Many US Jews likely experienced the same emotions following Tuesday’s Democratic primary victory in Michigan of stridently anti-Israel Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as they did last year after Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary.
First came shock and disbelief that a candidate espousing such virulently anti-Israel positions could prevail. Then came the hope that somehow he would lose the general election.
With Mamdani, that hope proved futile. With El-Sayed, it may not.
Polls show a very tight race heading into November between the far-left El-Sayed – whom the moderate Democrat he defeated, Haley Stevens, said wants to pin all his woes on Jewish Americans – and former Congressman Mike Rogers. But it is important to remember that Michigan is not New York.
That may sound obvious, but in the rush to extrapolate broad national trends from every primary election, it is a distinction worth remembering.
New York City is about as Democratic as a city can be, in a deep-blue state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Michigan, by contrast, is one of the country’s quintessential swing states. It voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and Republicans now control both chambers of the state legislature. Even with its large Muslim population, Michigan’s political and demographic makeup is considerably less favorable to El-Sayed than New York’s was to Mamdani.
And that raises an important question. It is now clear that the Democratic Party has reached the point where a candidate with El-Sayed’s positions can win a Democratic primary. But does that necessarily mean such a candidate can win a statewide general election in a swing state?
In New York City, for instance, if you win the Democratic Party primary, you are all but assured of winning the general election for mayor or Congress. But that is by no means the case in a statewide general election in a swing state.
The race in Michigan will now pose a genuine dilemma for many of the state’s Jews. Do they vote for a candidate who advocates an arms embargo on Israel – meaning he would oppose even the sale of defensive systems such as Iron Dome – and who, on Wednesday morning after the election, called Israel “bloodthirsty” and said his problem with Israel goes beyond Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has to do with a longstanding “illegal apartheid regime”? Or do they vote for Rogers, the Republican candidate, with whom they may disagree on a range of social and economic issues?
New York Jews confronted a similar choice with Mamdani, and roughly one-third voted for him. Since then, he has continued to libel the Jewish state while helping mainstream anti-Israel rhetoric that only a few years ago would have been considered beyond the pale.
Will Michigan’s Jews make the same calculation? According to the Jewish Institute for the Electorate, there are some 130,000 Jews in Michigan – of whom an estimated 44% are Democrats and 36% independents – and the movement of a few thousand of these voters to the Republican, pro-Israel candidate could make all the difference in November’s election.
And the stakes extend well beyond Michigan.
Democrats seeking to end Republican control of Senate
Democrats view the Michigan Senate race as essential if they hope to regain control of the Senate. For many lifelong Democrats, that creates an agonizing political choice. Do they vote for their party, despite deep discomfort with El-Sayed’s views on a wide range of issues, including Israel? Or do they vote Republican – or stay home – knowing that doing so could help keep the Senate in Republican hands?
The same dilemma will confront voters in Maine, where they too will choose between a hard-left Democrat and a moderate Republican in a race that could help determine which party controls the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – who in front of Jewish audiences often says that his name derives from the Hebrew shomer (guardian) and that he views himself as a guardian of the Jewish people and Israel – has already endorsed El-Sayed following his primary victory.
Some will argue that El-Sayed is simply unelectable in a statewide general election. They will point to his far-left politics, his comments regarding 9/11, and other positions they believe place him well outside the political mainstream.
Perhaps.
But “unelectable” is a term that has lost much of its meaning.
Many people were convinced Donald Trump could never win a general election when he emerged from the crowded 2016 Republican primary field. They were wrong.
In today’s America, yesterday’s “unelectable” candidates increasingly turn out to be quite electable.
Michigan candidates leaning away from activist Left
Still, there are reasons to believe Michigan may prove different.
Michigan Democrats have won recent statewide races by nominating candidates such as Elissa Slotkin for senator and Gretchen Whitmer for governor, politicians who appeal to the political center rather than the activist Left.
Rogers is also not to be easily dismissed. A former Army lieutenant and FBI special agent who focused on organized crime and public corruption, he served seven terms in Congress and, in 2024, lost to Slotkin by just 25,000 votes – about one-third of one percentage point.
Nor did El-Sayed exactly sweep into the nomination. He defeated Stevens by less than one percentage point, or roughly 15,000 votes. It is reasonable to assume that at least some Democrats who supported Stevens in the primary will balk in November at El-Sayed’s positions and either cross party lines or simply stay home.
Rogers, moreover, is not easily caricatured as a MAGA firebrand. Though he has aligned himself with Trump, he remains very much an establishment conservative, something that could make him a more acceptable option for moderate Democrats than a more populist Republican nominee would have been.
Which brings us to the irony.
Had Stevens won the Democratic primary, Democrats might well have entered the general election as favorites, just as they did with Slotkin two years ago.
Instead, by choosing a candidate riding the Democratic Socialist wave flooding the party, they may have selected someone less able to win where elections in swing states are generally decided – in the political middle.
If that happens, El-Sayed’s primary victory could ultimately cost Democrats control of the Senate.
And for those whose overriding concern is preserving strong US support for Israel – and who are watching the Democratic Party’s trajectory on that issue with growing unease – that may not necessarily be viewed as a particularly bad outcome.