GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat running for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, said Saturday that party insiders are questioning his electability in part because he is Muslim.
A newly released poll, however, points to a simpler political explanation.
Making one of his final appeals before Tuesday’s Democratic primary, El-Sayed forcefully rejected the argument that he cannot win a general election, saying opponents are using that claim to discourage voters from supporting him.
“When they say I’m not electable, they’re not talking about me,” El-Sayed told supporters at a Grand Rapids rally on Saturday.
“They’re saying that you couldn’t possibly be open-minded enough … to elect somebody with a name like mine who prays like I do in a state like ours.”
El-Sayed is in a closely watched Democratic Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens, who has drawn significant financial support from political action committees, including one affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Spending in the contest has reached $60 million, making it a potential record-setter as the most expensive Democratic primary in history.
At a Sunday church service at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, a parishioner told Stevens, “Miss Stevens, we know you’re gonna kick that Muslim’s butt,” the Detroit News reported.
Stevens rejected the remark aimed at El-Sayed, responding, “You know what, we’re here for Michigan.”
A recent EPIC-MRA poll had El-Sayed losing to Republican Mike Rogers 46% to 43% in a theoretical general election but Stevens (D-Mich.) winning 44% to 42%.
But the Bernie Sanders-backed El-Sayed is still the frontrunner in most polling in the Democratic primary — even as Stevens boasts support from more traditional pillars of the party.
El-Sayed, a former public-health official, is leaning hard on his personal identity.
He joked Saturday about how his full name, “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” is a mouthful and recounted former President Bill Clinton suggesting he should run for president after hearing him deliver a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in 2007.
“Did you see my name, though?” he recalled asking Slick Willy at the time.
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He also cited the uneasiness he felt people had around Muslims and Arab Americans such as himself after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Later during his riff on questions about how formidable he is in a general election, El-Sayed urged his backers to remind detractors “that electability has nothing to do with the color of your skin or how you pray or what your name is.
“Electability has a lot more to do with whether or not you see what is possible when all of us come together around our shared values,” he said.
He cited the election of Barack Obama, who he noted also has a unique name, as evidence that voters are open-minded enough to back someone such as himself.
Some of El-Sayed’s top critics have raised electability concerns about him over his lefty positions and courting of controversial left-wing firebrands such as streamer Hasan Piker.
Piker said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11″ and argued years later that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was a “direct consequence” of Israeli actions, claiming that if the terror group engaged in rape, it “doesn’t change the dynamic for me.”
El-Sayed has distanced himself from Piker’s more repulsive remarks but argued that he doesn’t believe in “cancel culture” and has stumped with Piker during the campaign.
The former health director of Wayne County and the city of Detroit has also attracted support from the far-left of his party, including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
He has taken hardcore lefty positions such as backing Medicare for all with no copays or deductibles. But at the same time, he insists he is still a capitalist.
“It is the idea that you allow supply and demand to allocate capital at the micro level to enable people to make money in sustainable ways,” he told reporters Saturday when asked about why he supports capitalism.
“The part that I have trouble with is that we don’t live in capitalism, we live in corporatism, where we allow big corporations to move capital based on the interests of shareholders and a quarterly bottom line.”
El-Sayed has delighted the lefty base by opposing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as the Democratic leader in the upper chamber, preferring Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) instead. However, on Saturday, when pressed by The Post, El-Sayed gave himself some wiggle room on that.
“A vote is a choice between two or more options. I don’t know what other options are. If it happened to be a guy named John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, or Chuck Schumer, well then, I’d make a different decision,” he replied when asked if he is 100% ruling out the possibility of backing Schumer.
El-Sayed also told The Post he would back Stevens if she wins the nomination.
