One socialist consultant said Michigan is ‘absolutely the next focus of this national movement’
Fresh off a series of wins in deep-blue House districts in New York and Colorado, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are homing in on Michigan in an attempt to propel left-wing insurgent Abdul El-Sayed to victory in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.
DSA officials have “already shifted organizers, volunteers and resources” into Michigan as El-Sayed squares off against the more moderate congresswoman Haley Stevens in a bruising Democratic primary, Politico reported. El-Sayed’s campaign has also held discussions with the DSA about holding rallies in the state with left-wing officials like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), who recently endorsed El-Sayed, according to Politico.
“It’s DSA summer. We can’t stop racking up wins,” left-wing media host Emma Vigeland told the outlet. “We’re seeing the culmination of 10 years of democratic socialism becoming more mainstream.”
The DSA’s organizing in Michigan is notable given that El-Sayed is not officially a DSA member—and that he’s running for Senate in a swing state that narrowly backed President Donald Trump in 2024. Socialist candidates like Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York City and Melat Kiros in Denver, by contrast, won primary elections in deep-blue districts that are almost guaranteed to send them to Congress come November.
“Abdul El-Sayed is not DSA affiliated, but he’s a progressive fighter,” anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed in April, told Politico.
“Everybody in the coalition is on the same page, whether it be Justice Dems, whether it be [the Working Families Party], whether it be DSA,” added left-wing consultant Vincent Vertuccio, who said that Michigan is “absolutely the next focus of this national movement.”
El-Sayed, like Chevalier, Valdez, and Kiros, has made opposition to the “pro-Israel lobby” a centerpiece of his campaign. Earlier this month, he said he was “honored” to accept an endorsement from an Arab-American lobbying group whose leader called for Israeli Jews to be “sent back to Poland,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. During a May debate, El-Sayed sidestepped a question about whether the Democratic Party has an antisemitism problem and instead accused Israel of committing “apartheid and genocide.”
El-Sayed has sparked controversy with his comments on terrorism as well, saying on a campaign call that he would not take a position on the assassination of former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei because “a lot of people” in Muslim-majority Dearborn were “sad” about Khamenei’s death. A day after a Dearborn Heights resident carried out a Hezbollah-inspired attack on a synagogue in Michigan in March, El-Sayed released a video statement denouncing the attack but stating that the terrorist “lost family, including two children, in an airstrike in Lebanon last week. They were innocent people.” The gunman’s brother was a Hezbollah commander.
El-Sayed is considered the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race to take on Republican congressman Mike Rogers in November, having long maintained a polling lead over Stevens and state senator Mallory McMorrow, who suspended her campaign on Sunday. While no fresh polling has been conducted in the wake of McMorrow’s departure from the race, a poll the El-Sayed campaign commissioned before McMorrow quit shows El-Sayed with a 20-point lead over Stevens, according to Semafor.
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