LIZ PEEK: Michigan can stop the socialist fever rage — or watch it swallow the Senate
On Tuesday, Michigan voters have a final shot at shutting down the socialist surge that is convulsing the Democratic Party and alarming the country. Polls and prediction markets suggest they will not do so.
Tuesday is the final day for voters in the Democratic primary to choose a U.S. Senate candidate for November. The primary winner will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers for the seat currently held by Sen. Gary Peters, who is retiring. Although Mallory McMorrow remains on the ballot after suspending her campaign, the contest has effectively narrowed to establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens and progressive Abdul El-Sayed. Stevens has represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional District since 2019.
It is, to paraphrase Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a choice between normal and crazy. El-Sayed, who wants to abolish ICE, eliminate oil and gas, ban school choice, deny arms shipments to U.S. ally Israel, sharply raise taxes, provide tuition-free four-year college degrees and establish a wealth tax, will likely win the primary. Stevens, in contrast, is a normal liberal Democrat.
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Why should you care? Because the critical Michigan contest could well determine whether Democrats take over the Senate in November and effectively shut down the Trump agenda.
If you agree that there is much more work to do to strengthen our immigration laws, make American energy permanently accessible, level the trade playing field for U.S. companies, purge our welfare programs of fraud, appoint more conservative judges, promote new industries and improve our health care system, you will not want to see the virtual end of the Trump presidency.
That is what is at stake.
The Michigan race will also indicate whether the progressive left — the ideological home of the Democratic Socialists of America — has the support of mainstream voters in a Midwestern purple state or instead represents a fringe element born of an intellectually bankrupt Democratic Party whose sole message for the past 12 years has been its hatred of President Trump.
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If El-Sayed wins the primary but is defeated in the November election, the progressive left will lose steam and have less say in choosing the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028.
That would be good for Democrats and good for the United States.
It would also be good for Israel and for American Jews. The Michigan contest is as much about support for the Middle East’s only democracy and a close U.S. ally as it is about tax policy or Medicare for All, which El-Sayed endorses. AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, and affiliated groups have spent about $30 million supporting Stevens and opposing El-Sayed in the race, which has already become the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in history.
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The race is a proxy battle for the heart of the Democratic Party, pitting El-Sayed supporters Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., against popular Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Peters, all of whom are backing Stevens.
Stevens’ supporters claim she has a better chance of beating Rogers in the fall than El-Sayed does. RealClearPolling averages support that claim, showing Stevens leading Rogers in a potential November matchup while El-Sayed narrowly trails him.
Republican Rogers ran for the Senate before, losing by only half a percentage point to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Defense Department employee. At the time, Democrats had lost only two Senate seats in 52 years. Many of these Senate races were fiercely competitive, which was not surprising. Michigan is an authentic swing state. Trump won the state in 2016, lost it to Joe Biden in 2020 and won it again in 2024.
Rogers, a veteran, a seven-term congressman and a businessman, is campaigning with the endorsement of President Donald Trump, as he did in 2024.
Michigan holds open primaries, prompting speculation that Republicans might cross party lines to vote for El-Sayed, thinking the inexperienced Muslim candidate would be easier to beat in November. There is no evidence that this is happening.
Another quirk of the race is that the UAW has endorsed El-Sayed, despite his opponent’s ties to the auto industry. Stevens served as chief of staff for the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, "the federal initiative that helped save General Motors, Chrysler, and over 200,000 Michigan jobs during the Great Recession." In addition, she helped build the Office of Recovery for Automotive Communities and Workers in the Obama White House.
In contrast, El-Sayed has no real ties to the auto industry or its workers. Since expanding to include more than 100,000 higher education workers, the UAW has been hijacked by leftist elements. The union recently endorsed a candidate in a New York City Democratic primary who ran on a platform opposing federal highway spending and embracing public transportation. The UAW endorsement does not mean what it used to.
El-Sayed has not declared himself a member of the DSA but shares many attributes with that group’s newly elected candidates. Some of his funding, like that of former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, has come from his family, with his father-in-law, a nephrologist at a Detroit hospital, donating $300,000 to an independent super PAC supporting his candidacy. He is also campaigning with Hasan Piker, the far-left antisemite who once said that America deserved the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed thousands.
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And, like other progressives, El-Sayed’s résumé is paper-thin. He was appointed executive director and health officer of the Detroit Health Department in 2015 but resigned in 2017 to run for governor of Michigan. He came in second in the 2018 primary. He worked for the Wayne County Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services starting in 2023 but left two years later to run for the Senate. He points to his emergency leadership of the county’s scandal-plagued juvenile detention facility as a key accomplishment, but local news fact-checkers have scrutinized that claim as overstating the extent of the recovery.
The star-struck liberal media have unsurprisingly spent little time investigating his performance in those two posts.
If he wins, that will change, and El-Sayed’s spotty and opportunistic record will become campaign fodder. He is favored by young, white, anti-Israel liberals. Whether that group can propel him across the finish line in November is questionable.
We fervently hope not.
