A fight over who gets to stand with whom at a Detroit church event has spilled into public view among Michigan Democrats, just days before a Senate election that could help determine control of the chamber.
An adviser to Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said Saturday that Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) remains invited to a Sunday church appearance in Detroit, pushing back after the campaign of Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed reportedly tried to keep her away from his remaining campaign events.
“This is not Abdul’s event,” Clyburn adviser Antjuan Seawright told the New York Times. “The invitation still stands.”
Clyburn and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) had been working to bring Stevens and El-Sayed together after days of public sniping over Israel and antisemitism. Seawright told the Wall Street Journal that both Democrats remained welcome at the Detroit event and that Clyburn’s focus was on turning out voters, not taking sides in the dispute. Clyburn himself told the Times on Saturday that he did not know whether Stevens would actually show up.
El-Sayed is running against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a tight Senate race. Reuters reported that the campaign’s effort to exclude Stevens risked deepening party divisions right before an election with national stakes.
A primary rivalry that hasn’t cooled
Stevens narrowly lost the August Democratic primary to El-Sayed and endorsed him afterward. The two appeared together at party unity events in the days that followed. But CNN reported Wednesday that they had not spoken in months, even as their campaign teams stayed in touch and some of Stevens’s former staffers joined El-Sayed’s operation.
The current clash centers on a Rebellion PAC ad that ties U.S. military aid for Israel to a lack of funding for domestic needs. Stevens and other critics have called the ad antisemitic. El-Sayed’s campaign has denied any involvement in producing it, while the group’s Cenk Uygur defended the ad as criticism of government spending rather than of Jewish people.
Stevens said Friday that she agreed to accept Clyburn’s invitation after Democratic intermediaries assured her that El-Sayed would condemn the ad. She also demanded an apology over his own past comments linking Israel aid to domestic funding shortfalls, and she called on him to pull a separate ad that uses footage of Tucker Carlson criticizing Rogers, even though Carlson was not campaigning as an El-Sayed surrogate.
El-Sayed accused Stevens of “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago” and urged fellow Democrats to stay focused on defeating Rogers. On Saturday he said he disagreed with the Rebellion PAC ad but did not directly say whether he wanted Stevens at Sunday’s church event, saying he’d rather talk about political spending, health care and household costs.
The dispute has reached into Stevens’s own household. Her fiancé, Jason Turkish, said he plans to vote for Rogers over concerns about El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel and Jewish safety. Stevens says she will still vote for El-Sayed.
