Michigan Senate Race Tests Democratic Ties With Jewish Voters as Polls Close

Voters headed to the polls Tuesday in a deeply contentious US Senate race in Michigan that has strained Jewish relationships with the Democratic Party and could shape which party controls the chamber.

At the center of the contest is Abdul El-Sayed, a former county health director and the Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare For All candidacy has become a rallying cry for the national progressive movement. His uncompromising stances on Israel, including a call to end all US military aid, made him a target of pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC, which spent heavily against him in both the primary and general election in a rare general election intervention on behalf of his Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers.

On Election Day morning, President Donald Trump announced that nearly $4 billion in annual US military aid to Israel would wind down by the end of the year under his watch, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed with ending the aid and denying Democratic critics a point of attack. Trump cited El-Sayed in the announcement, saying on Fox News, "Why should we suffer the slings like lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don't need it?" Representatives for both campaigns and for the Republican Jewish Coalition did not immediately return requests for comment, and it remains unclear whether the White House can halt the funding by the end of 2026, since the memorandum of understanding governing it extends through 2028.

El-Sayed galvanized young voters and other constituencies and pulled ahead in polling in the race's final stretch. But his questioning of Israel's existence as a Jewish state, his refusal to say whether Israel or Iran posed a greater threat to the United States, and past associations with figures such as streamer Hasan Piker sparked concern among Jewish Michiganders. So did comments he made after the March terror attack on Temple Israel, a major synagogue in the state, in which he appeared to link the attack to Israel's war in Lebanon following reports that the attacker lost family in an Israeli strike. Hostile behavior by some of his supporters toward pro-Israel Democrats, most prominently at the state party's spring convention, also alarmed Jews. El-Sayed has pledged to stand up to antisemitism.

Some Jews who long considered themselves Democrats, including several local Jewish leaders, cited those controversies in pledging to vote for Rogers, and yard signs in some Michigan Jewish neighborhoods declared that a vote for Rogers was a vote "against antisemitism." Rogers made a direct play for Jewish voters, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October that his opponent is "anti-Jew" and running ads highlighting El-Sayed's tenuous family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood. Top Republicans amplified the message, with Trump calling Jews "crazy" if they backed El-Sayed and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz labeling him a national security threat, while a Trump administration event addressing antisemitism was held at a Michigan synagogue weeks before the election.

Jewish Democrats who broke with El-Sayed found major validation in the race's dramatic closing days, when Rep. Haley Stevens, a strongly pro-Israel congresswoman who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, endorsed Rogers days after her Jewish fiancé, a Democratic megadonor, did the same. The surprise move drew criticism from Jewish Democratic leaders and many other prominent Democrats, and it followed days of public sparring in which Stevens pressed El-Sayed to condemn a PAC ad that linked rising grocery prices to US aid to Israel. Meanwhile, Michigan's Jewish Democratic Caucus, whose leadership was deeply divided, issued a statement Monday declaring the caucus would never vote for a Republican, saying: "Our commitment to the Democratic ticket remains resolute as we work to build a more inclusive coalition."

Throughout the campaign, El-Sayed sought to reassure Jewish voters. He apologized for his Temple Israel comments, distanced himself from Piker, hired a Jewish outreach director, said in a recent "60 Minutes" interview that Israel has a right to exist, and sent mailers to Jewish households stating, "I am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice." He told JTA in August that "the prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me." More than 1,000 Michigan Jews signed an open letter pledging to vote for him, compared with 560 who did so for Rogers, and progressive Jewish figures held salons across the state to persuade undecided voters.

Yet El-Sayed continued to stake out positions many Jews found alienating, asserting in the closing weeks that Israel was "not actually our friend" and declining during a debate to say whether Israel or Iran was the bigger danger to the United States. His campaign also released an ad aimed at conservatives featuring a brief clip of Tucker Carlson, and his sidestepping of objectionable material about Jews and Israel from allies such as Piker and his uncle, left-wing pundit Cenk Uygur, continued up to Election Day. A group of rabbis and Jewish leaders launched Nonnegotiable Michigan to press him to affirm five core principles of Jewish participation in the Democratic Party, including "Jewish sovereignty in Israel," and after silence from the campaign, some of its figureheads urged followers to write in the 19th-century Jewish poet "Emma Lazarus" rather than vote for either candidate.

Michigan's Jewish population of around 105,000 adults splintered further over El-Sayed's candidacy, but it could prove pivotal: the state's 2024 Senate race was decided by fewer than 20,000 votes. Whatever the outcome, the contest has crystallized the Democratic Party's shifting fault lines over Israel and many Jews' growing uneasiness with their place in the liberal coalition.