GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Lefty Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed claimed Saturday that the Democratic establishment is trying to attack his electability because of his identity as a Muslim.
A new poll, however, suggests there’s a more obvious reason.
In one of his closing pitches to voters before the Tuesday primary, El-Sayed strenuously pushed back on the notion that he’s not electable — something he argued his critics are using to try to scare off Dems from backing him.
“When they say I’m not electable, they’re not talking about me,” El-Sayed contended during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday.
“They’re saying that you couldn’t possibly be open-minded enough… to elect somebody with a name like mine who prays like I do in a state like ours.”
El-Sayed is locked in a tight primary fight against Rep. Haley Stevens, who is raking in cash from PACs, including one that is aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The $60 million race could be the most expensive Dem primary ever.
A recent EPIC-MRA poll had El-Sayed losing to Republican Mike Rogers 46% to 43% in the general election, but Stevens (D-Mich.) winning 44% to 42%.
Still, Bernie Sanders-backed El-Sayed is the frontrunner in most polling in the Democratic primary — even as Stevens boasts support from more traditional pillars of the party.
The former public health official, though, is leaning hard on his identity.
He joked Saturday about how his full name, “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed” is a mouthful and recounted former President Bill Clinton suggesting he should run for president after hearing him deliver a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in 2007.
“Did you see my name though?” he recalled asking Slick Willy at the time.
He also cited the uneasiness he felt people had around Muslims and Arab Americans like him after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Later during his riff on questions about how formidable he is in a general election, El-Sayed urged his backers to remind detractors “that electability has nothing to do with the color of your skin or how you pray or what your name is.”
“Electability has a lot more to do with whether or not you see what is possible when all of us come together around our shared values.”
He cited the election of Barack Obama, whom he noted also had a unique name, as evidence that voters are open-minded enough to back someone like him.
Some of El-Sayed’s top critics have raised electability concerns about him due to his lefty positions and courting of controversial left-wing firebrands such as streamer Hasan Piker.
Piker said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11″ and argued years later that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was a “direct consequence” of Israeli actions, claiming that if the terror group engaged in rape, it “doesn’t change the dynamic for me.”
El-Sayed has distanced himself from Piker’s more repulsive remarks, but argued that he doesn’t believe in “cancel culture” and stumped with the controversial streamer. He has stumped with Piker during the campaign.
The former health director of Wayne County and the city of Detroit has also attracted support from the far-left of his party, including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
He has taken hardcore lefty positions such as backing Medicare for all with no copays or deductibles. But at the same time, he insists he is still a capitalist.
“It is the idea that you allow supply and demand to allocate capital at the micro level to enable people to make money in sustainable ways,” he told reporters Saturday when asked about why he supports capitalism.
“The part that I have trouble with is that we don’t live in capitalism, we live in corporatism, where we allow big corporations to move capital based on the interests of shareholders and a quarterly bottom line.”
El-Sayed has delighted the lefty base by opposing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as the Democratic leader in the upper chamber, preferring Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) instead. However, on Saturday, when pressed by The Post, El-Sayed gave himself some wiggle room on that.
“A vote is a choice between two or more options. I don’t know what other options are. If it happened to be a guy named John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, or Chuck Schumer, well then, I’d make a different decision,” he replied when asked if he is 100% ruling out the possibility of backing Schumer.
El-Sayed also told The Post he would back Stevens if she wins the nomination.
