Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed acknowledged on an internal campaign call that his lengthy statement after the Temple Israel attack this month was a “risk” that “really worried” his team.
One day after Ayman Ghazali’s thwarted terrorist attack at a West Bloomfield, Mich., synagogue March 12, El-Sayed released a four-minute video condemning the attack while tying Ghazali’s actions to Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon.
“A week earlier, an airstrike killed his niece and nephew. Imagine if that had never happened. Imagine there was no war in Iran. Imagine if there were no airstrikes in Lebanon. Imagine if his family had never died,” El-Sayed said.
“We can and must condemn the attack on Temple Israel, and we can and must condemn the violence 6,000 miles away,” El-Sayed continued.
Reflecting on the statement during an organizing call on March 18, El-Sayed admitted his take was controversial.
“It was a risk,” El-Sayed said. “All of our team was really worried about saying something, but leadership is being willing to say the thing if you believe it to be true that nobody else is going to say.”
An El-Sayed aide said the issue is a complicated one in Michigan, which has significant Muslim and Arab-American communities. El-Sayed has also been highly critical of Israel’s long military campaign in Gaza.
“We understood that putting out a nuanced statement opened the door for bad-faith critiques, but decided that it was important to give voice to the complexities that so many Michiganders are trying to navigate,” El-Sayed spokesperson Roxie Richner said in a statement.
El-Sayed has staked out a position as the most progressive candidate in his three-way Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. El-Sayed is endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), backs Medicare For All and has said Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.
While Stevens is an AIPAC ally and is courting center-left voters, McMorrow and El-Sayed have sparred when appealing to the party’s left flank. We reported how El-Sayed accused McMorrow of copying his homework on key policy positions.
Polling averages of the primary have Stevens and McMorrow within a point of each other, with El-Sayed trailing behind in third.
