Messy Michigan primary leaves Democrats licking wounds

Abdul El-Sayed has just three months to convince a fractured Democratic Party to unite behind him after a nasty primary.

Even before his narrow win over moderate Rep. Haley Stevens became official Wednesday, El-Sayed had begun the difficult process of trying to patch things up with a moderate wing of the party he’d spent months flaying as corporatist stooges as Republicans launched their first wave of attacks of the general election. He says he looks forward to “building relationships” with Jewish voters. And some top Democrats in Michigan and Washington alike are largely filing behind him in a show of unity ahead of November’s high-stakes election.

“To all of our supporters here tonight, watching on TV, tomorrow we begin to mend fences,” El-Sayed told a crowd of supporters early Wednesday before the race was called, asking them to show “magnanimity in victory.”

“We need to move forward and start bringing this party together,” El-Sayed reiterated on MS NOW’s Morning Joe hours later.

And, in a speech formalizing his victory after it was called at 10 a.m. Eastern, he said: “Whatever differences that we might have had in the primary, they pale in comparison to what unifies us.”

El-Sayed has little time to force a reconciliation before he faces off against Mike Rogers, a Donald Trump-endorsed former representative with the backing of Washington’s GOP Senate apparatus. Michigan is one of the nation’s top battlegrounds, a state Trump has won twice but where Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin narrowly defeated Rogers in 2024.

Early voting begins in five weeks.

Already prominent Michigan Democrats like Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell are working to consolidate support behind El-Sayed, showing efforts from both the moderate and progressive flanks after a bitter primary that put tensions over Israel and campaign finance in the spotlight.

“We do have to unite,” Dingell said in an interview. “Abdul’s got to figure out how he’s going to bring people that were part of Haley’s coalition and have them know that he cares about the values that they have, which I know he does, but he’s got to talk to them. This coalition has got to be a very broad coalition.”

Michigan Democrats plan to hold their so-called post-primary “unity breakfast” Thursday morning in Southfield, where they will rally behind party nominees. The contest was separated by less than a percentage point when the AP called the race Wednesday morning. Stevens immediately conceded and called for unity. And state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped her U.S. Senate bid a month before the primary, had already endorsed El-Sayed, saying she wanted to enter November “as a unified party” after “a brutal primary.”

“We must elect Democrats up and down the ballot,” Stevens said in a statement Wednesday, promising her support to El-Sayed after calling her primary with him “a thorough and rigorous campaign that brought out the full span of views within the Democratic Party.”

The primary was animated by charges of sexism, racism and religious bigotry. Splits over Israel played prominently in the race: El-Sayed attacked Stevens incessantly for relying on outside spending from groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent a record $32 million on her behalf. In the race’s final days, Stevens and her allies accused El-Sayed of antisemitism and sexism, and El-Sayed’s allies accused Stevens of Islamophobia.

Outgoing Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who had endorsed Stevens, said he spoke with El-Sayed Wednesday morning and congratulated him. He said he will “work hard to make sure” Democrats coalesce behind El-Sayed.

“The party has to all come together right now,” he told POLITICO. “We don’t have a lot of time, but everybody has to come together and understand that as Democrats, whatever differences we have between us as Democrats are minor compared to the differences between our Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate.”

Republicans are already plastering the airwaves with their preferred attack: Painting El-Sayed as “radical” and “dangerous” while emphasizing the full name of the American-born son of Egyptian immigrants.

“Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, the most radical Senate candidate in America,” a new National Republican Senatorial Committee ad says.

“Abdul El-Sayed: Dangerously radical,” says a new Senate Leadership Fund ad.

In a statement Wednesday morning, Rogers called El-Sayed an “extremist” who “campaigns with people who refuse to condemn terrorism” — likely a reference to comments made by his ally, far-left streamer Hasan Piker, which Piker has since said he regretted. “I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” said Rogers, a former FBI special agent. “Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”

Cullen Schwarz, a longtime Democratic strategist in Michigan, said Democrats need to portray Rogers as the extreme one if they’re going to emerge victorious in the must-win Senate race.

“As Democrats move forward, I hope we remember that in politics, the real battle is over moving the Overton window,” he said. “The Republicans are going to try to paint progressives across the country as extreme. It’s extreme to support Donald Trump.”

If that is the frame, Schwarz said, he doesn’t think Democrats will have any issues reunifying. “Democrats will immediately remember the fight we’re facing in the fall,” he said. “There’s been no force more unifying for Democrats than Donald Trump,”

El-Sayed could have the most work to do in rural, working-class areas and among Black voters. He won just 34 percent of the vote in Detroit, according to unofficial returns. And Stevens won a majority of votes across counties where less than 30 percent of adults have a college degree, according to a POLITICO analysis.

Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said Democrats — from Michigan to Washington — need to line up behind El-Sayed.

“Frankly, the Democratic establishment needs to very quickly consolidate around him — all of them,” said Duss, executive vice president at Center for International Policy. “If they believe what they say about needing to take Michigan for Democrats in the Senate, they can show us by getting all in behind El-Sayed right now.”

El-Sayed’s emergence from the contentious primary — which saw record levels of outside spending in one of the nation’s key battlegrounds — will require some Washington Democrats who previously kept him at arm’s length to now embrace him. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). said he preferred Stevens in the primary, but he released a statement Wednesday saying he and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand “look forward to working with Abdul and Democrats across Michigan to win this seat in November.”

And the narrow result is forcing progressives who had been expecting a dominant, double-digit victory to recalibrate their expectations as their attention shifts to the general.

“Tough result for Democrats,” said Adrian Hemond, founder of a Michigan-based bipartisan advocacy and outreach firm. “The promised populist wave was a dud… If you think the primary was nasty, just wait until next week. General election voters are less college educated and less ideological, so they have to find a way to sell ideology to normal people.”

Jessica Piper, Adam Wren, Ali Bianco and Mia McCarthy contributed reporting.