Grand Rapids, Michigan
Key Democratic establishment figures believe Abdul El-Sayed will blow the party’s chances of holding onto a critical Senate seat this fall. He is out to prove them wrong — and to show that they misunderstand what voters really crave.
Michigan’s August 4 Democratic Senate primary is shaping up to be 2026’s highest stakes showdown between the party’s rising progressive insurgency and an establishment more focused on electability.
After state Sen. Mallory McMorrow exited the race on Sunday, the primary is now a head-to-head, pitting El-Sayed, a former public health official backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other prominent progressives, against Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate with a track record of winning on red turf. The Democratic nominee will face GOP ex-Rep. Mike Rogers in November.
In El-Sayed’s telling, viewing the race through that center vs. left lens misses the bigger picture that voters across the spectrum are frustrated with their leaders.
“This ideology thing — people think too deeply into it,” El-Sayed said in an interview with CNN shortly before taking the stage for a rally last week in Grand Rapids.
“I don’t think most voters walk around thinking where they stand on the ideological spectrum,” he said. “I think most voters are just being like, ‘Damn, I can’t afford my health care.’ ‘Damn, I’m worried about losing my job.’ ‘Damn, this AI stuff feels scary. Who’s going to do something about that?’”
Those voters are alienated, he said, when politicians “talk to you about what you can’t have and shouldn’t fight for.”
“My job has been to show that if you’re willing to be honest, direct, specific and fearless about fighting for people, you can build a movement,” El-Sayed said.
The progressive flank is on a roll — driven in part by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — with democratic socialists ousting three incumbent House members in deep-blue districts in New York and Colorado primaries in recent weeks. But the stakes in those races were nowhere near as high as Michigan, a perpetual battleground where Democrats almost certainly need to retain the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters to have a path to the net four-seat gain the party needs to win a Senate majority in November’s midterm elections.
Democrats in Washington worry that nominating El-Sayed, who is not a democratic socialist but aligns with them on many issues, would alienate enough moderates to jeopardize the race against Rogers.
El-Sayed supports Medicare for All, wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and says the United States must cut off aid to Israel — a position that has made him a target of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, whose super PAC has pumped millions into ads boosting Stevens. He campaigned with pro-Palestinian Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who called Hamas a “lesser evil” than Israel and once said that “America deserved 9/11,” though he later backed away from that comment and acknowledged it was “inappropriate.” El-Sayed deleted tweets calling for the defunding of police and also pushed that position in interviews in 2020, despite his recent claims that he had never done so.
In a recent digital ad intended to boost El-Sayed with Democratic voters, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm highlighted some of those positions and called El-Sayed “too radical for Michigan.”
“The Republicans don’t want to run against me, which is why they’re propping up his campaign,” Stevens told CNN after marching in a Fourth of July parade in East Grand Rapids.
In their debate Tuesday night, the differences in style and philosophy between El-Sayed and Stevens were on display. Stevens repeatedly described herself as a “workhorse” who gets things done in Washington, and suggested El-Sayed instead wants to be a “celebrity senator.” El-Sayed shot back that special interests are “trying to buy a politician who’s going to do their bidding instead of yours.”
“If you want your politics dictated to you by AIPAC or Chuck Schumer, then I’m not your guy,” he said, referring to the Senate Democratic leader.
El-Sayed isn’t shy about his problems with Democratic leadership. He says he’d support Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who has endorsed El-Sayed, over Schumer, who has signaled support for Stevens, for majority leader if the party wins 51 or more seats this fall.
But he also says critics have the wrong idea about what it means to be electable, especially in the Donald Trump era.
“I mean, Michigan went for Bernie, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump,” he told CNN, recounting the state’s results in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary and then the general elections in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
“Folks in the Midwest aren’t known for being scattered. They’re about as steady as they come,” El-Sayed said. “It’s just they keep going back to the buffet and not finding what they want. So if you can give them the thing they’re looking for, which is someone who’s going to offer some relief around the pain and fight like hell to do it — that’s going to win.”
Mamdani on the minds of Michiganders
So far, the electoral splits between El-Sayed and Stevens appear to be similar to those that were on display a decade ago, when Sanders — backed by younger voters, progressives and Whites — narrowly edged Hillary Clinton, who was stronger among Black voters and moderates.
Both are well-known in and around Detroit: Stevens represents its suburbs in Congress, and El-Sayed was Wayne County’s health director from 2023 to 2025. In a race with well-known and well-funded candidates, Grand Rapids could be one of the few remaining pools of large numbers of undecided voters.
In the parade in East Grand Rapids on Saturday, El-Sayed marched first — behind a large banner bearing his name, wearing an American flag-themed cowboy hat, a tight black V-neck T-shirt and dark jeans and tossing candy to children along the route.
Stevens was minutes behind, in a tank top with stars and stripes and shorts, following a small boat built by a supporter, pulled by a truck and plastered with campaign signs — the “Vote Boat II.” (The first Vote Boat, built to support Rep. Hillary Scholten, hadn’t survived a Michigan winter, an aide said.) She waved a miniature American flag and carried a sign that said “Stevens and Scholten for West Michigan.”
Bob Aardema, a 73-year-old retired attorney who lives in Grand Rapids, said he voted for Trump in 2020, but became an “extreme never-Trumper” after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He said he likes both El-Sayed and Stevens but would “be very inclined to vote for Haley Stevens — thinking, you know, she’s a little more centrist.”
“There’s a lot of people that would want to vote Democratic, but they see what’s going on lately in New York City with Mamdani,” he said. “It doesn’t scare me, but it scares other people.”
He said he would vote for El-Sayed over Rogers in November if those are his choices. But, he added: “I would think (El-Sayed) would not do as well as Haley Stevens in the general election.”
Aaron Eddens, a 41-year-old college professor from Grand Rapids, said he thinks prioritizing electability “is a losing battle” for Democrats.
“We’ve got to get rid of that. It comes from a place that says people don’t deserve more,” said Eddens, who wore an El-Sayed button as he attended the parade with his family.
“I’m frustrated when Democrats are just like, ‘Vote for us because we’re not as bad as the other side,’” Eddens said. “I don’t like the electability argument at all.”
Paul Fink, a 34-year-old professor from nearby Rockford, said he is “absolutely frustrated with the Democratic Party.”
“I think the strategy has been completely off in the last several years, leaning more toward the middle and catering more toward undecided voters … instead of leaning into issues that I think people care about the most,” he said.
He said his biggest priority is “getting money out of politics,” and said doing that is El-Sayed’s “lead point.”
His wife Jess Fink, a 29-year-old speech therapist, said she thinks about electability, “but I’m more likely to just vote with who I think is the best candidate, regardless of that. It’s not so much who will win.” She said she’s more interested in where the candidates stand on health care, education and the economy.
The Finks both plan to vote in the Democratic primary but said they have not yet decided who they’ll support.
Paul Fink, like Aardema, brought up Mamdani unprompted. But he didn’t share the retired attorney’s concerns about how the New York City mayor is being received and instead characterized him as a model.
“I think he’s done a fantastic job rallying the base around issues that people really care about, but I guess he’s also just really charismatic, right? And that connects well with people,” Fink said.
Stevens has lined up a broad range of Democratic establishment support — including Scholten, the Grand Rapids-area congresswoman and the only current Michigan House member to back her campaign.
She’s also backed by a longtime former Michigan senator, Debbie Stabenow, state Attorney General Dana Nessel and Jennifer Granholm, the former Michigan governor and US energy secretary. She has endorsements from EMILY’s List and a raft of national figures that includes former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Chris Coons of Delaware.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, is endorsed by the United Auto Workers union, as well as Sanders, Van Hollen, and a list of progressive House members that includes one Michigan House member — Rep. Rashida Tlaib — as well as California Rep. Ro Khanna, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal and more.
Brad Lander, a progressive who recently won a New York City congressional primary with Mamdani’s backing, this week endorsed El-Sayed. It followed Ocasio-Cortez, an influential progressive who has been more cautious with her endorsements, announcing her support for El-Sayed earlier this month.
At El-Sayed’s rally in Grand Rapids — where the crowd was dotted with Bernie Sanders hats, T-shirts and buttons — frustrations with the Democratic Party overall were as prominent as demands for progressive ideology.
In interviews, several attendees brought up El-Sayed’s support for Medicare for All. But it typically came after their complaints about how Democrats have responded to Trump’s presidency.
Brielle Denoyer, a 24-year-old fast food worker from Grand Rapids, said she is “sick of Democrats doing nothing and not actually taking a stand.”
“And they’re all saying, ‘Well, we’re taking a stand against Trump,’ and it’s really just strongly worded tweets and letters and not actually anything that changes anything,” she said.
Christian Villagomez, a 30-year-old service worker in Wyoming, Michigan, said he is looking for “a clean break from everything that has left the party in stagnation.”
He said the argument that El-Sayed is less likely to win in November than Stevens is “complete bupkis.”
“Voter enthusiasm is undeniable here, and that’s where it all stems — the trust between candidates and their constituents. To suggest otherwise is spitting in the face of reality,” he said.
Michelle Guzinski, a 52-year-old assistant director at a childcare center in Nunica, said she is “sick of this two-party politics.”
“The state of our country is scary, and I really want to see more people like him who want to give back to the communities and help people live decent lives,” she said.
Wes Muraoka, a 41-year-old former pharmacy technician who is job-hunting in Grand Rapids, said he likes El-Sayed because “he’s real.”
“He talks to you like a human being, which is rare,” he said. “I’m not Democrat, I am not Republican, I’m not independent, I’m just a human being looking to make a change. So when I see Abdul as a person talking to us about change, talking to us about putting money back in our pocket, taking money out of politics … this is the kind of change we need.”
A rally attended by hundreds of El-Sayed’s supporters is a limited window into a politically complicated state — one where Democrats have nightmares of Trump cracking the so-called “blue wall” twice, in 2016 and 2024, on the way to his two victories.
It was in the middle of Trump’s first term, 2018, that El-Sayed and Stevens — a pair of thirtysomething candidates — both first ran for office.
That year, Stevens and fellow first-time candidate Elissa Slotkin both won seats previously held by Republicans — helping Democrats win a majority and marking the first time since the 1930s that no Republicans had represented Oakland County, which contains most of Detroit’s northern suburbs, in the House. Slotkin now holds Michigan’s other Senate seat.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, ran for governor with the support of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez — but finished a distant second, 22 percentage points behind Gretchen Whitmer in the Democratic primary. He went on to host a podcast, represent Sanders on a task force with Biden supporters focused on health care, and work as Wayne County’s health director.
While Stevens, now 43, tends to steer her speeches and interviews toward the work she’s done, El-Sayed, 41, is much more brash. He brags that he’s a counterpuncher unlike anything Rogers, the Republican, has ever seen. He is omnipresent — appearing in interviews, on podcasts, at rallies and across social media platforms constantly. His appetite for risk includes embracing figures like Piker in spite of the backlash. He’s willing to make viewers cringe — occasionally posting on social media videos of himself and his supporters dancing and lip-syncing, including a video featuring a Taylor Swift song coinciding with the singer’s wedding.
He’s also occasionally glib — as when he told Semafor that Stevens is “a suit with a large AIPAC bank account” and that he hopes “maybe they find some way to teach her how to string together two coherent sentences.”
“That’s just the kind of junk that turns people off, you know. We don’t need to go there,” Stevens said when asked by CNN about El-Sayed’s comment.
She said that “obviously I knew how to speak for myself” when she worked on the auto rescue task force during President Barack Obama’s administration, worked for the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act during Biden’s administration, and told Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a House hearing this spring that he should resign or be impeached over his vaccine skepticism.
“I think I’ve put forward the ideas and the messages on this campaign that are going to bring us together and enable us to beat Mike Rogers in November,” Stevens said. “I flipped a Republican district in 2018, I’ve held it in 2020, and I won those races by speaking directly to the hearts of Michiganders and what they expect and what they need from their lawmakers — which is decency, which is trust and delivery of results.”
El-Sayed has backed away from the personal tone in the days that followed his initial remark.
“I think Haley is very smart,” he told CNN. Still, he said, she is backed by millions of dollars in AIPAC ad spending, and “those checks come with strings.”
“I’m gonna let them burn $50 million of their dollars and still beat their candidate and still come for them when I’m in the US Senate,” El-Sayed said.
Asked about lessons he’s learned since his first run, El-Sayed said the biggest changes have been his age and becoming a father to two daughters.
“I think being a dad has just shown me what it means to show up and unconditionally love somebody, and to show up and take care of them,” he said. “And over time I just got less precious about the critique and a lot more focused on the solution.”
That shift is key to how he envisions winning over Trump voters, he said at a question-and-answer session with attendees after his rally in Grand Rapids.
“With Trump supporters, we’ve got to decide, do we want to get them to recant for what was done in the past, or do we want the partnership to build what we need in the future,” El-Sayed said. “We’ve got to ask how we make common cause with folks about building the things we need and deserve together.”
