Rep. Haley Stevens recently lobbed a stunning accusation at her rival in the race to be Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. “Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” Stevens wrote Thursday on X.
Stevens is not Jewish. But she has received nearly $30 million — a record amount — in support from forces that have long dominated American discussion of Israel, the self-proclaimed Jewish state: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and affiliated groups. El-Sayed, who could become the country’s first Muslim senator, has both condemned Israel and said he supports “equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike.”
Asked about her comments by a reporter on Saturday, Stevens responded: “There’s been a lot of talk from my opponent throughout this race about AIPAC, about foreign policy,” and mentioned El-Sayed campaigning with the streamer Hasan Piker, saying Piker “has been very antisemitic.” Piker has previously rejected similar characterizations of his views. Stevens’ campaign did not respond to an inquiry from NOTUS about her comments regarding El-Sayed.
Earlier in the week, Donavan McKinney, who is making a primary challenge against Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, told NOTUS that as he campaigns, voters have demanded a “redistribution of resources” with clear implications for the U.S.-Israel relationship. As people speak of working three jobs or rent swallowing most of their Social Security checks, he sees their dire straits as inseparable from Washington choosing to fund Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians and collaborating with Tel Aviv on “a war for no reason with Iran [that costs] $1 billion per day.”
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Israel is inescapable in the dynamics around Michigan’s Tuesday primaries, making the elections there a microcosm of the larger debate within the Democratic Party over U.S. support for the country. An overwhelming majority of Democratic voters think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, according to a late-June Quinnipiac poll. And the views of the American public writ large on the issue have trended downward in recent years — with a drastic split emerging between the preferences of the Democratic base and party leadership as the last Democratic president, Joe Biden, fueled Tel Aviv’s punishing offensives in Gaza and Lebanon.
Nationally, candidates and activists urging drastic changes to the U.S.’s Israel policy are now deeply enmeshed with those demanding an overall change to the Democratic Party’s positions and style, saying it has been soft on both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump. The establishment is pushing back: Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have endorsed Stevens against El-Sayed, and chief House Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries backs Thanedar against McKinney. Schumer and Jeffries are firm Israel supporters. Will Lawrence, another insurgent House candidate tied to the party’s left flank, is battling two establishment-friendly rivals in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District.
Yet while political convention once recommended deference to hardline Israel allies, the situation in Michigan suggests rising forces in the Democratic Party are cementing a different strategy: being loud and proud in questioning Washington’s entanglement with Tel Aviv.
The 2026 midterms follow the 2024 cycle, in which American support for Israel first became a dominant national concern among Democrats. Like the current slate of progressive candidates, including El-Sayed and McKinney, those questioning Israel then faced intense pushback presenting them as needlessly divisive, and defenders of the U.S.-Israeli status quo still cite that election. The argument — pushed by voices like Rep. Dan Goldman (D-New York), a staunch Israel backer unseated in a primary this summer — is that the Uncommitted campaign, which began in Michigan and urged Democrats in several states to reject Biden in their primaries votes to send an electoral message to shift his Gaza policy, hurt the party. Goldman argued on X that Uncommitted “was significantly responsible for Trump 2.0.” Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted co-founder, is now running for state senate in Michigan with the backing of many of the organizations supporting fellow progressives. Alawieh has said he voted for Kamala Harris, and Uncommitted’s defenders say its goal was to warn Democrats about a vulnerability so they could win.
Today, Israel skeptics say the success of their movements in Democratic primaries in Colorado and New York earlier this summer has already demonstrated the growing popularity of changing the American relationship with Israel. Rather than treat Michigan as definitive, they hope it will entrench a trend — and be influenced by momentum elsewhere.
“This is a national movement too,” McKinney said, recalling his trip to Denver in June to campaign for Melat Kiros, a fellow challenger to a Democratic incumbent who entered national politics because of the Gaza war. “To see the energy on the ground — We were like, ‘I hope it spreads.’”
He continued: “People around the country are just tired of status quo politicians.”
Kiros and fellow progressives, including two others who won primaries this cycle, have stumped for candidates in Michigan during the primary races’ final weeks, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a progressive leader, visited the state to campaign for McKinney and El-Sayed last month. Locally, their coalition includes figures like Eboni Taylor, who’s running for state senate and whom Sanders has endorsed. Ed Rushton, an adviser to Taylor, cast the fight against AIPAC as similar to a deeply local issue: He said its operations resemble those of Detroit-based energy company DTE, in focusing on silencing critique from politicians from both parties — rather than supporting a positive agenda — and pumping excessive money into races. Stevens’ opponents argue, for instance, that there is no guarantee AIPAC and its partners will continue supporting her through November should they succeed in quashing El-Sayed.
The alliance among progressives means they can vouch for each other to those who might be skeptical of one, Rushton noted — including those wary of growing discussion of Israel in politics, and those highlighting the issue.
Some voters and even elected Democrats in Michigan have expressed concern about the political influence of Arab Americans, the community to which El-Sayed and Uncommitted’s leaders belong. At a recent campaign stop at a senior-living center, Rushton said, a person said they did not want “these Arabs to run the show,” an apparent criticism of Taylor’s endorsement from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D), the sole Palestinian American in Congress.
“I almost appreciated them saying that” for the chance to respond, Rushton said, to what he calls “an attempt to remarginalize Arab Americans disguised as a reclaiming of the Democratic Party” after the loss to Trump.
“Across the state, 70,000 white women voted for Whitmer twice and voted for Trump in 2024. Yet somehow this is an Arab issue?” Rushton told NOTUS. He said Taylor responds to similar comments while canvassing by describing her personal trust in Tlaib, El-Sayed and Alawieh. Stevens has falsely claimed El-Sayed led Uncommitted and rejected Harris in 2024.
Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for the progressive group Justice Democrats, said the Michigan progressives can jointly “build power for the working class in working class communities” while using the 2024 experience to their own benefit, to argue that mainstream Democrats enabled the rise of a Republican trifecta federally.
“The establishment has spent so many years trying to convince everyday people they cannot challenge the billionaire class … [now] it is up to the establishment whether they want to use the campaigns we’re building as a roadmap,” he said. Justice Democrats formally endorsed McKinney and is, per Andrabi, “supportive from afar” of El-Sayed and Lawrence.
Part of that blueprint is a clear position on Israel. Greg Krieg of the American Priorities PAC, which explicitly aims to counter AIPAC spending, told NOTUS: “Palestine is a credibility test now. If voters think you won’t be honest about it, they won’t trust you on anything else.”
American Priorities has spent more than $650,000 in Michigan, he said.
Progressives say a central part of their strength is the excitement that drives grassroots ground organizing. In Michigan, they have the benefit of several aligned campaigns running simultaneously, “working to change the face of Congress for something much bigger” in terms of a policy shift, said Beth Miller, the political director of the organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action.
Her group’s endorsement of El-Sayed was its first Senate endorsement and itself an indicator of the Democratic evolution on Israel: JVP is explicitly anti-Zionist. Miller traced the development to years of work by organizers focused on what she called American “complicity in Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing” that has grown significantly since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
El-Sayed was long on the group’s radar, she said, “not coming in trying to ride the coattails.”
Alongside his message, JVP emphasizes “the truth there is no ‘Jewish’ opinion on Israel or Palestine – as long as there has been Zionism, there have been anti-Zionist Jews,” Miller said.
Amid the optimism among progressives, they still have determined detractors in Michigan — including among Democratic voters and persuadable Trump voters, groups from which their candidates will need support in November. The handling of Israel is a particular focus for those who remain leery, though seemingly more over its impact on domestic politics than policy choices abroad: Stevens supporters argue El-Sayed and allies focused on pushing the party over Gaza created unnecessary and even dangerous negativity at a party convention in April. On Thursday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, said she will not attend the state party’s August convention over fears for her safety. Nessel’s critics say their opposition to her is over her attempted prosecutions of anti-war protesters at the University of Michigan.
Some Democrats maintain that the party and voters it needs won’t coalesce around progressive candidates in the general election, and those divisions could aid the GOP, with some hinting they might never back El-Sayed if he triumphs over Stevens.
Meanwhile, Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ campaign is projecting confidence over the surge for the left and Democratic infighting.
“If you think calling to defund the police, abolishing private healthcare for autoworkers, and campaigning with an influencer who said, ‘America deserved 9/11’ are winning messages, I have news for you: Michiganders aren’t buying it,” Alyssa Brouillet, Rogers’ communications director, said in an emailed statement to NOTUS, including an apparent reference to Piker.
Miller cast cold water on that GOP logic and said the progressives are focused on overall success.
“What we need to beat Republicans in the general election in 2026 and then again in 2028 are people who are absolutely unapologetically un-bought and very clear in their values,” she said.
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