Outside Ad Puts Military Policy in Senate Fight

An outside group aired an ad tying high grocery prices to U.S. military support for Israel while promoting Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee. The ad didn’t come from El-Sayed’s campaign, Gabby Deutch said on The Atlantic’s Radio Atlantic. Haley Stevens called on him to condemn it more strongly, while El-Sayed distanced himself from the ad.

The campaign and the people caught in it

Deutch also described voters’ worries about war and the cost of living. Two students, ages 21 and 22, at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania told her they had voted for Trump and felt misled. “He promised he wouldn’t get us into any more wars, and now our fraternity brother just shipped out to the Middle East. He is in the military and got deployed.” Their account put a personal cost beside candidates’ and the outside group’s arguments over military policy. Deutch said the students felt lied to.

The ad dispute landed in a Senate contest already marked by tension between Stevens and El-Sayed. Stevens lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed in a close, contentious race, then endorsed him on the Democratic ticket. After the primary, the two didn’t appear to be on good terms, according to the report.

Stevens and El-Sayed had been expected to campaign together at a unity rally in Detroit. Then El-Sayed said she wasn’t welcome, Deutch said, while Stevens continued to say she endorsed him. Stevens appeared at a Detroit church with Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers and endorsed him. As the race tightened, voters watched the candidates’ alliances shift.

Endorsements as political currency

Deutch said it remained unclear what changed between Stevens’ continued support for El-Sayed and her endorsement of Rogers. Some Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats in Michigan who had supported Stevens had already said they wouldn’t support El-Sayed, she said. Some endorsed Rogers; others planned to sit out the race.

Deutch said opposition had been growing among a segment of the Jewish community unhappy with El-Sayed’s language about Israel, Zionism and issues aligned with Jewish communities. She wasn’t sure Stevens’ endorsement would expand that opposition. The Rogers campaign welcomed the endorsement and hoped it might sway voters still undecided, Deutch said.

According to Deutch, the Senate race was closer than the Michigan governor’s race, with El-Sayed appearing to lead. She said the endorsement might matter to a small number of voters who could be decisive. Campaigns treated a public endorsement as a possible lever over those voters; the report described no grassroots organizing or mutual-aid response to the dispute.

What the candidates say—and what voters face

El-Sayed said he was focused on voters beyond Stevens and Rogers. “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he said. “I think about the, like I said, the 9,999,998 people who are not those two. Because you know what? I’m just less interested in the politics of it all than I am the policy of it all.” He also described Michigan as “a state of 10 million people who deserve a lot better from their government.”

David Graham said polls from Fox News, the Financial Times and CNBC in the mid-to-late part of October found corruption topping voters’ list of issues. Deutch said high prices could change how arguments about corruption and threats to democracy resonate. The episode set those pressures alongside a contest where the outside ad, endorsements and candidate statements all became campaign material. Its account centered on electoral maneuvering and voter concerns, not a community-led alternative to the political process.