Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Michigan, wants Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens to stay away from his campaign events.
“I don’t want any distractions,” El-Sayed told reporters after a campaign rally, according to the New York Times. “It seems like other people are more interested in making this race into things that it’s not.”
The two men had planned to appear together Sunday at a church service in Detroit, but Rep. Debbie Dingell later told CNN that she spoke to Stevens and told him “This isn’t working.” Dingell added that tensions between the two were a distraction and that “there’s nothing to be gained by them both being in the same place.”
The public rift between the progressive El-Sayed and the more moderate Stevens, whom he defeated in a bitter primary, put Democratic tensions in the spotlight in one of the most important elections in the party’s campaign to regain control of the Senate.
Stevens endorsed El-Sayed shortly after his primary election victory in August and planned to campaign with him on Sunday.
But Stevens had until now avoided appearing publicly with her former opponent, whom she has publicly criticized for weeks. Her fiancé, Jason Turkish, campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Mike Rogers.
And just two days before they campaign together this weekend, Stevens demanded that El-Sayed denounce a political ad from an outside group that blamed the price hike on U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Congresswoman Stevens seems determined to revive a primary that ended three months ago,” El-Sayed countered in a statement, noting that the U.S.-Israeli Public Affairs Committee spent a lot of money to defeat him in the primary.
“Let’s all focus on the task at hand: beating Mike Rogers, holding Trump accountable, getting money out of politics, putting money in people’s pockets, and passing Medicare for All,” the statement said.
These open feuds worry many Democrats, who view this close race as a must-win for the party to win back the Senate.
“I have no idea what Haley Stevens is doing,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow told CNN on Friday. “This is a time where we need to recognize what’s at stake. People aren’t talking about commercials. They’re not talking about Haley Stevens. They’re talking about the price of gas and groceries.”
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