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Democrats focused on taking back the Senate in November are growing increasingly worried that a surging liberal candidate in Michigan's contentious Democratic Senate primary could imperil their slim shot at being in the majority next year.
Polls consistently find Abdul El-Sayed, a former local health official who lost a previous gubernatorial bid, at or near the top of the three-person August primary race. He has outflanked Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow from the left, boosted by a populist agenda and endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and liberal lawmakers.
His strength in primary polls has triggered backlash and anxiety among some Democrats, who view El-Sayed as a general election liability, too far left for a state that backed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. They cite El-Sayed's labeling of Israel's actions in Gaza as a "genocide" and his willingness to campaign alongside controversial figures such as Hasan Piker, the political streamer with a large audience of young men. Piker, who has faced accusations of antisemitism, has called the militant group Hamas better than Israel and questioned whether America "deserved" 9/11.
El-Sayed's outsider campaign promotes progressive policies, while the Democratic Party leadership is making a concerted bid to hew to the political center. He pitches Medicare-for-all, heavily taxing billionaires and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
He is betting that his economic populist agenda and stance against the war in Gaza will shift the race's general election dynamics in his favor in a state that is home to the country's largest concentration of Arabs and Muslims. Those Michigan communities deserted Democrats in the 2024 election, helping boost Trump's return to the White House.
Several of Michigan's most notable Democrats recently jumped off the sidelines to endorse Stevens in an attempt to thwart El-Sayed's surge, criticizing his record and suggesting he could not beat the presumed Republican nominee, former representative Mike Rogers, in November.
"It's not just thinking with our hearts but with our heads," said Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who represented Michigan in the Senate for 24 years and has endorsed Stevens. "We have to be strategic and purposeful right now."
Lon Johnson, a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party and Stevens supporter, said, "There is real concern that Abdul would not be able to beat Rogers and then potentially lose us a majority possibility in the Senate."
El-Sayed relishes the establishment's concern, calling it a symptom of Democrats' timidity and the public's broader frustration with both parties.
"People in Michigan are like, ‘Wow, we hate politics, and if politics hates that guy, he might actually be the one for us,'" El-Sayed said.
On Friday, the powerful United Auto Workers union backed the liberal candidate, touting him as "someone we can trust to have our backs, including when we need it most."
Democrats have little chance of taking back the Senate without securing the Michigan seat left open by Democrat Gary Peters's retirement. The party's uphill odds of flipping the chamber controlled by Republicans 53-47 rely on upset wins in states that Trump won handily in 2024. But an increasingly favorable political environment has lifted Democratic hopes, putting more pressure on Michigan Democrats to deliver.
The pressure has fostered a messy and increasingly bruising fight, with El-Sayed using the establishment anxiety to rev up voters. In one debate, he challenged his opponents to raise their hands if they had taken money from Blue Cross Blue Shield and then attacked them as beholden to special interests.
"You actually need to know how to deliver," McMorrow retorted.
Stevens has been lambasted as the establishment's pick and criticized for her ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel organization.
McMorrow has been cast as a carpetbagger, with her opponents highlighting deleted tweets in which she expressed a longing to be back in California and criticized Michigan. And El-Sayed's biography as a "physician" has been openly questioned, with Politico reporting that he has no experience as a licensed medical doctor. He has a medical degree.
"This race is already really ugly, and it's only going to get more ugly," said an unaffiliated Democratic campaign operative working in Michigan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the state of the primary. "And it's not a good situation for Democrats in purple battleground Michigan."
El-Sayed argues that Michigan voters are not so much moderate or conservative as they are antiestablishment. Michigan Democrats voted for Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary, only for the state to swing to Trump in the presidential race. Michigan voted to elect Joe Biden in 2020, then picked Trump a second time in 2024.
"If we think perfectly inoffensive is what it takes to win elections in 2026, we are not paying attention to recent history, because Donald Trump is a lot of things, but he is not perfectly inoffensive," El-Sayed said.
Stevens and McMorrow, perhaps wary of alienating El-Sayed's core supporters, spoke cautiously about his electability in interviews. Stevens, in an interview with The Washington Post, did not say his name.
"I haven't spent years trying to become a talking head or have a podcast or sell a best-selling book or something like that. I have been writing laws and passing laws and helping Michiganders and fighting for them," Stevens said, referring to El-Sayed's books and podcast. "I'm in the strongest place to beat Mike Rogers."
Stevens is running as a technocrat, often referring to herself as a "manufacturing geek" because of her work as one of President Barack Obama's top officials on the 2009 auto rescue. "I've always been a scrapper and Michigan's workhorse. And that's how I'm getting through this," she said of the primary.
McMorrow was only slightly more direct.
"There is a path for Democrats to take back the Senate, but not without Michigan," she said. "And as I think about how purple our state is, we need to be able to pick up independents, even Republicans, who no longer see themselves in Donald Trump's MAGA party."
McMorrow said Republicans are eating all the infighting up, "hoping the Democratic Party splits itself."
Republicans are increasingly hopeful about Michigan, arguably their best chance at flipping a Senate seat this year. Republicans are on track to outspend all three Democrats combined, reserving $34.7 million for political ads compared with the Democrats' $30 million, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.
Bernadette Breslin, a spokesperson for the Senate Republicans' campaign arm, described Stevens, McMorrow and El-Sayed as "locked in a three-way race to the bottom as they jockey for the Democratic nomination" while Rogers is focusing on "restoring common sense after years of failed Democrat rule."
Republican strategists in the state say the country's anti-incumbent mood will work in their favor in Michigan, where Democrats have held power for years. Greg Manz, senior communications adviser for the Michigan Republican Party, said that as long as the Democrats stay in a messy fight, he's less concerned about who emerges.
"We'll beat them," Manz said. The Rogers campaign declined to comment on the Democratic primary.
Asked how he'd feel if his opponents are right and he wins the nomination only to lose to Rogers, El-Sayed scoffed: "I'm not going to lose."
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