The two souls of the United States Democratic Party face a trial by fire this Tuesday. The primaries to choose the candidate for senator from Michigan have become a kind of thermometer to measure the fever of the party’s leftist sector, which has already achieved great victories in cities like New York and Denver, and now faces a so-called swing state, where both Democrats and Republicans can win.
The two opposing candidates could not be more different. On one side is Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor, son of Egyptian immigrants, Muslim, with progressive credentials such as the fight for universal free healthcare and radical criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government. On the other, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a centrist, who has the support of major figures in the mainstream Democratic Party and the powerful Israeli lobby.
If El-Sayed wins, as the polls timidly suggest, progressives will be able to repeat the idea that their movement is not exclusive to big cities, that they are prepared to aspire to everything anywhere in the country.
The two sectors fighting to take the reins of the Democratic Party have shown their cards in this battle. El-Sayed has had the enthusiastic support of two of the great stars of the left, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is considering her chances of running for president in 2028. A good result in Michigan could help her decide. On the other side, Congresswoman Stevens has been backed by popular figures such as Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The Michigan campaign has been one of the most expensive on record. The Israeli lobby has reached its record in a single state by investing around 30 million dollars. But those funds in ads praising Stevens and attacking her opponent may have their counterpart, because the influence of money in the campaign has become one of the debates. El-Sayed and his supporters insist on the need to regulate the influence of all those millions of obscure origin in electoral processes.
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Abolish ICE
“If you believe, as I do, that instead of spending money on an out-of-control agency like ICE we should abolish it and provide healthcare to everyone; if you believe that instead of financing a genocide perpetrated by a foreign government it would be better to build schools, let’s win these primaries on Tuesday,” El-Sayed recently urged his supporters. “I know things are tough and Washington is a total mess. Some just shout,” Stevens said in a video while images of her rival were shown. She continued: “I, on the other hand, am fighting to fix all this. The people of Michigan need someone who knows how to get things done.”
Stevens has played the card of an experienced legislator in this campaign and, above all, of presenting herself as just another citizen of Michigan. One of the big controversies of these weeks was generated by a video of her speaking with an accent that some considered forced Midwestern, as if to say she was native there and others were not. The controversy has generated as much laughter as support for the candidate.
Anyone who follows presidential elections in the United States knows that Michigan is one of the states to watch most closely. With more than 10 million inhabitants, it is the tenth most populous in the country. Also, it is not completely dyed either Republican red or Democratic blue. In 2024, Donald Trump won there by only 80,000 votes (he obtained 49.7% against Kamala Harris’s 48.3%). That is one of the reasons why this election is interesting, because not everything is written there. It is not New York, where the winner of the primaries is in most cases guaranteed the seat, because they run in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. In Michigan, if El-Sayed wins, it remains to be seen what effect a Muslim candidate, son of immigrants, with a clearly left-wing discourse will have. If after the primaries he also wins the seat, he would be the first senator of Islamic faith in the history of the United States.
This race is also important because Democrats have to win here if they want any chance of taking the Senate from the Republicans. El-Sayed and Stevens are fighting for the seat voluntarily vacated by Democrat Gary Peters. That is, it is a position that the opposition to Trump must hold at all costs to take the upper chamber in the midterm elections on November 3.
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