ANALYSIS – Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed, the Socialist Who Is Shaking the Senate — and Raising Alarms Among Counterterrorism Experts
By Angélique Bouchard
Abdul El-Sayed defeated the Democratic establishment candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens, and won the Senate primary in Michigan. He will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers — who ran unopposed in the GOP primary — in November for the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters. More than $80 million was spent on the primary, making it the most expensive Democratic Senate nomination contest in history. Beyond the money and the progressive fault lines, his candidacy raises questions of homeland security, antisemitism, and the ideological direction of the party.
A Bitter Primary, a “More Extreme” Candidate
An epidemiologist, former Wayne County health director, and unsuccessful candidate for governor in 2018, El-Sayed presents himself as a hard-line progressive: Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, fierce criticism of Israel — which he accuses of “genocide” in Gaza — and a rejection of corporate campaign funding. He received the endorsements of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Stevens was backed by Chuck Schumer, Gretchen Whitmer, and the retiring Gary Peters, who told Fox News Digital that “it doesn’t happen if we lose Michigan.” Mallory McMorrow, also in the race, suspended her campaign but remained on the ballot; the contest effectively narrowed to Stevens and El-Sayed.
El-Sayed stressed that pro-Israel groups, notably the United Democracy Project aligned with AIPAC, had spent heavily against him: “We all knew that they were going to spend their money. We didn’t know they were going to spend $70 million of their money. We didn’t know that they were going to outspend us $11 to $1. And yet we’re still standing.”
On the Republican side, there is no pretense of preference. A GOP operative told Fox News Digital: “Abdul El-Sayed has emerged from this cycle’s Democratic primary more damaged than ever and susceptible to more onslaughts of criticism from within their own party.” Mike Rogers summed it up: “We feel confident we’re going to beat either one of those candidates that come out of that race. They’ve both gone off to the left. They are very radical, and they are way too extreme for Michigan. […] Abdul, he has his own special sauce of crazy.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Bernadette Breslin said: “Abdul El-Sayed’s victory marks another devastating loss for Chuck Schumer in his civil war with Bernie Sanders as Democrats position Mike Rogers to defeat socialism’s newest standard-bearer in November.”
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Homeland Security: Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, Emgage, and the “Red-Green” Alliance
At a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Muslim Brotherhood threats in the United States — boycotted by every Democrat on the panel — Sen. Ted Cruz asked Center for Security Policy counterterrorism analyst Kyle Shideler whether El-Sayed’s candidacy raised such concerns.
“Yes sir, it does,” Shideler replied. He detailed alleged family ties: the candidate’s father-in-law, nephrologist Jukaku Tayeb, had at one time been president of CAIR-Michigan and served on the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Founders Committee. According to Shideler, that committee is “only for those most exclusively devoted to ISNA and provide significant amounts of funding.” “There are other known [Muslim] Brotherhood members on that committee,” he added. Tayeb also donated $300,000 to an independent super PAC supporting his son-in-law’s candidacy — family funding that sits in tension with El-Sayed’s own insistence on the need to “get money out of politics.”
Shideler also pointed to El-Sayed’s ties to Emgage, a voter-engagement and candidate-recruitment organization he described as closely tied to CAIR. “It was created by a former CAIR member who at one time was on a terror watchlist, and was also a consultant to convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian,” he testified. Khurrum Wahid, an Emgage founding member and attorney, had already drawn criticism in 2012 when the Times of Israel faulted Debbie Wasserman Schultz for speaking at a fundraiser hosted by Wahid, then described as listed on the federal terror watch list and a legal defender of terrorism suspects. In 2006, Sami al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the federally designated terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Cruz broadened the frame to the “Red-Green Alliance” between radical Islam and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). “Does the Muslim Brotherhood also partner with political groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America?” Cruz asked. “Yessir, they do,” Shideler testified. When Cruz spoke of a shared hatred of Western civilization, democracy, and capitalism, Shideler went further: “It’s also united around a revolutionary objective advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. Constitution.” He also affirmed that the Muslim Brotherhood has active chapters or cells within the United States.
A Fox News Digital review found that El-Sayed, who campaigns on the theme of getting “money out of politics,” has accepted donations from at least 41 individuals tied in one form or another to CAIR, including his father-in-law Tayeb. Fox News Digital reached out to Wahid’s law firm and to El-Sayed’s campaign for comment.
El-Sayed has also drawn criticism for declining to comment on the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, citing neighbors in mourning in the heavily Muslim city of Dearborn. That silence, against a backdrop of geopolitical tension and debates over influence networks, fed the questions already raised at the Senate hearing.
Lara Burns, a retired FBI special agent who helped lead a terrorism-financing investigation into what was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Holy Land Foundation, told the same hearing: “For decades, narratives have been intentionally seeded into public discourse that portray terrorist organizations as resistance movements. […] [One cannot] ignore evidence introduced in federal court simply because that evidence is politically uncomfortable. The history of this network is not in question. It was made public decades ago, but few paid attention. Now is the time to pay attention and understand the facts.”
Antisemitism, Hasan Piker, the Democratic Boycott, and the Party’s Fracture
In a state that is home to one of the nation’s largest Arab American populations, El-Sayed’s candidacy has crystallized the fears of many Jewish voters, especially after the March 2026 terrorist attack on Temple Israel in Bloomfield Hills — an attacker rammed into the building, leaving debris and a damaged doorway in the synagogue’s childcare center.
On CNN, asked by Manu Raju whether Israel was “just as evil” as Hamas, El-Sayed answered: “Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil. It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil. Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.” He added that he “absolutely” considers Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal: “When you conduct a genocide, you’re a war criminal.”
He has also campaigned alongside far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, including at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, and at a Detroit “pool party” for content creators. Piker has said the United States “deserved” September 11, that Hamas was “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state” of Israel, and, on Pod Save America, that he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time” as a “harm-reduction” voter. El-Sayed partly distanced himself: “Obviously, I don’t agree with some of the statements Hasan has made. But we play this game where we platform police and pretend that we’re not allowed to talk to certain groups of people because they said something we disagree with. That’s just not how the world works.”
After the primary, Piker attacked Democrats critical of El-Sayed head-on: “Like everyone being like, Abdul has a f— ton of work to do mending bridges. Here’s the f—ing take nuke for you, OK? You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of s—, OK? […] Do you want to f—ing win or not? Lock the f— in, OK?” He also framed the unity question as a test: whether pro-Israel groups, NGOs, and consultants would “shut the f— up about El-Sayed being a terrorist for a long enough timeline” so the base could consolidate and defeat the Republican.
Steve Cohen, a Michigan resident, told Fox News Digital: “I’m a lifelong Michigan resident, and when somebody runs for office in our state, it’s always been somebody who is not based on hate. Mr. El-Sayed not only is spewing hate, but he’s spewing it at political conventions and everywhere. With our history in Michigan, it’s shameful. He’s not a qualified candidate.” Another resident, Howard, described the state Democratic convention: activists had “flooded the convention with voters” after registering as Democrats within 30 days, shouted down Haley Stevens and anyone who had supported Israel; “many residents left frightened by what they saw.”
Jesse Arm, vice president at the Manhattan Institute and a pollster originally from Michigan, said the race has become “a proxy fight over whether Michigan Democrats remain a normal political party or continue drifting toward a faction that treats antisemitism and anti-American extremism as tolerable. For many Michiganders, not just Jewish voters, the question of whether the people seeking power take their safety seriously is no longer abstract.”
According to the American Jewish Committee’s 2025 State of Antisemitism in America report, 91% of American Jews surveyed said recent violent antisemitic attacks have increased their concerns about safety. Earlier, Mallory McMorrow — then running against El-Sayed, before suspending her campaign while remaining on the ballot — said her Jewish husband had been accosted by a Michigan Democratic activist who directed an antisemitic slur at him in front of their 5-year-old daughter.
Every Democrat on the subcommittee — Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Alex Padilla, Peter Welch — boycotted the Muslim Brotherhood hearing. Cruz opened by pointing to the empty chairs: “The American people should ask themselves why not a single member of the minority decided that a hearing on terrorism was worth their time? It is an embarrassment.” He tied the timing to El-Sayed’s victory: “Abdul El-Sayed, the son-in-law of a leading member of several Brotherhood groups, won Michigan’s Democrat primary for U.S. Senate. Perfect timing for this hearing. Probably explains why no Democrats are here.”
In a joint statement, the senators accused Cruz of staging a “political creepshow” that scapegoated Muslim Americans, “particularly after the recent violence targeting places of faith.” Blumenthal told reporters the hearing “could well be used as an anti-Muslim, Islamophobia kind of show trial.” Cruz and the witnesses rejected that characterization. Lara Burns insisted the facts on these networks have been public for decades; “now is the time to pay attention.”
Liz Peek stresses the strategic stakes: the Michigan contest could well determine whether Democrats take over the Senate in November and effectively shut down the Trump agenda. If El-Sayed wins the primary but loses in November, the progressive left will lose steam heading into 2028; if he prevails, it will be a strong signal. RealClearPolitics averages showed Stevens better positioned than El-Sayed against Rogers. The UAW nonetheless endorsed El-Sayed, despite Stevens’s ties to the Obama-era Auto Industry Task Force. Peek also notes a “paper-thin” résumé: Detroit health director (2015–2017), departure to run for governor, then Wayne County from 2023, left to run for Senate — with claims about the juvenile detention facility scrutinized by local fact-checkers.
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Abdul El-Sayed is not merely a progressive who beat the establishment. His candidacy concentrates the Democratic Party’s fractures: Israel, lobby money, democratic socialism, alliance with radical figures, and now homeland-security questions raised in a Senate hearing — a father-in-law tied to CAIR and ISNA and a $300,000 donor, Emgage, 41 donors tied to CAIR, the “red-green” alliance, silence on Khamenei in the name of mourning in Dearborn, a Democratic boycott of a counterterrorism hearing. Across from him, Mike Rogers, unopposed in the Republican primary and backed by Michigan’s full GOP ecosystem, embodies the camp that already preferred the “more extreme” nominee for November. Peters had warned: without Michigan, no path to retaking the Senate. Between Shideler’s alerts, Jewish community fears after Temple Israel, Piker’s support, and the national fight for control of the upper chamber, Michigan has become a test.
In November, voters will decide. Not only between two candidates. Between two visions of what the Democratic Party — and the country — is prepared to tolerate.
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