Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) said on Friday that she would appear at a campaign event for the first time in support of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan.
She said that she would do so after learning that he intends to apologize for some of his past statements about Israel and to condemn an ad that the Anti-Defamation League called “a case study in antisemitism.”
Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in a bitter primary battle for the Senate nomination in August, had said that she would vote for the former Detroit health director but not campaign for him. She also called on him to condemn the ad blaming high grocery prices on U.S. support for Israel.
On Friday, she said that she would visit a black church in Detroit on Sunday alongside Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-N.C.) to back El-Sayed.
“I have learned from Democratic Party leaders and emissaries, as reported in the news media, that Dr. El-Sayed has heard the deep concerns of the Jewish community and is now, for the first time in this campaign, formally condemning that ad for what it is,” she said.
El-Sayed’s campaign has disassociated itself from the ad, which is the product of an outside political action committee run by the left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur, but has not condemned its content.
Uygur is the uncle of Hasan Piker, an anti-Israel influencer who campaigned with El-Sayed during the primary.
Stevens stated that the ad, which features a couple putting back groceries they can’t afford because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians,” was based on El-Sayed’s campaign rhetoric, for which he should also apologize.
“The ad did not invent its argument. It dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words throughout this campaign, that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, healthcare and child care,” she wrote.
“The standard here is simple,” she said. “If those words are wrong when a political action committee supporting his campaign says them, then they are equally wrong when Abdul says them, and Abdul has said them from the start.”
“Abdul promises to get money out of politics. He can begin by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford,” Stevens said.
JNS sought comment from the El-Sayed campaign about what, if anything, he might apologize for among his past statements.
Stevens’s conditional embrace of her former rival, whom she accused of Jew-hatred during the primary, is a highly unusual intervention just days before Election Day in one of the most closely watched races in the midterms.
Polling suggests El-Sayed has a narrow lead over former congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee.
