Washington — Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and his Democratic primary rival, Rep. Haley Stevens, faced off Friday ahead of a campaign event Sunday where both were scheduled to make a rare appearance together.
The public rift between the two Democrats comes just days before one of the nation’s most hotly contested Senate elections, as Republican candidate Mike Rogers seeks to eliminate centrist Democratic voters. El-Sayed and the more moderate Stevens offered very different visions of the party’s future during the primary, and although Stevens supported El-Sayed after he won the nomination, the two essentially did not campaign side by side.
In a statement Friday evening, El-Sayed said Stevens “seems determined to revive a primary that ended three months ago.”
The digs came hours after Stevens demanded that El-Sayed — a vocal critic of U.S. aid to Israel — apologize for suggesting during the campaign that “Israel is the reason Michigan can’t afford schools, health care and day care.”
“Abdul promises to get money out of politics,” Stevens said in the release. “He can start by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan can’t afford.”
She also urged El-Sayed to condemn an ad from an outside PAC that she considers anti-Semitic. The video ad shows a couple in a grocery store talking about the need to put a carton of eggs back on the shelves because “we need to put that $7 aside to kill Palestinians.” The man and woman in the ad then complain about the billions of dollars in military support the United States has provided to Israel.
El-Sayed’s campaign said earlier this week that it was not affiliated “in any way” with the ad, created by political action committee Rebellion PAC.
“No one speaks for Abdul except himself and his campaign,” his campaign team said in a statement.
In his Friday statement, Stevens also called on El-Sayed to pull his own ad featuring far-right podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
It’s unclear what this means for their appearance on Sunday.
Stevens said she plans to appear with El-Sayed at a Detroit church, alongside South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn. An announcement from El-Sayed’s campaign regarding his appearance with Clyburn did not mention Stevens.
Earlier this week, Stevens’ fiance, Jason Turkish, told the Detroit News he would vote for Rogers. Later that day, Stevens said in a CNN interview that she would vote for El-Sayed, saying “we are a divided household,” but she called on her campaign “to silence the hate and denounce it.”
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