Abdul El-Sayed has a lot of work on his hands as he marches his U.S. Senate campaign toward the general election, and much of that will center on bridging deep divides held over from his battle against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost to El-Sayed last week in the Aug. 4 Democratic primary.
Michigan Democrats in some ways find themselves in 2026 where many Republicans were just a decade ago — locked in a battle of intraparty ideologies with a charismatic yet controversial figure leading their ticket in a bellwether election that could decide the party’s path forward for the next decade and beyond.
Mirroring the GOP’s 2016 struggles with an ascendant “Make America Great Again” movement, Democrats this year have to balance the rise of its progressive flank and the sensitivities of its older, center-left voters, all in a bid for unity ahead of November’s general election.
A united front against Republicans in the fall could be a tall order, and a lot of that work now falls on El-Sayed and his campaign. But his success also requires an all-hands-on-deck approach to campaigning — which would include bringing former rivals together under the common cause of winning against Republicans in the fall.
“The easy part is that most Democrats are just going to fall in line for the same reason that the overall national political environment is like D+5: President Donald Trump ran the economy into a ditch with tariffs and a war of choice in another part of the world,” Adrian Hemond, CEO of the Grassroots Midwest consulting firm, said in an interview with Michigan Advance. “That’s going to be good enough for most Democrats.”
The bruising nature of the party’s U.S. Senate primary race between El-Sayed, the nominee, and Stevens, of Birmingham, has left some bitter. It has also driven a wedge between the state’s Democrats over the Israel-Palestine conflict.
El-Sayed’s insistence on exposing Stevens’ connection to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which was one of several groups that spent more than $60 million against El-Sayed in the primary, has also left some Jewish Democrats feeling like they no longer have a home in the party, most prominently Attorney General Dana Nessel, who has said she will not attend the party’s August convention. She has also recently called on El-Sayed to tone down his rhetoric on Israel.
Stevens counted Jewish Democrats as some of her strongest supporters, while some have said they won’t support El-Sayed because of his stance on Israel’s actions in Gaza, which a United Nations independent body and Amnesty International have determined to be a genocide.
El-Sayed also didn’t do very well with one of the party’s key voting blocs, Black voters in urban centers like Detroit and the surrounding Wayne, Oakland and Macomb suburbs, which swung heavily toward Stevens instead of the eventual nominee. Those dynamics have created a potentially risky situation for the party in what should be an advantageous year, and earning votes from those disaffected voter blocks will require a united consensus.
I have every bit of confidence that the folks who are leading this party right now in Michigan are going to be able to knit together the kind of coalition that it will take to defeat Mike Rogers, because we all know what is at stake there.
– Former Democratic state Rep. Mari Manoogian, now executive director of The Next 50
In many ways, El-Sayed survived his primary fight by activating young voters, those who do not vote often or haven’t voted in a long time. But Hemond said the issue is that there will probably need to be some heavy reshaping of the electorate this year because “the Democratic Party is losing its hold on Black and Jewish voters.”
Some of that has to do with El-Sayed’s steadfast stance on Israel, which Hemond believes has taken some of the air out of his other main policy planks, like abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and advancing Medicare for All.
“I think the events of the last nine months in the Michigan Democratic Party’s tent have only accelerated that process,” Hemond added, referencing the primary race. “A big part of the progressive electoral theory is that you can get people under 40 to vote. And we’re going to find out.”
What worries Hemond is that he doesn’t believe there are enough of those voters in El-Sayed’s progressive coalition to win a competitive purple state like Michigan.
That’s why full unity across the board, and a rebuilding of a winning coalition that includes some recently disaffected voters, will be necessary if El-Sayed wants to win against Republican Mike Rogers in November.
A key piece of that effort will be getting Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak, who was in the U.S. Senate race but dropped out a month before the election, to actively participate in the campaign’s ground game.
McMorrow swiftly endorsed El-Sayed once he was declared the winner on the morning of Aug. 5. Stevens also last week indicated that she would stump with El-Sayed and work to corral her primary voters to support the nominee.
How do we beat Mike Rogers? By making sure everyone knows who he ACTUALLY fights for.
It’s not Michiganders. It’s Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/bFFtKfaNDs
— Mallory McMorrow (@MalloryMcMorrow) June 28, 2026
Air support swoops in from national Democrats
The Democrats are also putting up a united front across its full slate, with El-Sayed appearing at a rally late last week featuring gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson, secretary of state nominee Garlin Gilchrist and attorney general nominee Eli Savit.
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg headlined the event at Renaissance High School in Detroit, a key site for Michigan Democratic Party rallies in the past for former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Buttigieg during the Aug. 7 rally took turns excoriating each member of the Michigan Republican Party ticket, specifically naming Rogers and gubernatorial nominee John James as being rubber stamps for Trump’s agenda both in Congress and the executive office of one Trump’s favorite states.
.@PeteButtigieg amping up Michigan’s Democratic slate in November. @MichiganDems https://t.co/0m0QEKNWpL pic.twitter.com/fmTqtO38kF
— Ben Solis (@bensolis1) August 8, 2026
Over the weekend, POLITICO reported that former President Barack Obama, who did not endorse a candidate in the U.S. Senate primary race, reached out to both El-Sayed and Stevens to say that he was pleased with how both sides appeared to be coming together to unify the ticket.
POLITICO also noted that Obama does not have a formal endorsement process, and that his team does not often give readouts of his calls with Democratic candidates to the press, making this an exception and a show of force. An Obama endorsement is likely to hold sway with Black voters across the state.
A necessary heart-to-heart with disaffected voters
Mari Manoogian, executive director of The Next 50, which focuses on recruiting younger center-left candidates to shore up the future of the Democratic Party, said that if she were sitting down to have coffee with El-Sayed, she would advise him to conduct a deep listening tour in areas where he didn’t do well in the primary.
“Go have some very honest, heart-to-heart conversations with people, because ultimately … part of being a good leader is being a good listener,” Manoogian said. “If you can demonstrate that, even if you aren’t aligned exactly on policy, but you have the temperament to be a good leader, someone who is open to not always being the smartest person in the room and surrounding yourself with people who are excited to hear what you have to say, then take that feedback and improve your leadership.”
For Manoogian, Michigan is a harbinger for things to come throughout America, with Democrats nationally recognizing that its diverse demography, mix of ideologies and regional interests is “a proving grounds for how to engage voters.”
That includes both the operation of getting out there and doing face-to-face voter work, but also testing the kinds of messaging and policy that would resonate with people.
In that regard, Manoogian said she’s seen El-Sayed capitalize on some of that, as well as the kind of fence mending that needs to happen if Democrats plan to win the Senate seat in November.
“One of the big flashpoints of this primary has been discussion of who he was willing to campaign with and stand beside,” Manoogian said. “I have been really encouraged to see how he has taken an approach that opens his sort of a campaign up to be a bigger tent.”
The party’s role in bridging the divide
There is some disagreement over the party’s role in the fight to rebuild the Democratic coalition in Michigan.
Hemond said it was not the role of political parties in 2026 to engage in persuasion of voters, and that they were simply pass-throughs for money to candidates and mechanisms for turning out its tried and true base.
“That’s not fair to ask them to do that,” Hemond said. “They have no mechanism to do so. That’s the way our politics works now, that the candidates and elected officials have to do that work because of how money moves through politics now.”
Manoogian, however, said that Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel has a long history of working with a diverse group of people including those “who can really wade through some thorny issues and mend fences.”
“I have every bit of confidence that the folks who are leading this party right now in Michigan are going to be able to knit together the kind of coalition that it will take to defeat Mike Rogers, because we all know what is at stake there,” Manoogian said.
For Joe Spaulding, a Democratic strategist and a leading activist in Ottawa County, Hertel is the right man for the job ahead.
“Curtis Hertel is the type of leader that does not believe there is a job that’s too small, too difficult, or not his,” Spaulding said, just hours before the party gathered in Detroit last week to hold its unity kickoff rally. “I do not think that even if it wasn’t his job, in theory, that he wouldn’t try to do it.”
El-Sayed’s role in healing wounds
Manoogian, Hemond and Spaulding agree that the ball is now in El-Sayed’s court.
“From an activist standpoint, absolutely, it is the campaign’s responsibility to make sure that the constituencies in the coalition are pulled together,” Spaulding said. “The good news is that Abdul is not doing this alone, and the better news is that over the last month, he has demonstrated a level of humility that will allow him to take full advantage of the team that he has built, and they know the mission is rebuilding this coalition.”
El-Sayed is known for his steadfastness on the issues he cares about, and some have seen that as stubbornness. That has been one of the centrist concerns about El-Sayed as he was gaining steam in the primary — that he could be uncompromising as a U.S. senator, and that may not signal success in a governing body built on compromise.
Spaulding says in his mind there is no question whether El-Sayed has the capacity to humble himself and make that coalition work, both as a nominee and as a senator.
“He’s already doing that. He’s passed the test,” Spaulding said. “I can tell you that my experience growing up, and I did get called every racial slur in the book on the playground, Abdul and I did grow up in Michigan at the exact same time. We were both in high school when the War on Terror started, and that was an atmosphere that wasn’t friendly for anybody with not white skin. When you become an activist going through that, you do get some really, really thick skin, and sometimes thick skin leads to stubbornness.”
Still, Spaulding said El-Sayed has qualities in a candidate that are impossible to fake, and that he is confident in El-Sayed’s ability to pull off what appears to be a monumental task.
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.