The Jewish Democrats trying to get to “yes” on Abdul El-Sayed

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A Democratic fundraiser on how the candidate’s charm offensive is going.

Abdul El-Sayed is trying to win over undecided Jewish voters in Michigan — without compromising his substantive positions on Israel or disavowing his most radical allies.

During both his primary and general election campaigns, El-Sayed’s opponents have portrayed him as insensitive to Jewish concerns, if not outright antisemitic. These charges have often rested on falsely equating El-Sayed’s opposition to Zionism (he is not committed to Israel’s existence as a majority Jewish state) with a hostility for Jewish people.

But in recent weeks, two other concerns came to the forefront. One was El-Sayed’s response to an antisemitic attack on a Michigan synagogue. In March, a 41-year-old named Ayman Mohamed Ghazali drove a truck into Temple Israel’s Jewish preschool. Days later, El-Sayed condemned the attack, while also noting that Ghazali had recently lost family members to an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. El-Sayed suggested that these events illustrated how “hurt people hurt people” and that “violence is a cycle,” one that had led Ghazali to perpetrate “an evil act of displaced rage.”

Separately, El-Sayed had campaigned with the far-left streamer Hasan Piker during his primary campaign. This had always sat poorly with many Jewish and centrist Democrats in Michigan. But Piker made his association with the Democratic Senate candidate more conspicuous in late August. During a broadcast, Piker lambasted Jeremy Moss, a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat running for Congress in Michigan who had not endorsed El-Sayed but was in active conversations with the candidate about how to bridge lingering divides with Jewish voters. More explosively, Piker said, among other things, that “if Jews i

Nonetheless, this triggered a new round of calls for El-Sayed to both disavow Piker, and to take other measures to reassure Michigan Jews that he cares about their safety.

These disagreements between El-Sayed and moderate Jewish voters reflect broader tensions within the Democratic Party nationally.

El-Sayed declined to disown the streamer. But he did defend the right of all Americans “to advocate for what they believe without fear of violence,” saying this was “particularly true for communities that have been intimidated for their beliefs in the past.”

Some Jewish Democrats found this insufficient. In an open letter Wednesday, 400 Democratic Jewish Michiganders — including donor Rob Orley — announced that they would be supporting Republican Mike Rogers in their state’s Senate race.

Days earlier, El-Sayed had sought to mend fences with such voters at a summit held by the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus. During his appearance there, he apologized for his remarks following the Temple Israel attack, saying “I should have issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop.”