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<\/a><\/p>\n(L-r) Michigan U.S. Senate candidates Abdul El-Sayed (D) and Mike Rogers (R) square off in the closing days of the 2026 campaign. (Salwan Georges\/Getty Images; Spencer Platt\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At its center is Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director and Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare For All candidacy has become a rallying cry for the national progressive movement. <\/p>\n
His uncompromising stances on Israel have also made him a target among pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, which has spent heavily against him in both the primary and general election. AIPAC\u2019s rare entry into a general election race came to support El-Sayed\u2019s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers. <\/p>\n
One of El-Sayed\u2019s positions on Israel \u2014 including an end to all U.S. military aid \u2014 was once thought a far-left pipe dream. But that has changed. On Election Day morning, President Donald Trump announced that, under his watch, nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel would wind down by the end of the year. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in agreement with the need to end aid and deny Democratic critics a point of attack.<\/p>\n
In his announcement of the plan, Trump cited El-Sayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should we suffer the slings of lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don\u2019t need it?\u201d Trump said on Fox News, referring to Israel\u2019s financial strength.<\/p>\n
Representatives for the El-Sayed and Rogers campaigns, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, did not immediately return requests for comment on Trump\u2019s new pledge. It is unclear whether it will be straightforward for the White House to halt the funding by the end of 2026, given that the existing memorandum of understanding that governs it extends to 2028.<\/p>\n
At El-Sayed\u2019s election night party as results came in, Michigan senior Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Jewish moderate who campaigned extensively with El-Sayed, referenced \u201call the trauma we had in the last couple of days\u201d \u2014 a likely nod to pro-Israel Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens\u2019 last-minute endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers.<\/p>\n
But Slotkin told the crowd, \u201cThe idea that the state of Michigan can send one Jewish senator, and one Muslim senator, the first time ever, that\u2019s what this is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the first members of the general public to attend El-Sayed\u2019s election night watch party in Detroit was Barbara Weinberg Barefield, who sported a \u201cJews For Abdul\u201d shirt. Barefield, an organizer with the Detroit chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, was emblematic of many of the Jewish early adopters of El-Sayed\u2019s campaign message in that she opposes arms sales to Israel. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are going to be differences, and we\u2019re still going to be dialoguing with Abdul, even when he\u2019s in the Senate,\u201d she said. \u201cThe important thing is, I think we know that he\u2019s going to stand up for our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
El-Sayed\u2019s campaign has galvanized young voters and a range of other constituencies, and he pulled ahead in the polls in the race\u2019s final stretch. But his questioning of Israel\u2019s existence as a Jewish state and whether it or Iran posed a greater threat to the United States, as well as his prior associations with figures such as Hasan Piker, the streamer who has spread extreme rhetoric about American Jews, have sparked concern among Jewish Michiganders. <\/p>\n
So, too, did comments the candidate made following the March terror attack on Temple Israel, a major synagogue in the state, in which El-Sayed appeared to link the attack to Israel\u2019s war in Lebanon after reports that the attacker lost family in an Israeli strike. Hostile behavior from some of El-Sayed\u2019s supporters toward pro-Israel Democrats, most prominently on display at the state party\u2019s spring convention, have also alarmed Jews. El-Sayed has pledged to stand up to antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Some Jews who had long considered themselves Democrats, including several local Jewish leaders, have cited such controversies in pledging to vote for Rogers. In some Michigan Jewish neighborhoods, yard signs proclaim that a vote for Rogers is a vote \u201cagainst antisemitism.\u201d <\/p>\n
Accordingly, Rogers has made a play for the Jewish vote. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October that his opponent is \u201canti-Jew,\u201d while running ads that played up El-Sayed\u2019s tenuous family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood. <\/p>\n
Top Republicans have seized on the narrative, with Trump calling Jews \u201ccrazy\u201d if they back El-Sayed, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calling him a national security threat. A Trump administration event to address antisemitism was held at a Michigan synagogue weeks before the election, though El-Sayed\u2019s name was not mentioned there.<\/p>\n
Jewish Democrats who had broken with El-Sayed found major validation in the race\u2019s dramatic closing days. Democrat Haley Stevens, a strongly pro-Israel congresswoman who had narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, flipped sides to endorse Rogers days after her Jewish fianc\u00e9, a Democratic megadonor, did the same. <\/p>\n
The surprise move, which Jewish Democratic leaders joined many other prominent Democrats in criticizing, came after days of back-and-forth between Stevens and El-Sayed as she sought to publicly pressure him to condemn a PAC ad that had linked rising grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, some prominent Jewish Democrats in the state either avoided endorsing El-Sayed or did so with heavy reservations. Michigan\u2019s Jewish Democratic Caucus, whose leadership has been deeply divided on El-Sayed, issued a statement Monday declaring the caucus would never vote for a Republican.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur commitment to the Democratic ticket remains resolute as we work to build a more inclusive coalition,\u201d the caucus stated.<\/p>\n
Throughout the campaign, El-Sayed has 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 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview that Israel has a right to exist; and sent mailers to Jewish households stating, \u201cI am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice.\u201d He told JTA in August that \u201cthe prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 1,000 Michigan Jews have signed an open letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed, compared to 560 who have done the same for Rogers. Progressive Jewish figures of note have held salons throughout the state in a bid to convince on-the-fence Jews to back him.<\/p>\n
Yet El-Sayed also has continued to stake out positions many Jews find alienating. He asserted in the campaign\u2019s closing weeks that Israel was \u201cnot actually our friend\u201d and declined during a debate to say whether Israel or Iran was the bigger danger to the U.S. His campaign also released an ad, designed to appeal to conservatives, that featured a brief clip of Tucker Carlson, the right-wing pundit who has promoted conspiracy theories about Israel. In addition, El-Sayed\u2019s careful sidestepping of objectionable material about Jews and Israel from his ostensible allies, such as Piker and his uncle, left-wing anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, has continued up to Election Day.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Election Day, some liberal-leaning Zionist Jews tried to put pressure on El-Sayed to speak more directly to their concerns. A group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders launched Nonnegotiable Michigan in a bid to have him affirm what they called five core principles of Jewish participation in the Democratic Party, including \u201cJewish sovereignty in Israel.\u201d After silence from the campaign, some of Nonnegotiable\u2019s figureheads urged their followers to write in the 19th-century Jewish poet \u201cEmma Lazarus\u201d instead of voting for either candidate.<\/p>\n
Michigan\u2019s already small Jewish population, which numbers around 105,000 adults, has further splintered over El-Sayed\u2019s candidacy. But it could prove pivotal to the outcome of a race that may determine control of the chamber. In 2024, the state\u2019s Senate race was decided by fewer than 20,000 votes. <\/p>\n
Either way, the race has crystallized the Democratic Party\u2019s shifting fault lines over Israel \u2014 and many Jews\u2019 growing uneasiness with their place in the liberal coalition.<\/p>\n