Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Believes The Many Can Defeat The Money

DETROIT — It’s 2:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, just one week from election day, and Abdul El-Sayed’s Detroit office is standing room only. The front and back of the room are packed with volunteers eager to hear the senate-hopeful speak before they go out and canvass the nearby neighborhoods. Many of them are still coming off the high of what they saw as a stellar performance from El-Sayed in the candidate debate that aired the night before.

“He was so good, so good,” Lisa, a woman from Grosse Pointe Woods, tells me. While she has previously canvassed for El-Sayed, today she’s brought backup: her son, a college student at Michigan State University who is volunteering for the campaign for the first time. 

El-Sayed’s campaign has knocked 190,000 doors since he launched his run for Michigan’s U.S. senate seat, and in these final days before the election, they’re hoping to drive those numbers up. Every meaningful conversation they’re able to have with an undecided voter could make all the difference come Aug. 4. In the Michigan Democratic senate primary, El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-backed progressive with a background in public health, is facing off against Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate congresswoman who has picked up the support of Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The money in this race is decidedly not on El-Sayed’s side. Super PACs have spent more than $60 million to support Stevens, with over $30 million of that coming in from the American Israel Public Affair Committee.