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Progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will parachute into battleground Michigan’s campaign trail this weekend to boost Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left candidate they’re supporting in a crucial Democratic Senate primary.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will make three campaign trail stops with El-Sayed, a former Wayne County Health Department director who is facing off for the party’s nomination against Rep. Haley Stevens, a more moderate lawmaker backed by longtime Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and the establishment.
After victories by far-left and socialist candidates over more moderate contenders in deep-blue congressional districts in New York City and Colorado last month drew national attention, Michigan is now the latest battleground in the high-stakes fight between the left-wing and the center-left establishment for the future of the Democratic Party.
“What you’re seeing here are the two opposing forces of the Democratic Party. Both candidates offer very different visions of what the party and the country should look like,” veteran Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo told Fox News Digital. “The stakes are monumentally high because Democrats have to hold this seat in November.”
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The winner of the Aug. 4 Democratic primary will take on former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who is on a glide path to the GOP nomination, in the key midterm Senate faceoff to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
The rare open Senate seat is a top Republican target in the midterms, as well as a must-hold for the Democrats as they aim to win back the Senate majority from the GOP, which currently controls the chamber with a slim 53-47 margin.
The showdown in Michigan became a two-way race a couple of weeks ago, after progressive state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, once the third major Democrat in the primary, suspended her campaign.
McMorrow, who has seen her national profile expand in recent years and was running as a progressive in an ideological space between El-Sayed and Stevens, exited the race after failing to keep pace with her two main rivals.
Stevens held a seven-point lead over El-Sayed earlier this week in a Detroit News/WDIV poll conducted after McMorrow dropped out and following a debate last week between the two candidates.
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El-Sayed, who, if elected, would make history as the nation’s first Muslim senator, is an epidemiologist who unsuccessfully ran for governor as an insurgent candidate in 2018. He has made support for Medicare-for-all a major component of his campaign.
The far-left candidate has also called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and is a vocal critic of Israel amid its war with Hamas — even characterizing Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” against Palestinians. And El-Sayed, who served as a top surrogate on Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, has vowed not to accept PAC donations.
Schumer and the party establishment view Stevens as more electable than El-Sayed, who has sparked controversy with his past comments. They worry that El-Sayed as the party’s nominee would jeopardize the Democrat-controlled Senate seat by pushing the party too far to the left in a state that President Donald Trump carried two years ago by just over one percentage point.
Earlier this week, Peters, who to date had stayed neutral in the race to succeed him, endorsed Stevens.
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The primary showdown has become combustible.
“If you want your politics dictated by AIPAC or Chuck Schumer, then I’m not your guy,” El-Sayed said during last week’s debate, arguing the Democratic Party would not change if it continued to elect leaders who take money from corporations.
Stevens countered by accusing El-Sayed of benefiting from Republican efforts to boost him in the primary. “What my opponent needs to answer is, why is the GOP spending thousands of dollars to prop up his campaign, saying that he will make Mike Rogers the next U.S. senator?” Stevens said.
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The primary clash is also expensive, with outside groups spending big bucks to flood the campaign trail with ads.
The biggest spending is United Democracy Project, a political action committee aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group reports spending nearly $15 million in support of Stevens and against El-Sayed.
“This race is not between Abdul and Haley Stevens. It is Abdul vs. AIPAC,” Sanders argued in a social media post. “A billionaire-funded Super PAC shouldn’t determine American elections or foreign policy. Let’s support Abdul.”
A victory by El-Sayed over Stevens in the primary would give the far left a major win on a statewide stage, and further boost their momentum in the battle for the Democratic Party’s future.
But Matt Bennett, one of the leaders at the Third Way, a leading center-left Democratic organization, warned against placing too much emphasis on the results in Michigan, as he pointed to other factors in the race.
“I don’t think that even if El-Sayed wins, that means the national party is moving dramatically to the left, as the left will insist if that happens,” he told Fox News Digital. “Some of this is idiosyncratic. There’s a huge Arab American population in Michigan. The Israel issue is more resonant there than it is in other places. And candidates matter.”
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Caiazzo, a veteran of Sanders’ two presidential campaigns, also urged caution.
“I think it’s really important for Democrats not to read into these primaries as any sort of directional change within the party. Every single election happens under a different set of circumstances,” he said.
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