Messy Michigan primary leaves Democrats licking wounds
Politico · LC · trust 48/100
Politico Logo More from Politico Europe Pro E&E News AgencyIQ Press Escape to close the menu.
WASHINGTON & POLITICS WASHINGTON & POLITICS 6 items 1st item Congress 2nd item White House 3rd item Supreme Court and Legal Issues 4th item Magazine 5th item 2026 Elections 6th item Latest on POLITICO STATE POLITICS & POLICY STATE POLITICS & POLICY 4 items 1st item California 2nd item Florida 3rd item New Jersey 4th item New York GLOBAL POLITICS & POLICY GLOBAL POLITICS & POLICY 4 items 1st item Brussels 2nd item Canada 3rd item United Kingdom 4th item World Cup POLICY NEWS POLICY NEWS 11 items 1st item Food and Agriculture 2nd item Cybersecurity 3rd item Defense 4th item Education 5th item Energy and Climate 6th item Tax, Finance and the Economy 7th item Health Care 8th item Labor 9th item Tech 10th item Trade 11th item Transportation NEWSLETTERS NEWSLETTERS 6 items 1st item Playbook 2nd item West Wing Playbook 3rd item Inside Congress 4th item POLITICO Forecast 5th item POLITICO Magazine 6th item All Newsletters COLUMNISTS COLUMNISTS 7 items 1st item Alex Burns 2nd item Victoria Guida 3rd item John Harris 4th item Debra Kahn 5th item Jonathan Martin 6th item Nahal Toosi 7th item All Columnists SERIES & MORE SERIES & MORE 7 items 1st item Inside Congress Live 2nd item Breaking News Alerts 3rd item Podcasts 4th item Video 5th item Matt Wuerker Cartoons 6th item Cartoon Carousel 7th item The POLITICO Poll POLITICO Live POLITICO Live 1 item 1st item Events Follow us X Instagram Facebook LinkedIn My Account Log In Messy Michigan primary leaves Democrats licking wounds Progressive Abdul El-Sayed is trying to patch things up with moderates. And some party leaders have already started to file behind him.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed visits a polling place and speaks with supporters and members of the media on primary election day at Salina Intermediate School in Dearborn, Michigan, on Aug. 4, 2026. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO
Abdul El-Sayed has just three months to convince a fractured Democratic Party to unite behind him after a nasty primary.
Even before his narrow win over moderate Rep. Haley Stevens became official Wednesday , El-Sayed had begun the difficult process of trying to patch things up with a moderate wing of the party he’d spent months flaying as corporatist stooges as Republicans launched their first wave of attacks of the general election. He says he looks forward to “building relationships” with Jewish voters. And some top Democrats in Michigan and Washington alike are largely filing behind him in a show of unity ahead of November’s high-stakes election.
“To all of our supporters here tonight, watching on TV, tomorrow we begin to mend fences,” El-Sayed told a crowd of supporters early Wednesday before the race was called, asking them to show “magnanimity in victory.”
“We need to move forward and start bringing this party together,” El-Sayed reiterated on MS NOW’s Morning Joe hours later.
And, in a speech formalizing his victory after it was called at 10 a.m. Eastern, he said: “Whatever differences that we might have had in the primary, they pale in comparison to what unifies us.”
El-Sayed has little time to force a reconciliation before he faces off against Mike Rogers , a Donald Trump-endorsed former representative with the backing of Washington’s GOP Senate apparatus. Michigan is one of the nation’s top battlegrounds, a state Trump has won twice but where Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin narrowly defeated Rogers in 2024.
Already prominent Michigan Democrats like Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell are working to consolidate support behind El-Sayed, showing efforts from both the moderate and progressive flanks after a bitter primary that put tensions over Israel and campaign finance in the spotlight.
“We do have to unite,” Dingell said in an interview. “ Abdul ’s got to figure out how he’s going to bring people that were part of Haley ’s coalition and have them know that he cares about the values that they have, which I know he does, but he’s got to talk to them. This coalition has got to be a very broad coalition.”
Michigan Democrats plan to hold their so-called post-primary “unity breakfast” Thursday morning in Southfield, where they will rally behind party nominees. The contest was separated by less than a percentage point when the AP called the race Wednesday morning. Stevens immediately conceded and called for unity. And state Sen. Mallory McMorrow , who dropped her U.S. Senate bid a month before the primary, had already endorsed El-Sayed , saying she wanted to enter November “as a unified party” after “a brutal primary.”
“We must elect Democrats up and down the ballot,” Stevens said in a statement Wednesday, promising her support to El-Sayed after calling her primary with him “a thorough and rigorous campaign that brought out the full span of views within the Democratic Party.”
The primary was animated by charges of sexism, racism and religious bigotry. Splits over Israel played prominently in the race: El-Sayed attacked Stevens incessantly for relying on outside spending from groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent a record $32 million on her behalf. In the race’s final days, Stevens and her allies accused El-Sayed of antisemitism and sexism , and El-Sayed’s allies accused Stevens of Islamophobia .
Outgoing Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who had endorsed Stevens , said he spoke with El-Sayed Wednesday morning and congratulated him. He said he will “work hard to make sure” Democrats coalesce behind El-Sayed.
“The party has to all come together right now,” he told POLITICO. “We don’t have a lot of time, but everybody has to come together and understand that as Democrats, whatever differences we have between us as Democrats are minor compared to the differences between our Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate.”
Republicans are already plastering the airwaves with their preferred attack: Painting El-Sayed…
Read the original at Politico →
Open in TruthVane →