Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) told Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), his once primary opponent, to stay away from his campaign events and disinvited her from a planned appearance on Sunday, a source familiar confirmed to NewsNation, The Hill’s broadcasting partner.<\/p>\n
The source said El-Sayed does not want the ongoing fight with Stevens to distract from the issues in the final days of his hard-fought Senate campaign.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Stevens did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.<\/p>\n
El-Sayed was set to appear alongside Stevens and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) at a church in Detroit, a show of unity despite some harsh words exchanged between the two candidates throughout the week.<\/p>\n
Stevens released a statement saying she had accepted Clyburn’s invitation to appear alongside El-Sayed, but still criticized the Senate nominee for not condemning an ad that appeared to blame Israel for high grocery prices.<\/p>\n
“The ad did not invent its argument; it dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words throughout this campaign: that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, healthcare, and child care,” Stevens said in her statement. “I therefore expect him to apologize for those statements as well.”<\/p>\n
The ad was run digitally and was bought by an outside progressive group, not El-Sayed’s campaign.<\/p>\n
El-Sayed shot back in a statement on Friday, saying Stevens is focused on rehashing their August primary, which he narrowly won.<\/p>\n
“So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand: that’s beating Mike Rogers, holding Trump accountable, and getting money out of politics,” El-Sayed said in a statement posted to the social platform X.<\/p>\n
Support for Israel was a major issue in the Democratic primary. Stevens was backed by millions in funds from pro-Israel lobbying groups, which El-Sayed criticized her for. The Democratic Senate nominee is critical of Israel and has called for the U.S. to stop sending aid to the country.<\/p>\n
Since the primary, courting Jewish voters has been a hurdle for El-Sayed. His Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, has worked to earn the support of disaffected Democrats, including those who are Jewish.<\/p>\n
While Stevens told CNN this week that she still plans to vote for El-Sayed, her fianc\u00e9, who is Jewish, announced that he would be voting for Rogers.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/em> Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) told Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), his once primary opponent, to stay away<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4267,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265\/revisions\/4267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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