Bitter Michigan Senate race rattles Jewish, Muslim voters

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — For many Michigan voters, the US Senate race has become much more than which party controls Washington.

In suburban Detroit, some Jewish Democrats are facing deeply personal questions about faith and identity. if they can support their party’s candidate. A few miles away, in Dearborn, Arab American leaders who supported President Donald Trump two years ago, are increasingly alarmed by Republican rhetoric.

Concerns are spilling over into communities already shaken by Israel’s war in Gaza who followed the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023. They are now central players in the bitter race for open seats between Republican Mike Rogersformer congressman, and Democrat Abdul El-Sayeda former public health official who would be the country’s first Muslim senator if elected on November 3.

Rogers increasingly portrays El-Sayed as an extremist and a threat to Jewish voters as the Republican tries to capture a traditionally Democratic district. Rogers laughed when a visiting Republican senator said El-Sayed slept in an Osama bin Laden jersey, and he agreed with a social media post calling El-Sayed a terrorist.

Emotions were already running high before the last escalation.

In West Bloomfield, a synagogue recovering from an attack this year is just a half-hour drive from downtown Dearborn’s “Wall of Tears,” commemorating children killed in Gaza.

The race even divided close friends like Lori Goldman and Mimi Price-Miletic.

Goldman, a Jewish Democratic activist, described Rogers’ message as “fear-mongering.”

“It’s spreading, and it’s not spreading slowly,” she said. “It spreads insidiously, widely and efficiently.”

Price-Miletic, a member of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, sees things differently. She does not support El-Sayed and does not rule out voting for Rogers.

“Lori Goldman is my best friend,” Price-Miletic said. “This summer I said we can’t discuss Abdul. I don’t want to hear his name. We agreed to disagree and we’re not talking about it.”

“She loves it,” she added. “And I feel the exact opposite of her.”

Republicans seek to win over Jewish voters

The central plank of Rogers’ strategy has been to win over Jewish voters after the fierce Democratic primary between El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, in which Israel became a focal point.

Stevens, one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress, has benefited from about $30 million in spending by groups affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

Stevens represents much of Oakland County, just north of Detroit and home to a significant portion of Michigan’s Jewish population. Rogers has focused heavily on the region and will host an event later in October with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, billed as “Who Will Keep Us Safe? Rogers vs. El-Sayed in the Wake of October 7 and the Attack on Israel’s Temple.”

Vance Patrick, chairman of the Oakland County Republican Party, said Rogers was “definitely making headway” among Jewish voters and that the community was “listening to the Republican Party this time.”

Patrick added that Rogers visited synagogues across the county, including Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, where a man rammed a truck loaded with fireworks and gasoline into the building and exchanged gunfire with a security guard in March.

The attacker, a naturalized citizen originally from Lebanon and residing in Dearborn Heights, had recently lost family members during an Israeli airstrike in his homeland.

El-Sayed condemned the attack on Israel’s Temple but drew criticism for saying “hurt people, hurt people.” He later apologized, saying “to anyone who thinks my comments might have been hurtful, I am truly sorry.”

Rogers and his allies invoked these comments repeatedly, with Rogers saying that El-Sayed “cannot condemn terrorism in our own country because he is so close to the people who support the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Trump went further on Wednesday, claiming that El-Sayed was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is no evidence that El-Sayed has any affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. His half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, wrote on social media in 2012 that “my family has been MB for a long time” and described a conversation with her mother about her involvement in the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1970s.

El-Sayed, born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents and raised by his father, told NBC this week that the social media posts were “hearsay.”

The Trump administration designated the Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations earlier this year.

Democrats face divisions over El-Sayed candidacy

Democrats are still struggling to unite behind El-Sayed after the primaries revealed deep disagreements on Israel.

Oakland County is one of the largest and most politically important counties in Michigan, with approximately 1.3 million residents. Once a Republican stronghold, it has gradually shifted toward the Democrats over the past two decades.

But many of the country’s top Democrats have stayed away from El-Sayed.

State Sen. Jeremy Moss, Jewish and a candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives covering much of Oakland County, did not support El-Sayed. Stevens supported El-Sayed, but did not campaign with him.

Price-Miletic, who supported Stevens in the primary, said part of the reason she wouldn’t vote for El-Sayed was his past appearances with controversial streamer Hasan Pikerwho made comments described as anti-Semitic.

Goldman, founder of the grassroots organization Fems for Dems, said she believes much of the widespread rhetoric about El-Sayed is not true and that Republicans are “preying on the fears engendered in every Jew because the past is only prologue.”

El-Sayed’s surrogates, including local leaders and prominent Democratic officials, have held events across the state to speak with undecided Jewish voters. Former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan, a Jew and El-Sayed supporter, participated in many of them.

“We don’t take a hard sales approach at all,” Levin said. “It’s more like a group of Jews coming together and saying, ‘OK, let’s all talk about our fears, our hopes, our anxieties.'”

There is a backlash in the country’s largest Arab-American community

Dearborn, just south of Oakland County, is a hotbed of political division over Gaza. Many Arab American voters have turned against Democrats in 2024 over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. Trump won the city of nearly 100,000 by 6 percentage points.

But the community has become increasingly critical of Trump since he took office in January 2025. The rhetoric from Rogers and other Republicans toward El-Sayed has added to those frustrations.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat who did not support the 2024 election, said Republicans’ comments about El-Sayed and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, another prominent Muslim politician, were “very problematic.”

“You saw Sen. Cruz and other U.S. senators putting up billboards in the Senate, basically trying to link them to terrorist organizations or call them terrorists themselves, just because of their faith,” Hammoud said.

Criticism has also come from some Arab American leaders who were instrumental when Trump won the state two years ago.

“Any attack based on a person’s religion is not acceptable,” said Bishara Bahbah, who helped lead Trump’s outreach in Michigan in 2024. “Abdul El-Sayed was born and raised in the United States. He is as American as they come.”

Bahbah, who renamed his group Arab Americans for Trump to Arab Americans for Peace early in Trump’s term, said the president’s rhetoric toward El-Sayed crossed a “red line.”

“President Trump has repeatedly thanked the Arab-American population for their support of his candidacy. I think the people around him should remember that,” Bahbah said. “Because the elections are coming.”