DEARBORN, Mich.—Hundreds of voters who packed into an event hall in Dearborn, Michigan, on July 31 to support Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic Senate candidate and left-wing populist, were met with a promise to chart a new future away from the party’s past.
“There is something special happening in Michigan,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said amid a crescendo of cheers at Dearborn’s Yemeni American Cultural Center.
“I am seeing so much hope in the politics of what’s possible. For far too long, establishment Democrats have told voters we can only achieve incremental progress, but that is simply not true.
“Abdul is showing us what politics should be about.”
The current political climate has contributed to Michigan’s Aug. 4 U.S. Senate primary becoming a proxy battle in the ongoing war for the future of the Democratic Party.
For one, this is not El-Sayed’s first rodeo running against an “establishment” Democrat. When he challenged now-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary, the dynamics between the candidates were similar, but the stakes and national attention were much lower.
The difference now, according to many analysts, is simple: Control of the U.S. Senate is at stake.
Democrats are defending two Senate seats in states that President Donald Trump won in 2024, Michigan and Georgia. If they hold those seats and flip an additional four, they will retake the Senate in 2027.
But if Democrats lose Michigan, the flip column would increase to five—an even more difficult task, despite states such as Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, Alaska, and Iowa becoming more competitive since last year, when Democrats were overwhelmingly the underdogs in the Senate races.
‘Party Tent’ Tension
The Michigan Senate primary has dynamics similar to those of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s contentious rivalry with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 Democratic primary—another high-profile battle between the left’s centrists and progressives.Sanders, along with fellow self-described democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), has waded into the battle, endorsing El-Sayed and even stumping for him in Michigan.
Despite receiving endorsements from members of the progressive Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and inviting several onstage for rallies throughout the state, El-Sayed is neither a member nor endorsed by the group.
During last week’s debate, the Rhodes Scholar and epidemiologist said he is a capitalist.
“I am not a socialist. I am a capitalist who understands how capitalism works. The biggest threat to capitalism was never the idea of regulation; it was always monopoly,” El-Sayed said, arguing that it “should not be legal” for two to three companies to dominate a significant number of industries.
His opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), has described El-Sayed’s platform as “unelectable” in a general election against a Republican such as Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), suggesting that a wider tent is not capable of sustaining the support needed to win in purple Michigan.
Many Senate Democrats say they have no issue with a “big tent” in the party, even if that means working alongside progressive or socialist candidates.
“I’ve served in the Senate with an avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders, for years,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters on July 22. “Found him to be a good person to work with, that I agree with many times. So I think the tent for the Democratic Party can accommodate diversity.”
But not every Democrat has been open to including progressives or socialists.
“These people aren’t Democrats. That’s not a big tent situation,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told reporters on July 27.
Asked what he thinks the implications would be if Stevens loses to El-Sayed on Aug. 3, Fetterman said a progressive nominee would “put the Michigan seat in serious play,” calling Rogers a “strong” candidate for the final race in November.
“That’s part of why I’m never going to embrace [the] DSA,” Fetterman told The Epoch Times.
—Nathan Worcester; Jacob Burg; Stacy Robinson
BOOKMARKS
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—Stacy Robinson
