Mamdani calls AOC an ‘inspiration’ amid talk of 2028 White House
The lawmaker has sparked speculation in recent months about whether he is interested in higher office. Mamdani said of AOC:
Of all the Democratic primaries this year between progressive populists and establishment liberals, observers say the Aug. 4 Michigan Senate race will be the most important in charting the future of the party.
The race between Abdul El-Sayed, a Detroit-based public health worker, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a former Obama administration official, has touched nearly every nerve on the political left ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Centrists and leftists agree that the stakes are higher than in any other primary, whether it’s who is responsible for the outcome of the 2024 election, what kind of candidate is best able to defeat Republicans in the general election, or the U.S.-Israel relationship or the conduct of the war in Gaza.
“The crux of the campaign is between two competing visions of where the Democratic Party should go,” said Rabbi Mangla, a spokesman for the Working Families Party, a progressive party that supports Mr. El-Sayed.
“Michigan has become the main event, especially considering this race could decide the balance of the Senate,” he added. “The stakes are very high.”
Michigan’s primary election was held on July 6, with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who had hoped to bridge the gap between El-Sayed’s progressiveism and Stevens’ policy background, abstained, resulting in a two-person election.
Since then, independent polls by two media outlets have shown Mr. Stevens holding a seven-point lead over El-Sayed, while other polls sponsored by El-Sayed supporters have shown him leading by double digits.
Key issues surrounding control of the Senate floor
If Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters retires and loses his seat to Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary, it would make it more difficult for Democrats to gain four seats in the Senate and flip the Senate majority in November. President Donald Trump will win the Midwestern battleground state by about 1.5 percentage points in 2024, and the Senate seat is considered a surprise by forecasters.
Outside groups have funneled more than $52 million to both sides of the race through the middle of this month, according to OpenSecret, a nonpartisan group that analyzes federal election spending.
Amidst the battle for control of Congress was also a battle for control of the Democratic Party, with more progressive candidates scoring visible victories over longtime incumbents and traditional liberal candidates.
New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani’s congressional bid won all three primaries in June. Earlier this month, Melat Quiros, a political newcomer who like Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, easily defeated the longtime Colorado congressman.
“This is probably the best achievement for the progressive left and the democratic socialist wing of the party since the rise of Bernie Sanders in 2016,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.
“I don’t know of a year where progressives won a competitive primary with a fairly consistent record,” he added. “Mamdani’s victory further strengthened elements that have been growing within the Democratic Party and its coalition over the past decade.”
These victories have inspired the activist left, but have reportedly alarmed some in the party establishment who support Stevens. Groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have spent nearly $30 million supporting her campaign, their largest single investment this term.
Several other prominent Democrats are also rushing to endorse her, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s most famous politician.
“Hailey is quintessential Michigan,” Whitmer said in a July 24 video post on social media. “She knows what Michigan families are going through, so you know she always puts Michigan first.”
El-Sayed campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the USA TODAY Network that the governor’s endorsement shows the party’s “corporate establishment is crowding out allies and making their own choices,” but voters can still make their voices heard.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed is supported by a group of prominent progressives, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and a network of her supporters.
In a July 24 post to X ahead of Whitmer’s endorsement, the former Detroit health commissioner’s campaign posted a video showing El-Sayed standing with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. The message said Michigan deserves a senator who won’t be beholden to health insurance companies or AI developers.
Centrist-leaning strategists note that the victories touted by progressives have occurred primarily in deep-blue congressional districts, while Michigan is a critical battleground state. Democrats must run a near-perfect national campaign this fall by flipping at least four Republican-held seats while holding seats in Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire.
The task was made even more difficult by the July 10 resignation of Graham Platner, another progressive insurgent who won the Democratic Senate primary in Maine, the party’s most likely goal of flipping the Republican seat held by Sen. Susan Collins.
“The absolute devastation of Platner’s campaign has turned the question of whether Democrats can flip red seats in Maine into whether they can hold blue seats in a state that, frankly, President Trump won last cycle and that Democrats desperately need to take back,” said Kate DeGruyter, a spokeswoman for the centrist Third Way think tank.
Michigan voters are fine-tuning the issue of El-Sayed’s electability.
In the final two weeks, Stevens has delivered a familiar closing argument. El-Sayed would be an easy candidate for Republicans to win this November due to some of his controversial stances, including supporting defunding the police in 2020 and comments that have since been deleted.
According to CNN, the Stevens campaign is highlighting comments Rodgers made last week in which he said in a private phone call with supporters that he wanted to run against El-Sayed.
Many of her supporters echo those sentiments, raising the lack of background checks in the Maine race as a concern for candidates, even if it energizes the Democratic base. After Peters initially said he would not participate in the primary, one of the things he mentioned in endorsing Stevens on July 13 was that he had been vetted by Stevens.
That matters to voters like Richard Nielson, 71, of Birmingham, Michigan, who said he still feels pain that President Trump will win in the 2024 presidential election.
The retired auto worker said he supports many of El-Sayed’s ideas, including Medicare for All, and described the 41-year-old public health official as the more exciting candidate. But in contrast to his opponent, who has never held elected office, Nielson pointed to the four-term congressman’s past as chief of staff for the U.S. Auto Rescue Task Force during the Obama administration.
“Mr. Stevens successfully pushed through numerous bills that benefited our nation’s auto companies,” Nielson said. “There’s a lot to like about Abdul, but she tends to be more straightforward.”
But other voters dismissed those concerns, saying they were misplaced at a time when Democrats should be on the offensive amid the Trump administration’s executive actions.
Janine Gant, 59, a nonprofit executive who works in downtown Detroit, said establishment politics no longer works for people on both sides of the aisle. He said candidates like El-Sayed are “the best representatives of us” because they want to help as many Americans as possible, not special interests.
“People are hurting, people are hungry,” Gant said. “I think people aren’t getting the attention, and I think we have the ability as a country to do something different that supports everyone.”
Ryan Fritz, a 26-year-old federal election compliance worker, said Stevens is not an attractive or effective candidate because of his lack of grassroots support among people not involved in politics. She said FEC records show El-Sayed has outpaced her in small donations, collecting about $1.2 million from people who gave less than $200, compared to $227,000 for Stevens.
“AIPAC is putting money into the primary because they don’t want Abdul to (win). As soon as there’s a chance he could lose, all that money will dry up for Stevens,” Fritz said.
Gaza referendum? Democratic Party’s ongoing battle over Israel
Much of the debate in this year’s high-profile primaries revolves around Israel, whose popularity has plummeted among Democrats in the wake of the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
An Associated Press-NORC poll released this month found that 58% of Democrats believe the U.S. is “too supportive” of allies in the Middle East, up from 45% in the same poll in January 2024.
Matt Wolfgram, from Saginaw, Michigan, said he could not support Stevens, primarily because of the amount of support he received from AIPAC. The 28-year-old adult caregiver added that it is morally unacceptable for a candidate to accept money from pro-Israel groups or take a neutral stance on the war, citing human rights violations in Gaza documented by the United Nations and other organizations.
“I don’t think we should fund genocide,” Wolfgram said.
Stevens supports a two-state solution in the region, but said he did not believe that Israel’s military action, which has left more than 73,000 Palestinians dead in Gaza, constituted genocide, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
El-Sayed was a prominent figure in the “No Commitment” movement, which protested former President Joe Biden’s nominations over the Gaza war. He has clearly characterized the conflict as a genocide and campaigned in Michigan with streamer Hasan Piker, a controversial left-wing activist who has been accused of anti-Semitism for using derogatory language against the Israeli government.
Adrian Hemond, a Michigan political strategist and CEO of Grassroots Midwest, said Democratic tensions over Gaza are playing a big role in the primary, given the state’s sizable Arab and Muslim population.
He said that voter resentment towards the actions of the State of Israel allowed the party’s more progressive activists to take advantage of it, which collectively “added fuel to the fire in terms of the intensity of the primary.”
But for other voters, like Nielson, a former auto worker, the need to have a stronger candidate in the fall is more important than changing Israel policy.
“If it was anyone other than Haley Stevens, I would probably vote for them, but I think the question here is can they beat Mike Rogers in this voter base?” he said. “I think we have to choose who has a better chance of winning.”
