SAUGATUCK, Mich. (AP) , When Democrats assembled this week in a West Michigan congressional district they hope to turn blue, the discussion was meant to focus on the cost of living under President Donald Trump. It wasn’t long before the conversation drifted to a dispute fracturing the party.
One person in the crowd took U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten to task for not backing Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
“Your inflammatory rhetoric has nothing to do with creating a better economic future for the people of West Michigan, and everything to do with protecting the pipeline of our tax dollars to Israel,” the woman said.
The exchange laid bare a challenge facing Democrats as November approaches. Party leaders see economic anxieties as an opening to reclaim control of Congress, yet internal rifts keep pulling the conversation away from that message.
That tension is perhaps nowhere starker than in Michigan, where Democrats are working to recover from a hard-fought Senate primary that El-Sayed won earlier this month over U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. Clashes over Israel, antisemitism and El-Sayed’s ties to controversial online personality Hasan Piker have made it more difficult for the party to set its sights on Republican Mike Rogers.
With Election Day drawing near, Scholten and several other Democrats have held off on endorsing El-Sayed for the moment.
“I think it’s up to the top of the ticket to unify the top of the ticket,” Scholten said Tuesday.
Democratic divisions haven’t disappeared
El-Sayed, who would become the nation’s first Muslim senator, has condemned antisemitism while sharply denouncing Israel over its military operations in Gaza.
Some in his party have pushed back on his stance.
Michigan state Rep. Jeremy Moss, the Democratic nominee for a House seat outside Detroit, has also withheld his endorsement. In an interview with The Atlantic’s David Frum released Wednesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, said El-Sayed should not “make excuses” for domestic terrorism.
She was referring to a video statement El-Sayed released in March after an attack on Temple Israel synagogue outside Detroit, in which he said “hurt people hurt people.”
Democrats outside Michigan have taken their criticism even further.
“There’s no way I’m ever coming out for El-Sayed, right now,” New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer said on CNN, adding that El-Sayed has “refused to back off his views towards Jewish Americans.”
El-Sayed’s campaign appearances alongside Piker have emerged as a central flashpoint in the dispute. Piker is a well-known streamer with a track record of provocative comments, including saying America “deserved 9/11.”
Piker drew fresh criticism recently when he pushed back against the notion that criticizing Israel amounts to antisemitism. American Jews don’t uniformly back Israel, he argued, but many “Jewish institutions” are “teaching people the idea that Jews are monolithic” and “it’s a very dangerous mode of propaganda.”
“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel mind you, but against American Jews,” he said.
The reaction from Democrats came quickly, with detractors accusing Piker of implying that American Jews who support Israel were inviting violence.
“Hasan Piker’s dangerous and hateful language targeting Jewish Americans has no place in our civic discourse,” Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, wrote on social media. “Suggesting that Jewish Americans bear responsibility for hatred or violence directed against them is wrong, dangerous, and antisemitic.”
Piker pushed back on that reading in a phone interview, saying he was cautioning that broadly linking American Jews to Israel’s policies could stoke antisemitism, similar to how Muslims in the United States have been tied to extremist organizations.
He said he was never particularly close to El-Sayed’s campaign , even though he appeared with him at multiple events during the primary , and added that he didn’t want the race to become a conversation about him. He stood by his comments, though.
“I’m just a platform, I’m just a megaphone for people’s anger and frustration,” Piker said. “Even if I was going to go away tomorrow, I don’t think this problem would go away for our politicians.”
Although El-Sayed has created some space from Piker amid the backlash, he has stopped short of severing the connection entirely. In a statement, he said “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokesperson.”
Republicans are seizing on the ongoing rift.
“It’s great,” said Republican strategist Jason Roe. “You can tell these Democrats are not going to distance themselves. Piker is to Democrats what Trump is to Republicans. You embrace him, it’s not helpful, and distance is also not helpful.”
Democrats try to turn toward November
Democrats who have thrown their support behind El-Sayed are growing more eager to move past the infighting.
“I am done. So don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker. It’s not what November is about,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell said Wednesday. “I don’t agree with Hasan Piker on a lot of stuff.”
She appeared with El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland at a campaign event in Ann Arbor on Wednesday. The day before, El-Sayed stood alongside Eli Savit, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, the party’s nominee for secretary of state, at a press conference.
Democrats backing El-Sayed contend that the party is largely united and that the lingering disagreements are simply part of working through a difficult primary. Raskin, who is Jewish, described it as a “process that we go through” once the primary concludes.
“The Democratic Party is a big, sometimes an unruly family, but we’re all going to be together in the end,” Raskin said.
Michigan Democrats from across the state are set to convene this weekend in Lansing for a convention to finalize the party’s November ticket. In advance of the gathering, all of the party’s nominees and party chair Curtis Hertel issued a letter stating that “disruptive behavior or harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.”
“This convention is our moment to celebrate our candidates,” the letter read.
El-Sayed at Wednesday’s event in Ann Arbor voiced frustration with the sustained focus on Piker.
“You would think if you turn on any media that this whole campaign is about a streamer in California,” El-Sayed said at the Ann Arbor event. He added that he’s “less interested in going to the sort of tabloid version of our politics where we cover this like, who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down, who’s talking to who?”
But El-Sayed conceded that some Democrats haven’t fully moved past the primary.
“There are a few people who are still nursing wounds or grievances from the primary,” El-Sayed said. “I get it. Losing is hard.”