Marquette, Michigan – After being called a “weasel” who should “shut his mouth” by Vice President JD Vance, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said he was something else instead.
“No, no, no. What you’re talking about is a f****** Wolverine. You could take your Buckeye and go shove it somewhere else,” El-Sayed, a Michigan alumnus, told a crowd of over 1,300 in the Upper Peninsula of the state. Vance was previously Ohio’s senator and is an Ohio State University graduate.
Vance, President Trump and Republicans have sought to portray El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who has led city and county health departments in Michigan, as an Islamic extremist. Late Thursday night, Mr. Trump in a Truth Social video accused El-Sayed of being a “Muslim radical” and a “Muslim Brotherhood Member,” though there is no evidence for either claim.
During his own rally in Monroe on Thursday, Vance criticized El-Sayed’s past critical comments about America’s history, and said “it’s clear – Abdul doesn’t love this community, Democrat or Republican.”
“He wants to litigate ancient grievances with your tax dollars, and he wants to use the grievances of faraway lands to punish you. Well, I say, on November the third, send a message to Abdul El-Sayed: Punish him, don’t send him to Washington D.C,” Vance told the crowd.
Vance and El-Sayed have traded jabs before. After an El-Sayed post questioned whether Vance’s grandfather would have accepted second lady Usha Vance, an Indian-American, Vance called him “very, very evil.”
In response to Vance’s latest comments, El-Sayed said the remarks were intended “to raise questions about my commitment to America.”
“I got a front-row seat to what my life might have been had I not been born in America. So don’t lecture me about America,” El-Sayed countered, in reference to trips he has taken to Egypt.
“In America, we don’t discriminate against people for who they love, how they identify, how they pray, the color of their skin. We believe in an America big enough for all of us. So don’t you dare come from Ohio to lecture me about America. You don’t know a damn thing about America,” he added.
“One of the ugliest campaigns in modern history”
Holding the Michigan Senate seat is critical to Democrats’ efforts to flip control of the U.S. Senate into their hands in November. But the race has turned especially contentious this month.
At a campaign stop in Iron Mountain on Thursday, El-Sayed said the race could go down “as one of the ugliest campaigns in modern history,” a reference to Republican claims that El-Sayed has ties to foreign terrorist groups.
The claims in part stem from old social media posts made by his half-sister, first reported by the conservative outlet The Washington Free Beacon, when she wrote about their mother’s activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during college in the 1970s.
In 2012, after a Muslim Brotherhood candidate won the presidential race in Egypt, she wrote that her family “has long been MB” but added that she has “always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively.”
El-Sayed has denied any ties to the Islamist organization and has criticized the attacks as being tied to his Muslim faith. He said after his parents divorced, he was raised by his father and stepmother in Michigan and did not see his mother for years and did not talk with her about any activism in the 1970s.
“My mom and my sister are not running for office. I’m running for office. Judge me by my actions and my work, but please do not assume that because I might pray differently than anybody who’s ever held this office, that somehow I am not deeply committed to this Constitution,” he added.
Islamophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail, including claims that El-Sayed himself is a terrorist, has increased in recent weeks. Far-right instigator Jake Lang and others held signs that read “Abdul = Terrorist In A Suit” at the protest of an El-Sayed event last weekend. The Rogers campaign condemned Lang’s appearance and said it has no affiliation with him.
Republican protesters also showed up outside the first two stops of El-Sayed’s tour on Thursday. They held signs with messages criticizing his “Medicare for All” platform, declaring “The United States Will Always Be A Christian Nation” and urging voters to “Keep Terror Out Of Congress.”
On the campaign trail with Rogers last weekend, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana quipped that El-Sayed “sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey.”
Asked by CBS News Thursday if he thinks El-Sayed is a terrorist, Rogers replied, “Look at the data. It’s pretty clear.”
But speaking to reporters in Detroit on Friday about the recent focus on El-Sayed’s religion in the Senate race, Rogers said the race “has never been about how you pray.”
“You get to pray any way you want, and I passionately believe that. It is about your ideology and how you think. We can’t let this be a campaign deciding to hunker down because they say it’s Islamophobic or racist, or fill-in-the-blank,” he said, according to Fox 2 Detroit.
El-Sayed campaigns in GOP strongholds as Rogers targets Detroit
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan accounts for just 3% of the state’s total population, and Republicans have easily won the area since 2016. Mr. Trump won all but one of the area’s 15 counties in 2024.
El-Sayed took his campaign bus there anyway, and brought Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York with him as he tried to appeal to disaffected Republican and independent voters frustrated with the economy and the Iran War.
At packed stops, Ocasio-Cortez addressed the GOP attack ads and mailers targeting El-Sayed, and said they were trying to create a “caricature of him, so that you close your ears before you even hear what this man has to say.”
Ocasio-Cortez transferred $1 million to El-Sayed’s campaign. Asked about the contribution on Friday, she told reporters it’s “the first time that I’ve made a transfer of this kind.”
“I believe so deeply in how important this state is. I believe so deeply in the transformational power of Abdul’s leadership,” she said.
Asked by CBS News about the vice president’s attacks on El-Sayed, Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think he’s on the back foot right now.”
“You’ve got gas anywhere between five to six a gallon, depending on where you are in the country, and they know that they need to be putting these distractions out around Abdul El-Sayed because the one person they don’t want you hearing about is Mike Rogers,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So, JD Vance can say whatever he wants to say, but the reality is that this administration’s record has been horrific for working-class Americans.”
Independent voter John Haigh says he’s backing El-Sayed, and said the higher grocery, gas and diesel prices are a reason more conservative-leaning voters in the area are considering El-Sayed.
“You should always be looking at the other side and hearing what they have to say, not just negative ads,” Haigh told CBS News at the Iron Mountain event.
About an hour away, in the small town of Escanaba, Republican voter Al Hansen said he likes El-Sayed’s ideas on affordability. But Hansen is still backing Rogers, in part because he’s skeptical of the feasibility of a government-run healthcare plan and the barrage of TV ads have not convinced him.
“How are you gonna do it? Of course, in a 30-second commercial they don’t have time to explain that. It’s very hard,” Hansen conceded when spoke with CBS News at a coffee shop nearby El-Sayed’s event.
Republican groups have spent over $119.2 million on TV ads in Michigan, compared to $86.6 million for Democratic groups, according to advertisement tracking firm AdImpact.
Last weekend in Highland, Michigan, Rogers dismissed El-Sayed’s attempts to whittle away at his GOP base of support. He then pointed to his own wooing of typically Democratic enclaves in the Detroit metro area – with heavily Jewish and Black populations whom El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, won decisively.
“He really needs to shore up his base down here. That tells me they are desperate,” Rogers told reporters. He claimed their internal polling shows they will get between 60% to 70% of Jewish Democratic voters who have been critical of El-Sayed’s positions in opposition against the U.S.’ relationship with Israel.
El-Sayed and his campaign have pointed to conversations he’s had with the Jewish community, and support from Democratic statewide Jewish politicians, like Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Sen. Elissa Slotkin.
Rogers has also targeted the Black vote in Detroit through appearances at churches and closed door conversations. He argues his education and housing plans appeal to Detroit voters, and that he is finding a “whole new coalition that’s coming to us.”
“Some of those areas in Detroit feel pretty neglected. They haven’t had people down and around paying attention to them,” Rogers told CBS News at Vance’s rally Thursday. He added, “We even went into a church the other day who said they hadn’t had a Republican cross the threshold…in 76 years.”
“He’s showing up more than a Republican would,” Detroit-area Reverend Charles Williams II said of Rogers, adding that he’s tapping into existing tensions between some Black and Arab-American communities in the Detroit Metro area.
El-Sayed, who campaigned in Detroit on Wednesday with The Black Slate organization, could see a boost soon amongst Black voters with some high-profile visits. Former President Barack Obama is set to rally with him later this month, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts is campaigning for him this weekend.
At an event hosted by The Black Slate Wednesday, El-Sayed highlighted his work as a health official in Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, and said his “story in America does not happen” without the organizing and history of the Civil Rights Movement.
He was asked about his commitment to the community and why voters should believe these appearances aren’t “one off” conversations for the political season. El-Sayed responded that “it is not enough to get elected.”
But Democratic Detroit councilwoman Mary Waters, who is undecided on who she’ll vote for in the Senate race, also acknowledged the substantial GOP outreach to the Black community. She said while El-Sayed’s campaign is also doing outreach, she thinks voters are disenchanted with what they see as ineffective Democratic governance.
“The majority of voters vote straight Democrat. But there is an outside chance…that the 30% who have not committed to anybody, Rogers could break in and get some of those votes,” she said. “But it’s a big state. And he still has to do outreach with his party as well.”
