By Felipe De La Hoz   Epicenter-NYC   August 6, 20226

In one of the most-watched primary contests of this election cycle, former public health official Dr. Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Michigan Sen. Gary Peters. Stevens had the endorsement of Peters, not to mention popular Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the rest of the Democratic establishment.

Polling in the state had shown El-Sayed well ahead, by enough that many expected a blowout. The contest ended up quite close, but El-Sayed’s victory was another feather in the cap of a progressive political movement that has managed to knock off incumbents and machine-picked candidates across the country, including in the near-clean sweep of candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani here in New York. Still, El-Sayed faces a tough road ahead in a state that’s one of the Democrats’ must-wins in the party’s quest to take control of the Senate in the November midterms.

Republicans haven’t held a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan since a one-term senator left office in 2001, but it remains a very purple state. President Donald Trump has won it twice, in 2016 and 2024, if by a small (2024) and ridiculously small (2016) margin. El-Sayed will face off against longtime FBI agent and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who in 2024 lost to the current senator, Elissa Slotkin, by just 0.3% (and, in keeping with contemporary GOP dogma, immediately suggested without evidence that the election may have been stolen).

If you were even dimly aware of this primary race, you were probably aware that it revolved perhaps more than any other race in the country around the issue of Israel. Of the more than $60 million of outside spending that went to support Stevens, over half came from a super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, the most significant pro-Israel political lobbying group in the U.S. All told, outside money gave her camp about a 9-to-1 advantage in spending over El-Sayed’s campaign.

There are both moral and practical dimensions to the domestic political conversation around Israel. In moral terms, progressive Democrats have long considered Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks to be unjustifiable, whether or not they fit more contentious and technical definitions of war crimes or genocide. It’s a position that mainstream Democrats have increasingly joined. In practical terms, El-Sayed and other progressives have worked to connect the issue of Israel to the Democrats’ broader affordability agenda. Their message is that the billions of dollars the U.S. sends in military and other aid to Israel could be put to better use at home.

Read the rest of the story here: https://epicenter-nyc.com/el-sayed-michigan-senate-primary-democrats-israel