The Right-Wing Attacks on Abdul El-Sayed Keep Faltering

When a tornado threatened the east side of Detroit last week, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed shifted from campaigning to making sure that people were safe. After the tornado hit, El-Sayed was in the streets with local officials such as Detroit City Council member Renata Miller and state Rep. Donavan McKinney (the district’s Democratic congressional nominee and likely next House member) assessing the damage, giving people hugs on their doorsteps, spreading the word about how they could get help, and proposing smart solutions for the future – such as burying power lines so they don’t get knocked out in storms.

This people-focused response is typical of El-Sayed’s approach, which blends the roles of candidate and community organizer with an agility rarely seen in statewide political campaigns. And it appears to be working. 

Even as the Republican attack machine and its media echo chamber seeks to undermine and smear the Democrat in a desperate attempt to prop up the campaign of former US Rep Mike Rogers, Donald Trump’s hapless Republican nominee for the seat, El-Sayed projects a level of real-world engagement that makes the GOP attacks ring hollow.

That may explain why El-Sayed has led in six of the eight major polls that have been conducted on the Michigan Senate race since the August 4 primary. The most recent survey, released by CNN on Wednesday, showed the Democrat ahead of Rogers by three points, 47-44. Notably, the CNN survey found that 40 percent of likely voters had a favorable view of El-Sayed, versus just 35 percent for Rogers. And, despite all the recent attacks against El-Sayed, Rogers’s unfavorable ratings were still narrowly higher than those of his Democratic rival.

These leads might not seem like much, but in such a close race, every percentage point matters. And there are other hopeful signs for El-Sayed. The most recent poll from the Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, which was released on September 1, had him moving past the 50 percent mark with likely voters, while Rogers was trailing by five points. Another recent poll from the well-regarded Susquehanna Polling and Research group had the Democrat up by an even bigger margin of seven points.

Make no mistake: the Michigan contest is still going to be a long and very expensive race, where El-Sayed knows he will be dramatically outspent — just as he was in the August 4 primary that secured him the nomination for the open Senate seat. And that spending will focus heavily on attacks, which – at least in the early stages of the contest – have been frequently amplified by major media outlets.

But El-Sayed is offering a master class in how to counter the attacks. Take, for instance, the relentless criticism the Democratic nominee has faced for appearing during the primary campaign with popular streamer Hasan Piker. Republicans and much of the media have been obsessed with Piker, whose past statements about Israel and Palestine and other issues have drawn their share of sharp criticism, but whose appeal among young voters cannot be denied.

Critics keep demanding that El-Sayed condemn Piker — as if every candidate should be held responsible for everything that every person they are interviewed by, or photographed with, has ever said. But El-Sayed, a tenacious campaigner who spends much more time on the ground with actual voters than in punditry echo chambers, dismisses what he portrays as clumsy attempts to distract the electorate. “You would think, if you turned on any media, that this whole campaign is about a streamer in California,” he says. “That’s not what this campaign has ever been about.”

This savvy pushback against the right’s latest line of attack is wisely framed, as is El-Sayed’s argument that his opponent, Rogers, and the GOP keep coming back to Piker because they have “nothing to say about anything.” That resonates with voters, who El-Sayed suggests are capable of making the distinction that he does when he says, “It’s not about distancing from an individual. It’s about saying, ‘here’s the thing I disagree with…’ He doesn’t speak for me. I don’t speak for him. There are a lot of things he says that I deeply agree with: people deserve health care, we shouldn’t be fighting dumb wars, the war in Iran is ridiculous, Donald Trump is a fascist, all true. There are things he said I disagree with. There are things he said he now disagrees with.”

Political insiders and many commentators may refuse to entertain so nuanced a perspective. But that’s on them, not El-Sayed, who explains, “The whole discourse is intended to confuse and distract us from the actual issues.”