Jewish voters have been doing a lot of soul-searching when it comes to U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Many have taken issue with his harsh stance on Israel and saw his initial response to an attack on a West Bloomfield synagogue and childcare center in March as callous or even offensive.
Though they make up only about 1.5% percent of Michigan’s electorate, Jewish voters could prove decisive in a tight race. Hundreds have signed on to competing petitions vowing support for El-Sayed or taking a stand against him. Even stalwart Democrats are grappling with who to support in the Senate race.
“We are bringing people together to engage in healthy, constructive dialogue,” Alicia Chandler, a Jewish community leader, said to a few dozen people gathered in a beautiful, historic home in Detroit recently. “Unfortunately, that's not something we see all the time in our communities. We have a lot of vitriol and social media yelling.”
Organized by Michigan Jews for Democracy, a grassroots organization that’s backing El-Sayed, this event is part of a discussion series at private homes across Southeast Michigan. These “house parties” are meant to get ambivalent voters to talk through their concerns alongside prominent Jewish Democrats like former Michigan Congressman Andy Levin and New York congressional candidate Brad Lander.
In the Detroit gathering last week, Chandler was joined in conversation with Daniel Biss, a congressional candidate from Illinois who told the crowd he understands their concerns about Jewish safety. When he was mayor of Evanston, Biss said white nationalists showed up to city council, barraged him with antisemitic slurs and sent hate mail to his home.
“Our police department got worried based on the intel they had and pretty soon there was a squad car outside my home 24/7,” he told those who had gathered for the event. “I had to call my mother, whose parents survived the Holocaust, and explained that her grandchildren needed police protection because his father was a Jewish mayor, so these issues are real.”
Biss acknowledged that some of El-Sayed’s remarks have “landed imperfectly with some people.” Still, he said, he was lending his support to the Senate candidate because he sees El-Sayed as someone who “gets it.”
“A guy who knows in his bones that his kids' safety as Muslim children is tied to Jewish children's safety,” Biss said. “And that if he doesn't fight for the safety of Jewish children, he's not fighting for his own kids.”
“The Jewish community is not feeling safe”
Abdul El-Sayed has had harsh words for Israel on the campaign trail. He drew ire among many Jewish Michiganders for saying Israel is not an ally and referred to its actions as “bloodthirsty.”
It was El-Sayed’s response to the terrorist attack on the Temple Israel synagogue and childcare center in West Bloomfield in March that has been a particular pain point for many. “Hurt people hurt people,” El-Sayed said of the attacker — a statement which many found dismissive and for which he later apologized.
“The Jewish community is not feeling safe,” said Rabbi Josh Whinston, who added that what he sees as El-Sayed’s “failure” to engage with Jewish voters is going to cost him at the polls.
Whinston launched a campaign to urge El-Sayed to sign on to five “nonnegotiables” — including the safety of Jews in Michigan and the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, which has not received a response from the candidate.
While some Jewish Democrats will be voting for El-Sayed’s opponents, Whinston said that voting for Republican Mike Rogers would be “completely antithetical to who I am as a liberal, progressive person.”
Just days before the election, Whinston is still unsure if he’ll vote for El-Sayed or decline to vote in the Senate race. “To be honest,” he said, “I’ll likely decide as I look at the ballot. It is a very difficult and painful moment for me, and I know for many other Jews.”
“I feel good about voting for him”
“I want to love Abdul, and I don't,” Huntington Woods resident Laura Kohn told the group gathered in Detroit last week. She wore an El-Sayed campaign button and said she already voted for him.
“I feel like the reason I don’t is because he’s not soft with a piece of Jewishness that a lot of us carry, which is if you don't go toward us and tell us how much you care about us and how much we mean, we'll fill in the blanks. We've done that for so long, hundreds of years,” Kohn said.
Before the group broke up into smaller casual discussions, former Congressman Andy Levin said he sees current U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish and has endorsed El-Sayed, as an example for Jewish Democrats to follow.
“She's a model for me about this and a model, I hope, for our whole community of grabbing this situation and saying, ‘This guy's a fighter. He and I are going to duke it out with each other on some things.’”
Levin noted that Americans have elected hundreds of Jewish politicians to Congress, but only four Muslims have ever served — all of them in the last two decades and all of them in the House of Representatives. If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim senator in the country.
“I'm really proud of the idea that Michigan would have a Jewish and a Muslim senator,” Levin said, “That would just be really incredible.”
That got people chatting over cheese and crackers and sips of wine.
Farmington Hills resident Caroline Trapp said she was moved by Levin’s insights about the broader historical context for increased minority representation, though she shared the concerns many others noted about Jewish safety and antisemitism.
“I have grandchildren who are in preschool [and] family members who belong to Temple Israel,” she said. “So that attack [in March] was very worrisome.”
She doesn’t know exactly what El-Sayed could say to win over Jewish voters, but she hates how divided they’ve been over his candidacy.
“To me, there's just no question: We can't elect another Republican senator,” Trapp said. “So I feel good about voting for him.”
“Better,” she added, “After hearing tonight’s discussion.”
