El-Sayed responds after Vance calls him a ‘weasel’ as Michigan Senate race turns contentious

Marquette, Michigan– After being called a “weasel” who should “shut his mouth” by Vice President JD Vance, Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said he was something else instead.

“No, no, no. What you’re talking about is a fucking Wolverine. You could take your Buckeye and go push it somewhere else,” El-Sayed, a Michigan alumnus, told a crowd of more than 1,300 people in the state’s Upper Peninsula. Vance was previously a senator from Ohio and graduated from Ohio State University.

Vance, President Trump and Republicans have sought to portray El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who led Michigan’s city and county health departments, as an Islamic extremist. Late Thursday night, Mr. Trump, in a Truth Social video, accused El-Sayed of being a “Muslim radical” and a “member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” although there was no evidence for either claim.

At his own rally in Monroe on Thursday, Vance criticized El-Sayed’s critical comments on America’s history and said “it’s clear — Abdul doesn’t like this community, Democrat or Republican.”

“He wants to pursue old grievances with your tax money, and he wants to use the grievances of faraway countries to punish you. Well, I say, on November 3, send a message to Abdul El-Sayed: Punish him, don’t send him to Washington, D.C.,” Vance told the crowd.

Vance and El-Sayed have already exchanged blows. After an article by El-Sayed questioned whether Vance’s grandfather would have accepted second lady Usha Vance, an Indian-American, Vance called him “very, very mean.”

In response to Vance’s latest comments, El-Sayed said the remarks were intended to “raise questions about my commitment to America.”

“I had a front-row seat to see what my life could have been like if I hadn’t been born in America. So don’t lecture me about America,” El-Sayed replied, referring to his trips to Egypt.

“In America, we don’t discriminate against people based on what they like, how they identify, how they pray, what color their skin is. We believe in an America big enough for all of us. So don’t you dare come from Ohio and lecture me about America. You don’t know anything about America,” he added.

“One of the ugliest campaigns in modern history”

Holding Michigan’s Senate seat is critical to Democrats’ efforts to turn things around. control of the US Senate in their hands in November. But the race has become particularly contentious this month.

During a campaign stop in Iron Mountain on Thursday, El-Sayed said the race could go down as “one of the ugliest campaigns in modern history,” a reference to Republican claims that El-Sayed has ties to foreign terrorist groups.

The claims stem in part from old social media posts by her half-sister, first reported by the conservative newspaper The Washington Free Beacon, when she wrote about their mother’s activism in the Muslim Brotherhood while attending college in the 1970s.

In 2012, after a Muslim Brotherhood candidate won Egypt’s presidential race, she wrote that her family “has long been members of the Muslim Brotherhood” but added that she “always felt that they had mismanaged the political sphere and in a destructive way.”

El-Sayed has denied any links to the Islamist organization and criticized the attacks as being linked to his Muslim faith. He said that after his parents divorced, he was raised by his father and stepmother in Michigan, did not see his mother for years and did not speak to her about activism in the 1970s.

“My mother and my sister are not running for office. I am running for office. Judge me on my actions and my work, but please do not assume that because I pray differently than anyone who has ever held this office that I am not deeply committed to this Constitution,” he added.

Islamophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail, including claims that El-Sayed himself is a terrorist, has increased in recent weeks. Far-right instigator Jake Lang and others held signs reading “Abdul = Terrorist in Suit” during a protest against an El-Sayed event last weekend. The Rogers campaign condemned Lang’s appearance and said it had no affiliation with him.

Republican protesters also showed up outside the first two stops of El-Sayed’s tour on Thursday. They held signs with messages criticizing his “Medicare for All” program, declaring “America will always be a Christian nation” and urging voters to “keep terror out of Congress.”

While on the campaign trail with Rogers last weekend, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana joked that El-Sayed “sleeps in a bin Laden jersey.”

Asked Thursday by CBS News if he thought El-Sayed was a terrorist, Rogers said: “Look at the data. It’s pretty clear.”

But speaking to reporters in Detroit on Friday about El-Sayed’s recent emphasis on religion in the Senate race, Rogers said the race “has never been about how you pray.”

“You can pray however you want, and I believe that passionately. It depends on your ideology and your way of thinking. We can’t let this campaign decide to hide because they say it’s Islamophobic or racist, or to fill in the blank,” he said, according to Fox 2 Detroit.

El-Sayed campaigns in GOP strongholds as Rogers targets Detroit

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula represents just 3% of the state’s total population, and Republicans have easily won the region since 2016. Mr. Trump won all but one of the region’s 15 counties in 2024.

El-Sayed still took his campaign bus there and brought with him Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as he tried to appeal to disaffected Republican and independent voters frustrated by the economy and the war in Iran.

At crowded stops, Ocasio-Cortez addressed GOP attack ads and mailers targeting El-Sayed, and said they were trying to create a “caricature of him, so that you close your ears before you even hear what this man has to say.”

Independent voter John Haigh said he supported El-Sayed and said higher prices for groceries, gasoline and diesel were a reason conservative-leaning voters in the area were considering El-Sayed.

“You should always look at the other side and hear what they have to say, not just the negative ads,” Haigh told CBS News at the Iron Mountain event.

About an hour away, in the small town of Escanaba, Republican voter Al Hansen said he appreciated El-Sayed’s ideas on affordability. But Hansen still supports Rogers, in part because he is skeptical of the feasibility of a government-run health plan and the barrage of television ads hasn’t convinced him.

“How are you going to do it? Of course, in a 30-second commercial, they don’t have time to explain that. It’s very difficult,” Hansen conceded during an interview with CBS News at a cafe near El-Sayed’s event.

Republican groups spent more than $119.2 million on television ads in Michigan, compared to $86.6 million for Democratic groups, according to ad tracking company AdImpact.

Last weekend in Highland, Michigan, Rogers rejected El-Sayed’s attempts to chip away at his Republican Party support base. He then highlighted his own courting of the typically Democratic enclaves of metro Detroit — with heavily Jewish and black populations that El-Sayed’s main opponent, Representative Haley Stevenswon decisively.

“He really needs to consolidate his base here. That tells me they’re desperate,” Rogers told reporters. He said their internal polls show they will get between 60 and 70 percent Jewish Democratic voters. who were critical of El-Sayed’s positions in opposition to relations between the United States and Israel.

El-Sayed and his campaign highlighted conversations he’s had with the Jewish community and support from Democratic Jewish politicians across the state, like Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Sen. Elissa Slotkin.

Rogers also targeted the black vote in Detroit by showing up at churches and speaking behind closed doors. He says his education and housing plans are appealing to Detroit voters and that he’s discovering “a whole new coalition coming our way.”

“Some of these areas in Detroit seem pretty neglected. Nobody pays attention to them,” Rogers told CBS News at Vance’s rally Thursday. He added: “We even went to a church the other day and said that no Republican has crossed the threshold…in 76 years.”

“He puts himself out there more than a Republican would,” the Rev. Charles Williams II of the Detroit area said of Rogers, adding that he was exploiting existing tensions between some black and Arab-American communities in metro Detroit.

El-Sayed, who campaigned in Detroit on Wednesday with The Black Slate organization, could soon see a surge among black voters thanks to some high-profile visits. Former President Barack Obama is expected to rally to his side later this month, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts is campaigning for him this weekend.

At an event hosted by The Black Slate on Wednesday, El-Sayed highlighted his work as a health official in Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, and said his “story in America doesn’t happen” without the organizing and history of the civil rights movement.

He was asked about his commitment to the community and why voters should believe these appearances are not “one-off” conversations for the political season. El-Sayed responded that “it is not enough to be elected.”

But Detroit Democratic Councilwoman Mary Waters, who is unsure who she will vote for in the Senate race, also acknowledged the GOP’s significant outreach to the black community. She added that while El-Sayed’s campaign also does outreach, she believes voters are disillusioned with what they see as ineffective Democratic governance.

“The majority of voters vote straight Democratic. But there is an outside chance … that the 30 percent who haven’t committed to anyone, Rogers could break in and get some of those votes,” she said. “But it’s a big state. And he still needs to do outreach to his party.”