Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, is actively interviewing candidates for a Jewish community liaison position on his campaign, according to a person familiar with the operation. The outreach effort follows an apology El-Sayed delivered to the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus on Saturday and his attendance at the group's Summer Simcha celebration.
The liaison search includes conversations with Jewish community leaders as part of the vetting process. The role responds directly to criticism El-Sayed drew after public remarks following a March attack on Temple Israel, in which a man rammed a truck into the building and opened fire with a rifle. No one was killed or injured.
After the attack, El-Sayed condemned the suspect but also noted the alleged assailant had lost family members in the war between Israel and Lebanon, saying "hurt people hurt people." Critics accused him of using the line to justify violence against a Jewish house of worship. The remarks shadowed him through the primary and into the general election.
At Saturday's session with the Jewish Democratic Caucus, El-Sayed said his comments "may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify." He added, "To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I'm really sorry. That was not my intention." He had previously told the group he would take the remarks back entirely if he could.
Asked what he hears most from Jewish voters who approach him directly, El-Sayed said: "I hear a lot about safety, and folks want to know that they're going to be safe. The prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me, and I just want to make that very, very clear."
Michigan's approximately 100,000 Jewish voters carry unusual weight in this race. The state has become a central battleground in the fight for Senate control, and Jewish voters in Michigan have historically broken heavily for Democrats. El-Sayed supports zeroing out all U.S. aid to Israel, a position at odds with a significant share of the community he is now trying to court.
El-Sayed won his primary by a narrow margin, leaving him with little room for defection within the Democratic coalition heading into November. The combination of a close primary, a competitive general election and an unresolved controversy over his synagogue attack remarks makes Jewish outreach a measurable electoral calculation.
Republican nominee Mike Rogers has pressed hard on the issue. Rogers said El-Sayed "has had six months to apologize for his incredibly horrific remarks regarding the Temple Israel attack" and accused him of choosing instead to "surround himself with terrorist sympathizers and some of the most notable antisemites in the country."
An Epic-MRA survey published Monday shows El-Sayed leading Rogers 47 percent to 43 percent. Roughly 10 percent of the electorate remains undecided or has not declared a choice—a pool larger than El-Sayed's current margin and one that includes the Jewish voters he is working to retain.
Rogers' broadside reflects a Republican calculation that the synagogue attack remarks are a durable liability. The GOP needs a net gain of seats to take Senate control, and Michigan is among the handful of states where the outcome is genuinely in doubt. Every point of Democratic coalition erosion in a state this close matters.
For El-Sayed, the liaison hire is both operational and symbolic. Operationally, a dedicated staffer with standing in the Jewish community can open doors to organizational endorsements, donor networks and synagogue outreach events that a candidate with El-Sayed's record on Israel cannot easily access. Symbolically, the position signals the campaign takes the breach seriously enough to dedicate a full-time resource to repair it.
Whether that is enough depends on undecided Jewish voters and how they weigh his position on Israel aid against Rogers and the broader partisan choice. El-Sayed's team is betting that sustained engagement, a formal apology and a dedicated outreach hire can hold enough of that community together to win.
