The Israel lobby’s attempt to destroy Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign is a disturbing example of how money warps democracy.
I was recently in Michigan, reporting for the Nation about the Senate campaign of Abdul El-Sayed. The race has hugely important implications. El-Sayed is a Medicare For All-supporting, Bernie Sanders-style progressive and critic of the Democratic leadership, who wants to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel. His opponent, Haley Stevens, is a centrist so devoted to Israel that she says the country “comes to me in my dreams.” (Note: Stevens is not even Jewish!) If El-Sayed defeats Stevens, it will be another step forward for the left-wing insurgency that is currently roiling the Democratic Party (see the victories by Zohran Mamdani, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Melat Kiros, and a certain odious oysterman who is best forgotten but whose electoral success nevertheless showed the weakness of the party establishment). If El-Sayed wins his primary and defeats Republican Mike Rogers in November, he will have destroyed the argument that milquetoast centrism is necessary for winning swing states, and he will immediately be discussed as a potential presidential contender. On the other hand, if El-Sayed loses in November, it will be seen as proof that “safe” candidates are needed, and the left will be accused of having sabotaged the Democrats’ chances at taking the seat. The name “George McGovern” will frequently be spoken.
El-Sayed’s candidacy also has major implications for the relationship between the United States and Israel. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, having received a total of $174 billion in aid. In Congress, there was formerly a bipartisan consensus in favor of continuing that aid. But since Israel began committing outright genocide, many Democrats have shifted, and Bernie Sanders got dozens of Democratic supporters in the Senate during his most recent attempts to block further military aid to Israel. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago, and even formerly staunch pro-Israel Democrats like Rahm Emanuel have changed their tune. (Republicans are almost uniformly pro-genocide and deeply racist against Arabs, so the consensus there has not shifted in the same way.)
If El-Sayed defeats Stevens, it will be a major rebuke to the pro-Israel wing of the party. If El-Sayed then wins in November, he will be the first Muslim senator, and a powerful critic of the U.S.-backed ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza. He is charismatic, talented, and politically savvy; even if he does not run for president, as a senator from one of the most important swing states in presidential elections, his endorsement and support will matter a great deal in 2028.
The pro-Israel lobby has already been losing influence among Democrats. A “Senator Abdul El-Sayed” is a horrendous outcome for them, not only because of El-Sayed’s own effectiveness, but because his winning Michigan will encourage more progressive candidates to think they can win in swing districts with uncompromising pro-Palestinian stances. No wonder an AIPAC fundraising email called El-Sayed a “direct threat to the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
And so AIPAC is spending massively on the race. The Forward reports that AIPAC’s super PAC, the “United Democracy Project,” has already spent over $10 million in the race, including over $2 million on an attack ad against El-Sayed. It’s not actually clear how much in total pro-Israel groups are spending. The Michigan Information and Research Service reports that “such enigmatic groups as ‘A Stronger Michigan,’ ‘Fight For Michigan’ and ‘Center Forward’ have combined for $10 million in advertising spending in support of Stevens,” but who knows who is behind those?
I’ll tell you what I do know: AIPAC’s new anti-El-Sayed attack ad is everywhere on Michigan TV. Within half an hour of flicking on my hotel television after arriving in the state, I had seen the same ad three times. Over a long weekend in the state, I saw it well over a dozen times. They were truly blanketing the airwaves with it.
Importantly, the attack ad never actually mentions Israel. AIPAC and the “United Democracy Project” seem to know that Israel is actually quite unpopular with Democratic voters these days. They know that if they advertised El-Sayed’s stance on military aid, it would probably make people vote for him rather than against him. So they’ve made an ad accusing him of misogyny instead.
The ad’s charges are ludicrous. Even the Detroit Free Press, which endorsed Mallory McMorrow against El-Sayed, ran a fact check concluding that it was “unpersuasive.” The ad rests on four supposed incidents of “disrespecting women.” First, it says, El-Sayed called Michelle Obama’s “work with children ‘uninspired’ and ‘ineffectual.’” In fact, El-Sayed wrote an op-ed about childhood obesity in which he said that American political leaders as whole had taken an “uninspired” approach to tackling the crisis. He actually called Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity program “commendable, if ineffectual,” and the reason he said it was “ineffectual” is that it did not successfully lower childhood obesity. This is their leading example of “disrespecting women”! The ad also cites El-Sayed calling Governor Gretchen Whitmer “bought and paid for,” which she is. It says that “in a discrimination lawsuit, El-Sayed was accused of telling a woman he didn’t want to work with anyone over 40.” In fact, he’s never faced a discrimination lawsuit. The suit in question wasn’t against him (he was just quoted in a legal filing), this isn’t a remark about women, and he was only accused of saying that he was excited to be working on a team where everyone was under 40, not that he “didn’t want to work with” anybody older. Finally, the ad claims that “an employee said he was offered payment to keep silent after witnessing El-Sayed disparaging women.” In fact, the employee said he left El-Sayed’s campaign because he was troubled by El-Sayed’s opposition to Israel and embrace of Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, and while he claimed on Twitter that El-Sayed had used “offensive language” in discussing opponent Mallory McMorrow, he didn’t say what El-Sayed had said. The “offer of money” was a general offer of a separation agreement with a nondisparagement clause, which the employee turned down so that he could bash El-Sayed on Twitter about his insufficient support for Israel.
So the ad’s claims are garbage, and fall apart when you look into them. But that may not matter. AIPAC has a lot of money and it is absolutely blasting this thing all over the state of Michigan, hoping that voters will hear that El-Sayed disrespects women and think “hm, I’ve heard that Abdul disrespects women.” In fact, it’s striking that they combed his entire record and this was the best they could come up with, but the sheer volume of repetition may have its desired effect. El-Sayed and Stevens are neck-and-neck in the latest poll, and the massive influx of negative advertising may tip the balance against him.
What struck me as I watched the attack ad over and over was just how blatant the rigging of our democracy is. The ad’s contents are absolute horseshit. They are in complete bad faith (how can you note that he called Obama’s program “ineffectual” without noting that the full phrase is “commendable, if ineffectual”?) They are designed to make voters think the advertiser cares about misogyny, when their actual issue is Israel. They are pushed out to every Michigan television through millions of dollars in spending. Their sole purpose is to destroy El-Sayed’s reputation and make people falsely think he’s a misogynist.
This is how AIPAC works, though. Instead of waging a fair fight, and trying to make the case for Israel and persuade voters that supporting Israel is worth their tax money, the organization wages a dirty campaign and hides its hand. (“United Democracy Project.”) It’s completely antithetical to how an authentic democracy would function, where candidates would have roughly equal funding and would make their case on the issues. But AIPAC has no qualms about flooding races with money to try to warp the outcome. Stevens actually got elected in 2022 with the help of $4.2 million in AIPAC money. In that race, she defeated Andy Levin, who is Jewish. Stevens isn’t Jewish, but because she’s pledged to faithfully serve Israel’s interests in Congress (sending more weapons, voting to sanction the ICC for going after Netanyahu, etc.), AIPAC would rather have her in Congress than Levin, who is a critic of Israel.
Right now, Cori Bush, another opponent of Israel’s genocide, is trying to win her congressional seat back in Missouri. Sure enough, AIPAC’s “United Democracy Project” is spending nearly a million dollars on an attack ad. Is the ad about her opposition to Israel? Of course not. Instead, the ad features Black workers saying that while she was in office, Bush did not deliver for her constituents. It also attacks her for missing votes. Here, as Bush herself pointed out, the claims were totally misleading, noting that she missed many of the votes because she was sick with COVID and didn’t want to get her colleagues sick. But AIPAC is not interested in context, it’s only interested in finding out what lines of attack will successfully sink someone. In 2024, United Democracy Project spent $7 million ousting Bush from Congress, including sending mailers that “show images of Bush with distorted features that make her forehead look bigger and elongate her features.”
Politico reported last month that the United Democracy Project “has shelled out more than $38 million so far this cycle through direct spending, shell PACs and donations to other groups,” meaning it “has already surpassed the $26 million it spent during the 2022 election and is likely on track to exceed the $46.3 million it uncorked during 2024.” All of this is a plain effort to manipulate voters into selecting pro-Israel candidates, even if those voters have no idea that that’s what they’re doing. AIPAC cares about one issue and one issue only, and its job is to ensure that candidates who threaten U.S. aid to Israel are ousted and those who support it are kept in place.
Back in 2018, when I first met Abdul El-Sayed, I was bowled over by his political talent and charisma. “This man will be the first Muslim president,” I thought. He had Obama-like star power. But a lot of money is being put into ensuring that El-Sayed never gets anywhere near power. AIPAC understands that an El-Sayed victory could have very negative repercussions for the U.S. relationship with Israel. They know this may be their last chance, that if El-Sayed’s politics prove viable in a swing state, a flood of new progressive contenders may follow. And so the next few weeks will be spent doing everything possible to stop El-Sayed. Ideally, many voters will not even notice what is going on. They will think there is a debate about sexism going on, when there is in fact nothing but a silent contest between the power of the Israel lobby and the power of those who want to cut off U.S. support for a genocidal government. But the first step to ending AIPAC’s influence is to show people how the dirty tricks work, so that they won’t get fooled again.
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