Progressive US Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed spent Monday night's final Democratic primary debate in Michigan continuing to hammer on his centrist opponent Rep. Haley Stevens' backing from big money donors.
With just a week before Michiganders head to the polls, Stevens has emphasized her supposed electability against presumptive Republican nominee former Rep. Mike Rogers for the seat, which could decide the balance of power in the Senate.
While El-Sayed has consistently dominated in fundraising from individual contributors, particularly small-dollar donors, he is still dramatically outgunned by Stevens in terms of overall financial support.
Six aligned super PACs have reserved roughly $60 million to run ads boosting her—more than half of which comes from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-affiliated super political action committee (PAC) the United Democracy Project.
This tidal wave of outside funding has appeared to help Stevens remain competitive with El-Sayed after initially trailing him. But on the debate stage Monday, former Detroit public health official El-Sayed—who has made removing big money from politics a central campaign plank—argued that the spending cuts against Stevens' claim that she is more "electable" than him.
Along with the Senate filibuster, which he said would allow Republicans to stymy ambitious agenda items like Medicare for All and labor protection bills like the PRO Act, El-Sayed argued that "money in politics" was among the biggest "risks to our democracy."
He pointed to the super PAC-funded "attack ads that you've seen, probably in the last commercial break itself" that "change our political system." He then called out Stevens directly.
"When you ask $60 million to come into a race for you, and then say that somehow you're electable, I think you don't quite understand what electability means," El-Sayed said. "If you need a $60 million crutch, you probably can't be elected on your own terms."
Both El-Sayed and Stevens are shown to be slightly ahead of Rogers in polls for a hypothetical November matchup.
While Stevens has claimed that Rogers views El-Sayed as an easier opponent, one aggregate of four recent polls by 270ToWin shows El-Sayed leading the Republican by about 2.5 percentage points on average compared to Stevens, who leads by about 1.3 points on average.
El-Sayed, who has made a point of swearing off corporate backers, hit on the idea that Stevens was "bought off" repeatedly throughout the night.
He noted the $45,000 in direct support her campaigns had received since 2019 from the increasingly loathed Michigan energy monopoly DTE, as well as her support from super PACs backed by donors in the health insurance and tech industries.
Responding to Stevens’ message about the need to lower prices for ordinary people, El-Sayed said, “I don’t take money from the corporations who are jacking up your prices in the first place.”
He also pointed to her vote last week to preserve $3.3 billion in military aid for Israel while more than half of her Democratic colleagues voted for an amendment that would have cut off the support.
El-Sayed said it showed that AIPAC, which has grown overwhelmingly unpopular with Democratic voters disgusted by Israel's actions, had dumped $46 million behind Stevens because “they know she’ll be a reliable vote."
Stevens largely sidestepped questions about her super PAC support, instead hitting back at El-Sayed for campaigning with "senators who’ve come in here from the coast," like Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who she said lack an understanding of "what makes our state tick."
She emphasized her "experience" over El-Sayed as a four-term congresswoman and as “Michigan’s manufacturing geek” who'd bring a "unique understanding" of the state's issues to Congress.
"I don't think there's much difference between super PACs going in for Abdul or super PACs going in for me," Stevens said, ignoring that outside spending to back Stevens throughout the primary outpaces the amount supporting El-Sayed by about 18-to-1, according to the latest totals from AdImpact.
While polling for next Tuesday's primary has been all over the map, showing leads for both El-Sayed and Stevens in recent weeks, an unscientific online poll from Fox 2 Detroit indicated that El-Sayed was viewed overwhelmingly as the winner of Monday's debate.
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