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DEMOCRATS FACE MOST CONTENTIOUS – AND CRUCIAL – TEST YET WITH
MICHIGAN PRIMARY  
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Rachel Leingang
August 2, 2026
The Guardian
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_ Voters are faced with the thorny question of electability: who can
win this purple state in November and potentially push Democrats
toward a US Senate majority? _

Left: Abdul El-Sayed, right: Haley Stevens. , Composite: Robin
Buckson/The Detroit News via AP

 

At Chad Green’s house in Davison, Michigan
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roamed around the idyllic green lawn as US senators pitched a couple
dozen voters on why they should turn out for the hopeful one, Abdul
El-Sayed.

Green, a retired federal firefighter, hosted a similar small gathering
for Mallory McMorrow, who was running for the US Senate
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of the race in early July, narrowing the contest to El-Sayed, a
progressive insurgent campaigning for universal healthcare, and US
representative Haley Stevens, who has branded herself as a workhorse.

Green, 54, sees himself as a more moderate Democrat, and originally
aligned with McMorrow. After she dropped out, he looked into El-Sayed
and Stevens, and resonated more with El-Sayed’s policies.

“I’ve never seen people more excited about a candidate,” Green
said. “I feel like there’s not going to be excitement for the
Republicans to vote. And I feel like there is excitement for Democrats
[[link removed]] to vote for Abdul.”

The Michigan primary is, perhaps, the most contentious Democratic
primary this year – and a test for the party’s future. Voters are
weighing the policies and personalities of the candidates as they once
again consider the thorny
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question of electability: who can win this purple state in November,
and potentially push the party towards a majority in the Senate?

Recent surveys have shown El-Sayed pulling ahead. A nonpartisan
Emerson poll
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this week of likely Democratic voters found 54% intended to vote for
El-Sayed compared to 39% for Stevens, with a stark age divide. Voters
under 50 broke for El-Sayed by 42 percentage points, while voters over
60 preferred Stevens by a 14-point margin, it showed. Independents
were siding with El-Sayed by a 27-point margin.

Stevens, 43, has represented Michigan’s 11th House district since
2019, after flipping the seat. She has been endorsed by Senate
minority leader Chuck Schumer, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and
Gary Peters, the retiring senator who holds the seat she and El-Sayed,
41, are now running for.

Haley Stevens poses for a photo with attendees during an event with
Detroit Seniors. Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters

El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who served in health director roles in
Detroit and its county, counts leading progressive officials among his
supporters, including US senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van
Hollen, who rallied with him in Michigan last weekend alongside a host
of representatives and former elected officials.

The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary will face Mike Rogers, a
former congressman from the state who was also the Republican nominee
for US Senate in 2024, when he lost to Elissa Slotkin.

El-Sayed, often mentioned alongside democratic socialists who have won
a string of party primaries ahead of this year’s US midterm
elections, is not himself a democratic socialist: he says he is a
“capitalist who understands how capitalism works”, and wants to
regulate monopolies and oligopolies.

But the race has become a key focal point in the rise of the left
flank of the Democratic party, and its potential limits – especially
after a wave of wins in solidly blue districts across the country.

More than $40m has poured into the race from outside groups supporting
Stevens or attacking El-Sayed, including from
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groups associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(Aipac), a pro-Israel lobby. AdImpact shows
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in ad reservations and spending to benefit Stevens.

Misleading
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ads have attacked El-Sayed for “disrespecting women” while tying
Stevens to Barack Obama, who has not endorsed in the race, but
previously praised Stevens’ work on the auto industry rescue plan.
The Obama connection sits prominently in the minds of some Black
voters in Michigan, who cite Stevens’ work with the former US
president as key to their vote in the primary.

El-Sayed has seized on the major outside spending against him and
turned it into a central line of attack against Stevens. Stevens
points to an A-rating from End Citizens United, a group dedicated to
getting money out of politics, and says she feels “very strongly”
about campaign finance reform.

While talking to reporters outside Plymouth United Church of Christ in
Detroit last Sunday, Stevens held up a note passed to her during the
church service from a member of the congregation. “Had I known that
you would be at church today, I would have brought my checkbook,”
the letter said, according to Stevens, who added that most of her
direct campaign contributions come from small donors.

Bernie Sanders, Abdul El-Sayed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally
in Grand Rapids in July. Photograph: Chris duMond/Shutterstock

In the waning days of the primary, Stevens attacked El-Sayed for not
releasing his full financial disclosures, which he subsequently did.
She also often accuses El-Sayed of seeking fame, pointing to his
previous podcast, which he co-hosted for Crooked Media, his book, and
a website purchase for El-Sayed for president.

El-Sayed said he purchased URLs for various offices as a defensive
maneuver so others couldn’t snap up the websites and use them
against him, and said he doesn’t understand the line of attack on
podcasts or books: “I would think that you’d want to send a
nominee who’s comfortable doing podcasts.”

The campaign has grown increasingly tense in its final weeks. Earlier
this month, El-Sayed faced backlash over remarks that he later
clarified were in reference to Democratic senator John Fetterman of
Pennsylvania – not his primary rival. El-Sayed had said a left-wing
victory over Fetterman – who campaigned as a progressive but has
moved sharply to the right in office, particularly on Israel – would
be akin to putting an “ogre on a pike”. Stevens responded:
“Thank you for clarifying that you didn’t call me an ogre.”

And in a Twitter post
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Stevens criticized a video where El-Sayed criticized Aipac, with
Stevens saying: “Everyone in America understands you want to blame
all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”

Stevens said she isn’t campaigning on “false promises” or
“slogans”, a nod to El-Sayed’s central issue of the Medicare for
All proposal of universal healthcare. “I am offering a path to win,
to make sure that Mike Rogers goes back to Florida for a second time,
so that he doesn’t get to go into the Senate and return nothing for
us, just rubber-stamping Donald Trump,” she told reporters last
weekend.

El-Sayed contends that universal healthcare requires fundamentally
changing Congress – by electing politicians who will fight for it.
“If you don’t fight for certain things, you’re never going to
get them,” he told the Guardian.

Where the voters go

Stevens stood in front of Black congregations on a recent Sunday
morning, joining in worship services before telling the churchgoers
who she was, and what she could deliver.

Black voters – who make up about 20% of the Democratic primary
electorate – have expressed some skepticism
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of El-Sayed. Black voters in the state have tended to side with more
moderate candidates in primaries. Polls
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show Black voters overall siding with Stevens.

At Hartford Memorial Baptist church in Detroit, Stevens mentions Obama
and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House of
Representatives. She says she prayed for her parents. Her dad, she
said, always told her: “Do not be the smartest person in any room;
be the hardest working.”

Later, at Plymouth United Church of Christ, she told the congregation
that she “could have stayed comfortable” in her House seat.

Haley Stevens in Detroit. Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Scott Benson, a Detroit city councilman and a deacon at Plymouth, said
he’s been a longtime supporter of Stevens because of her focus on
“kitchen-table issues”. He worked with El-Sayed when he was the
city’s health director, he added, but El-Sayed’s politics don’t
align with his.

“I am very pragmatic. I’m very kitchen table. I’m about jobs,”
Benson said. “Other issues just really don’t align with mine and
so, great guy, but Haley Stevens’ policies align with mine, and her
effectiveness as a legislator is also a very big deal to me.”

After services ended at Plymouth, people stopped to get photos with
Stevens and tell her she had their vote . One woman said she had seen
Stevens’ actions, including the work she did under Obama. “I know
that there was hope then,” she said. “There’s more hope for us
now in Michigan.”

Willie Goston, 71, of Redford, said he and his wife filled out their
ballots two weeks ago – two votes for Stevens. He knew he would vote
for Stevens right away, citing her work with Obama, and her connection
with US representative James Clyburn, a longtime South Carolina
legislator.

“She’s an amazing politician, and she seems like she’s honest,
seems like she’s not going to go back behind and do no underhanded
stuff,” said Goston.

On Sunday afternoon, in Rouge Park in Detroit, volunteers and
supporters of El-Sayed rallied, getting egg rolls and ice cream from
food trucks as they listened to elected officials and activists talk
about the candidate, frequently calling on his central slogan:
“Money out of politics, money in your pockets, Medicare for All.”

El-Sayed has hosted rallies and door-knocking launches throughout the
campaign, his ground game aided by groups like the Working Families
Party, the United Auto Workers and the progressive activist network
Indivisible . His campaign has more than 10,000 volunteers and is
knocking on nearly 10,000 doors per day, he said.

Justin Daniels, 45, who attended the park event, said the_ _dividing
line in the race is establishment versus non-establishment. Daniels,
who is Black, said if younger Black voters tune into the primary,
they’d probably lean toward El-Sayed, while for older Black voters
it’s more of a toss up.

Abdul El-Sayed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in April. Photograph: Julia
Demaree Nikhinson/AP

But he thinks El-Sayed can win in November. “I see him winning over
Republicans, because what a lot of people don’t understand is
they’re getting their benefits cut just as well,” Daniels said.

El-Sayed said he believes his campaign will do well with a number of
different subsets of Democratic voters, including the Black community.
“My relationship with the Black community isn’t built on photo ops
and all of a sudden crossing 8 mile
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because somebody told you that’s what you need to do,” he said.
“My public service is built in the city and county, and I’ve been
building these relationships for a very long time.”

The electability question

El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent and Muslim, said the electability
argument is often a coded way of questioning his name and religion. He
has been “Abdul in Michigan” his whole life, including as a high
school student after September 11, and still was voted captain of the
football team the next year.

“Michiganders are open-minded. They’re big-hearted people,” he
told voters at Green’s house. “And the funny thing is, when they
say I’m unelectable … that’s not a comment on me. You know what
that’s a comment on? It’s on you. They’re trying to say that you
all, Michiganders, who I know to be open-hearted, kind, thoughtful
people, are not big enough to see past my name. And I’m betting
otherwise, because I’ve been betting otherwise my whole life.”

Voters have shown a strong anti-incumbent bias in recent polls. A
recent CNN poll
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found that a majority of voters think US Congress would be better off
if most sitting members were unseated in the midterms.

El-Sayed said he regularly has people attend his town halls who tell
him they voted for Trump, and now would for him.

He is trying to both inspire people who haven’t been voting to come
out and back his campaign, and win over people who voted for Trump,
but feel betrayed by the administration’s actions.

“Why did it go for Bernie, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump?”
El-Sayed asked the group at Green’s house of Michigan’s recent
voting history. “And either it’s because we can’t make up our
minds – which, y’all been in Michigan long enough to know, we know
what our minds are – or it’s because we keep going to the buffet,
and not finding what we really want. So what happens if you give an
alternative that is actually against the system, the corruption on
both sides of the aisle, that’s also not a megalomaniacal,
narcissistic billionaire asshole?”

Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Haley Stevens, are displayed on a television
during a debate, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photograph: Kristen
Norman/AP

Stevens points to her record of winning over Republican voters in a
tight congressional district. She notes that she has beaten Maga four
times. When she and El-Sayed both ran (in separate races) in 2018,
Stevens won a six-way House primary. She is the first Democrat to hold
the 11th district seat for a full term since the moon landing, she
said.

As to which of the two candidates is more poised to win in November,
“I think the Republicans have answered that for us”, Stevens said,
pointing to a leaked phone call
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where Rogers said he had a better shot at flipping the seat if
El-Sayed won the primary.

Videos [[link removed]] of
Stevens’ heavy Michigan accent, where she said she was going to
fight with “a little bit of stick it to ‘em”, have circulated
widely online in the final weeks of the campaign. Stevens has moved to
embrace the phrase, putting it on campaign signs, though also
suggested [[link removed]] its
virality was driven by “cool kids on the Internet doing the cool kid
chatter”, some of whom “might be the coastal elites”. Both
Stevens and El-Sayed were born in Rochester Hills, a suburb of
Detroit. El-Sayed told his supporters not to “make fun” of
Stevens, calling it “unkind and unhelpful”.

“I’m going to run through anything and anyone to cut the best deal
for Michigan,” Stevens told reporters at an event in Detroit last
weekend. “So yeah, they can make fun of my voice, but I sure as damn
well am going to make sure we’re heard in the halls of power.”

Benson, the Detroit councilman, said he believes El-Sayed’s
positions are too far to the left for a purple state. Trump won
Michigan in 2024, after Joe Biden won it in 2020.

“I believe in the centrist Democrats,” he said. “So I’m a
centrist Dem, I’m moderate Dem, and I’m proud of that fact. I just
believe it’s what we need to be competitive in the state of
Michigan. Those views, his views, they are very well accepted in other
places. But when you have a purple state, I’m not sure that’s
going to play well here.”

Robin Evans, a 75-year-old registered Democrat who attended the
gathering at Green’s house with her two siblings, said she would be
voting for El-Sayed. His background in public health, and focus on
healthcare, appealed to her.

“They’re trying to sell the fact that he’s not electable, but
I’m not doing that,” she said. “I’m voting for whom I feel is
right, not for electability.”

Why this race is so closely watched

Some of El-Sayed’s potential future colleagues are betting that his
win, and other progressive wins this cycle, will change the tenor of
what Democrats in the Senate are willing to stand for. US senators
Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, and Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland,
rallied with El-Sayed in Michigan last weekend, saying they wanted
fighters like him to work alongside.

Voters want people who have courage and aren’t afraid to stand up to
Trump, but also aren’t afraid of losing their seat, Warren told the
Guardian, so they’re committed to making meaningful change.

“Remember, the Senate is actually a pretty small place. For
Democrats to be in the majority, shoot, there’d only be 51 of us,”
she said. “You bring us just a few more progressive fighters, and
the whole tone of that place changes. We’re in the fight now.
We’re pulling people over. It’s shifting, but bring us some new
blood. Bring us some fighters. Bring us more energy into this. And
watch what we can do.”

El-Sayed is tapping into deep-seated anger among the electorate, like
dysfunction in the healthcare system that allows insurers or AI
programs to say whether a doctor-ordered test or medication could be
covered, Warren said. “I think that’s going to connect with people
who aren’t even part of the Democratic primary.”

Van Hollen, the Maryland senator, said he thinks El-Sayed has a better
chance of winning the general election because of his ability to
mobilize and motivate voters, who see his campaign as not a simple
test of left versus right, but about uniting against political
corruption and concentrated economic power, a “much more
universal” message.

Washington is in a bubble, Van Hollen said, and too caught up in
pundit-class chatter, but the general public is “way ahead” of
Washington on upending politics as usual. The pre-Trump status quo
wasn’t working, either, he said.

“Voters don’t vote for a convicted felon unless they’re really
frustrated with the way things are,” Van Hollen said of Trump.
“And he has changed the status quo in all the worst ways. We need to
change the status quo in all of the best ways.”

El-Sayed told the crowd at Green’s house that they all know how
important they are as Michigan voters. Campaigns come to court them
every other year, knowing that their status as swing-state voters
gives them a coveted spot in deciding the direction not just of their
state, but the country. And this election is no different.

Think of what it would say to the country, to Congress, to other
politicians, he said, if a campaign like his wins, “if a politics
that opposes corporations, that takes on their power, that opposes
sending our money elsewhere” wins in a place like Michigan.

“Every single person thinking about running for president is going
to be watching on November 3,” he said.

_RACHEL LEINGANG is a Midwest political correspondent for Guardian US.
She is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Signal rachelleingang.21_

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