DETROIT — The Michigan Democratic Senate primary is shaping up as one of the most consequential tests of the party's ideological direction in years. Black voters, who make up roughly one-fifth of the state's Democratic primary electorate, have shown early skepticism toward El-Sayed, with many backing Rep. Haley Stevens in the Aug. 4 contest, according to early results. Whether El-Sayed can close that gap before the primary concludes — and then in November — is the central question hanging over his campaign.
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, a Michigan native, put the challenge plainly. "It's a risky bet to assume Black voters will come home out of natural physics," Simmons said. The warning tracks with a pattern that has tripped up progressive candidates in Michigan before.
Exit polls from the state's 2016 presidential primary showed Hillary Clinton beating Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by roughly 40 percentage points among Black voters. Joe Biden posted a similar margin against Sanders in 2020. Sanders won the state narrowly in 2016 but lost it to Biden four years later. His persistent weakness with Black voters was never resolved. El-Sayed's campaign starts from a comparable deficit.
The skepticism is not simply ideological. Several Black voters interviewed during the primary's early-voting weekend in the Detroit area cited El-Sayed's history with the "uncommitted" movement during the 2024 presidential primary. That movement encouraged Democratic voters to withhold support from President Joe Biden over his administration's policy on Israel. Donald Trump carried Michigan in November 2024. Some Black Democrats in the state worry that the uncommitted effort El-Sayed backed helped contribute to that outcome, and they have not forgotten it.
El-Sayed, 41, is the son of Egyptian immigrants and a former public health official. His Senate campaign has centered on removing large-money donors from politics, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent millions on television ads opposing him during the primary. Those ads portrayed him as dismissive of women, citing past remarks he made about former first lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity initiative. The attacks landed with some Black voters who view the Obamas as touchstone figures.
At a campaign cookout in Pontiac on the Sunday before the primary, Army veteran Larry Nix, 63, drove up and told El-Sayed he had seen the ads. "I'm a big pro-Obama person and you're dogging his wife," Nix said. He told El-Sayed he wanted to know "what the hell is going on." El-Sayed told Nix, and roughly 40 attendees at New Bethel Baptist Church earlier that morning, that the ads distorted comments he had made about Michelle Obama, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and others. Nix said El-Sayed "opened my mind" but stopped short of committing his vote.
Stevens, a four-term congresswoman, built her relationship with Black communities through years of constituent work. Several voters told El-Sayed's campaign that Stevens had come to their homes during previous campaigns, spoken with them directly and put yard signs in their yards. That kind of retail politics is difficult to replicate in the closing weeks of a primary.
El-Sayed's stronger base is among white progressive voters, which has given him energy in the primary but creates a structural problem in November. His Republican opponent is former Rep. Mike Rogers. Democrats view the Michigan Senate seat as a pickup opportunity critical to their chances of reclaiming a Senate majority, and party strategists are pressing El-Sayed to build broader support fast.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune currently leads a Republican-controlled chamber. Democrats need a net gain of seats to flip control, and Michigan is one of the few competitive races on the map where they are the challengers rather than incumbents defending territory.
El-Sayed's campaign trail argument — that establishment Democrats have grown "soft" in confronting President Trump, as Nix put it — resonates with some voters. But it runs directly into the competing argument that the establishment has delivered concrete results for Black communities, and that abandoning it carries real risk.
Nix, who drives a Ford Expedition, said the conflict had driven pump prices up to a level that angered him, and he shared El-Sayed's frustration over the Iran war's effect on gas prices. Economic grievances that cut across party and ideological lines are the territory where El-Sayed has the best chance of expanding his coalition. Whether he converts enough of those conversations into votes is the question his campaign has not yet answered.
