonated more with El-Sayed\u2019s policies.
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen people more excited about a candidate,\u201d Green said. \u201cI feel like there\u2019s not going to be excitement for the Republicans to vote. And I feel like there is excitement for Democrats<\/a> to vote for Abdul.\u201d
The Michigan primary is, perhaps, the most contentious Democratic primary this year \u2013 and a test for the party\u2019s future. Voters are weighing the policies and personalities of the candidates as they once again consider the thorny<\/a> question of electability: who can win this purple state in November, and potentially push the party towards a majority in the Senate?
Recent surveys have shown El-Sayed pulling ahead. A nonpartisan Emerson poll<\/a> this week of likely Democratic voters found 54% intended to vote for El-Sayed compared to 39% for Stevens, with a stark age divide. Voters under 50 broke for El-Sayed by 42 percentage points, while voters over 60 preferred Stevens by a 14-point margin, it showed. Independents were siding with El-Sayed by a 27-point margin.
Stevens, 43, has represented Michigan\u2019s 11th House district since 2019, after flipping the seat. She has been endorsed by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and Gary Peters, the retiring senator who holds the seat she and El-Sayed, 41, are now running for.
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who served in health director roles in Detroit and its county, counts leading progressive officials among his supporters, including US senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen, who rallied with him in Michigan last weekend alongside a host of representatives and former elected officials.
The winner of Tuesday\u2019s Democratic primary will face Mike Rogers, a former congressman from the state who was also the Republican nominee for US Senate in 2024, when he lost to Elissa Slotkin.
El-Sayed, often mentioned alongside democratic socialists who have won a string of party primaries ahead of this year\u2019s US midterm elections, is not himself a democratic socialist: he says he is a \u201ccapitalist who understands how capitalism works\u201d, and wants to regulate monopolies and oligopolies.
But the race has become a key focal point in the rise of the left flank of the Democratic party, and its potential limits \u2013 especially after a wave of wins in solidly blue districts across the country.
More than $40m has poured into the race from outside groups supporting Stevens or attacking El-Sayed, including from<\/a> groups associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a pro-Israel lobby. AdImpact shows<\/a> more than $60m in ad reservations and spending to benefit Stevens.
Misleading<\/a> ads have attacked El-Sayed for \u201cdisrespecting women\u201d while tying Stevens to Barack Obama, who has not endorsed in the race, but previously praised Stevens\u2019 work on the auto industry rescue plan. The Obama connection sits prominently in the minds of some Black voters in Michigan, who cite Stevens\u2019 work with the former US president as key to their vote in the primary.
El-Sayed has seized on the major outside spending against him and turned it into a central line of attack against Stevens. Stevens points to an A-rating from End Citizens United, a group dedicated to getting money out of politics, and says she feels \u201cvery strongly\u201d about campaign finance reform.
While talking to reporters outside Plymouth United Church of Christ in Detroit last Sunday, Stevens held up a note passed to her during the church service from a member of the congregation. \u201cHad I known that you would be at church today, I would have brought my checkbook,\u201d the letter said, according to Stevens, who added that most of her direct campaign contributions come from small donors.
In the waning days of the primary, Stevens attacked El-Sayed for not releasing his full financial disclosures, which he subsequently did. She also often accuses El-Sayed of seeking fame, pointing to his previous podcast, which he co-hosted for Crooked Media, his book, and a website purchase for El-Sayed for president.
El-Sayed said he purchased URLs for various offices as a defensive maneuver so others couldn\u2019t snap up the websites and use them against him, and said he doesn\u2019t understand the line of attack on podcasts or books: \u201cI would think that you\u2019d want to send a nominee who\u2019s comfortable doing podcasts.\u201d
The campaign has grown increasingly tense in its final weeks. Earlier this month, El-Sayed faced backlash over remarks that he later clarified were in reference to Democratic senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania \u2013 not his primary rival. El-Sayed had said a left-wing victory over Fetterman \u2013 who campaigned as a progressive but has moved sharply to the right in office, particularly on Israel \u2013 would be akin to putting an \u201cogre on a pike\u201d. Stevens responded: \u201cThank you for clarifying that you didn\u2019t call me an ogre.\u201d
And in a Twitter post<\/a> this week, Stevens criticized a video where El-Sayed criticized Aipac, with Stevens saying: \u201cEveryone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.\u201d
Stevens said she isn\u2019t campaigning on \u201cfalse promises\u201d or \u201cslogans\u201d, a nod to El-Sayed\u2019s central issue of the Medicare for All proposal of universal healthcare. \u201cI am offering a path to win, to make sure that Mike Rogers goes back to Florida for a second time, so that he doesn\u2019t get to go into the Senate and return nothing for us, just rubber-stamping Donald Trump,\u201d she told reporters last weekend.
El-Sayed contends that universal healthcare requires fundamentally changing Congress \u2013 by electing politicians who will fight for it. \u201cIf you don\u2019t fight for certain things, you\u2019re never going to get them,\u201d he told the Guardian.
Stevens stood in front of Black congregations on a recent Sunday morning, joining in worship services before telling the churchgoers who she was, and what she could deliver.
Black voters \u2013 who make up about 20% of the Democratic primary electorate \u2013 have expressed some skepticism<\/a> of El-Sayed. Black voters in the state have tended to side with more moderate candidates in primaries. Polls<\/a> of the race show Black voters overall siding with Stevens.
At Hartford Memorial Baptist church in Detroit, Stevens mentions Obama and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House of Representatives. She says she prayed for her parents. Her dad, she said, always told her: \u201cDo not be the smartest person in any room; be the hardest working.\u201d
Later, at Plymouth United Church of Christ, she told the congregation that she \u201ccould have stayed comfortable\u201d in her House seat.
Scott Benson, a Detroit city councilman and a deacon at Plymouth, said he\u2019s been a longtime supporter of Stevens because of her focus on \u201ckitchen-table issues\u201d. He worked with El-Sayed when he was the city\u2019s health director, he added, but El-Sayed\u2019s politics don\u2019t align with his.
\u201cI am very pragmatic. I\u2019m very kitchen table. I\u2019m about jobs,\u201d Benson said. \u201cOther issues just really don\u2019t align with mine and so, great guy, but Haley Stevens\u2019 policies align with mine, and her effectiveness as a legislator is also a very big deal to me.\u201d
After services ended at Plymouth, people stopped to get photos with Stevens and tell her she had their vote . One woman said she had seen Stevens\u2019 actions, including the work she did under Obama. \u201cI know that there was hope then,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s more hope for us now in Michigan.\u201d
Willie Goston, 71, of Redford, said he and his wife filled out their ballots two weeks ago \u2013 two votes for Stevens. He knew he would vote for Stevens right away, citing her work with Obama, and her connection with US representative James Clyburn, a longtime South Carolina legislator.
\u201cShe\u2019s an amazing politician, and she seems like she\u2019s honest, seems like she\u2019s not going to go back behind and do no underhanded stuff,\u201d said Goston.
On Sunday afternoon, in Rouge Park in Detroit, volunteers and supporters of El-Sayed rallied, getting egg rolls and ice cream from food trucks as they listened to elected officials and activists talk about the candidate, frequently calling on his central slogan: \u201cMoney out of politics, money in your pockets, Medicare for All.\u201d
El-Sayed has hosted rallies and door-knocking launches throughout the campaign, his ground game aided by groups like the Working Families Party, the United Auto Workers and the progressive activist network Indivisible . His campaign has more than 10,000 volunteers and is knocking on nearly 10,000 doors per day, he said.
Justin Daniels, 45, who attended the park event, said the <\/em>dividing line in the race is establishment versus non-establishment. Daniels, who is Black, said if younger Black voters tune into the primary, they\u2019d probably lean toward El-Sayed, while for older Black voters it\u2019s more of a toss up.
But he thinks El-Sayed can win in November. \u201cI see him winning over Republicans, because what a lot of people don\u2019t understand is they\u2019re getting their benefits cut just as well,\u201d Daniels said.
El-Sayed said he believes his campaign will do well with a number of different subsets of Democratic voters, including the Black community. \u201cMy relationship with the Black community isn\u2019t built on photo ops and all of a sudden crossing 8 mile<\/a> because somebody told you that\u2019s what you need to do,\u201d he said. \u201cMy public service is built in the city and county, and I\u2019ve been building these relationships for a very long time.\u201d
El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent and Muslim, said the electability argument is often a coded way of questioning his name and religion. He has been \u201cAbdul in Michigan\u201d his whole life, including as a high school student after September 11, and still was voted captain of the football team the next year.
\u201cMichiganders are open-minded. They\u2019re big-hearted people,\u201d he told voters at Green\u2019s house. \u201cAnd the funny thing is, when they say I\u2019m unelectable \u2026 that\u2019s not a comment on me. You know what that\u2019s a comment on? It\u2019s on you. They\u2019re trying to say that you all, Michiganders, who I know to be open-hearted, kind, thoughtful people, are not big enough to see past my name. And I\u2019m betting otherwise, because I\u2019ve been betting otherwise my whole life.\u201d
Voters have shown a strong anti-incumbent bias in recent polls. A recent CNN poll<\/a> found that a majority of voters think US Congress would be better off if most sitting members were unseated in the midterms.
El-Sayed said he regularly has people attend his town halls who tell him they voted for Trump, and now would for him.
He is trying to both inspire people who haven\u2019t been voting to come out and back his campaign, and win over people who voted for Trump, but feel betrayed by the administration\u2019s actions.
\u201cWhy did it go for Bernie, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump?\u201d El-Sayed asked the group at Green\u2019s house of Michigan\u2019s recent voting history. \u201cAnd either it\u2019s because we can\u2019t make up our minds \u2013 which, y\u2019all been in Michigan long enough to know, we know what our minds are \u2013 or it\u2019s because we keep going to the buffet, and not finding what we really want. So what happens if you give an alternative that is actually against the system, the corruption on both sides of the aisle, that\u2019s also not a megalomaniacal, narcissistic billionaire asshole?\u201d
Stevens points to her record of winning over Republican voters in a tight congressional district. She notes that she has beaten Maga four times. When she and El-Sayed both ran (in separate races) in 2018, Stevens won a six-way House primary. She is the first Democrat to hold the 11th district seat for a full term since the moon landing, she said.
As to which of the two candidates is more poised to win in November, \u201cI think the Republicans have answered that for us\u201d, Stevens said, pointing to a leaked phone call<\/a> where Rogers said he had a better shot at flipping the seat if El-Sayed won the primary.
Videos<\/a> of Stevens\u2019 heavy Michigan accent, where she said she was going to fight with \u201ca little bit of stick it to \u2018em\u201d, have circulated widely online in the final weeks of the campaign. Stevens has moved to embrace the phrase, putting it on campaign signs, though also suggested<\/a> its virality was driven by \u201ccool kids on the Internet doing the cool kid chatter\u201d, some of whom \u201cmight be the coastal elites\u201d. Both Stevens and El-Sayed were born in Rochester Hills, a suburb of Detroit. El-Sayed told his supporters not to \u201cmake fun\u201d of Stevens, calling it \u201cunkind and unhelpful\u201d.
\u201cI\u2019m going to run through anything and anyone to cut the best deal for Michigan,\u201d Stevens told reporters at an event in Detroit last weekend. \u201cSo yeah, they can make fun of my voice, but I sure as damn well am going to make sure we\u2019re heard in the halls of power.\u201d
Benson, the Detroit councilman, said he believes El-Sayed\u2019s positions are too far to the left for a purple state. Trump won Michigan in 2024, after Joe Biden won it in 2020.
\u201cI believe in the centrist Democrats,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I\u2019m a centrist Dem, I\u2019m moderate Dem, and I\u2019m proud of that fact. I just believe it\u2019s what we need to be competitive in the state of Michigan. Those views, his views, they are very well accepted in other places. But when you have a purple state, I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s going to play well here.\u201d
Robin Evans, a 75-year-old registered Democrat who attended the gathering at Green\u2019s house with her two siblings, said she would be voting for El-Sayed. His background in public health, and focus on healthcare, appealed to her.
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to sell the fact that he\u2019s not electable, but I\u2019m not doing that,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m voting for whom I feel is right, not for electability.\u201d
Some of El-Sayed\u2019s potential future colleagues are betting that his win, and other progressive wins this cycle, will change the tenor of what Democrats in the Senate are willing to stand for. US senators Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, and Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, rallied with El-Sayed in Michigan last weekend, saying they wanted fighters like him to work alongside.
Voters want people who have courage and aren\u2019t afraid to stand up to Trump, but also aren\u2019t afraid of losing their seat, Warren told the Guardian, so they\u2019re committed to making meaningful change.
\u201cRemember, the Senate is actually a pretty small place. For Democrats to be in the majority, shoot, there\u2019d only be 51 of us,\u201d she said. \u201cYou bring us just a few more progressive fighters, and the whole tone of that place changes. We\u2019re in the fight now. We\u2019re pulling people over. It\u2019s shifting, but bring us some new blood. Bring us some fighters. Bring us more energy into this. And watch what we can do.\u201d
El-Sayed is tapping into deep-seated anger among the electorate, like dysfunction in the healthcare system that allows insurers or AI programs to say whether a doctor-ordered test or medication could be covered, Warren said. \u201cI think that\u2019s going to connect with people who aren\u2019t even part of the Democratic primary.\u201d
Van Hollen, the Maryland senator, said he thinks El-Sayed has a better chance of winning the general election because of his ability to mobilize and motivate voters, who see his campaign as not a simple test of left versus right, but about uniting against political corruption and concentrated economic power, a \u201cmuch more universal\u201d message.
Washington is in a bubble, Van Hollen said, and too caught up in pundit-class chatter, but the general public is \u201cway ahead\u201d of Washington on upending politics as usual. The pre-Trump status quo wasn\u2019t working, either, he said.
\u201cVoters don\u2019t vote for a convicted felon unless they\u2019re really frustrated with the way things are,\u201d Van Hollen said of Trump. \u201cAnd he has changed the status quo in all the worst ways. We need to change the status quo in all of the best ways.\u201d
El-Sayed told the crowd at Green\u2019s house that they all know how important they are as Michigan voters. Campaigns come to court them every other year, knowing that their status as swing-state voters gives them a coveted spot in deciding the direction not just of their state, but the country. And this election is no different.
Think of what it would say to the country, to Congress, to other politicians, he said, if a campaign like his wins, \u201cif a politics that opposes corporations, that takes on their power, that opposes sending our money elsewhere\u201d wins in a place like Michigan.
\u201cEvery single person thinking about running for president is going to be watching on November 3,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n