Stevens Posts Bizarre, Racist Rant Against El-Sayed as He Surges Ahead in Polls 

On Thursday, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) posted a bizarre and racist rant against opponent Abdul El-Sayed over his criticisms of AIPAC — even as Stevens’s campaign has already faced pushback for embracing bigoted attacks.

In a post on X addressed directly to El-Sayed late Thursday evening, Stevens said that “[e]veryone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.” She said, without basis, that El-Sayed is a “celebrity” and a “part of the complainer class” who is in the race to secure the “next book or podcast deal.”

“Bro, I just want to work for Michigan,” Stevens concluded in her post.

The post was a quote tweet of an interview clip in which El-Sayed taunted AIPAC, which has spent roughly $30 million on Stevens’s campaign — a record amount of spending on one race for the pro-Israel group — via its super PAC, United Democracy Project (UDP). In all, UDP and other outside groups have spent $60 million backing Stevens, while El-Sayed has received $4.6 million from outside groups.

“When AIPAC watches this — come for me, see what happens,” El-Sayed said. “If you think you can beat money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All, come. But I’ll tell you what people don’t want, they don’t want money in a foreign government. They want money here.”

El-Sayed has criticized the U.S. policy of funding Israel, but has also previously called for ending unconditional foreign military aid to other countries that commit abuses like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Pakistan.

Stevens’s post has been lambasted by critics as racist and Islamophobic, in part due to its invocation of the bigoted trope that Muslim people want to commit violence against Jewish people.

“Haley Stevens trying hard to compete with John Fetterman for the title of most racist elected Democrat in America,” said Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan.

Pro-Israel lobby watchdog AIPAC Tracker criticized Stevens for conflating AIPAC with Jewish people. “AIPAC isn’t a Jewish organization, Haley. It’s a pro-Israel organization. You, a non-Jewish person, are stoking dangerous antisemitism by conflating the two,” the group wrote.

The post came after two polls came out this week showing that El-Sayed is surging in the polls, just days before the primary election next week.

On Wednesday, a poll by Tavern Research found that 46 percent of likely primary voters said they were choosing El-Sayed, versus 36 for Stevens. Meanwhile, Emerson College Polling/WLNS/WOODTV found in another poll on Thursday that El-Sayed would get 54 percent of the vote, pulling out a 15-point lead over Stevens’s 39 percent.

Stevens’s campaign has already faced criticism in recent weeks over some of her backers’ bigotry — including from fellow Democrats who vocally back Stevens as well as right-wing figures.

Earlier this week, Stevens backer Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Michigan) did not say whether she would back El-Sayed if he becomes the Democratic nominee. Her reasoning was openly Islamophobic, as she said to Semafor: “I will not stand beside someone who has allowed distinctly anti-American sentiment to enter our public dialogue.”

Last week, a woman who sits on Farmington’s school board, Angie Smith, also came under fire when she said she’s backing Stevens because she would represent “not just one race, but all races.”

“You have to know how to work the room, don’t just come in here speaking Arabic, don’t come out with your Arabic music on,” she went on. The video went viral online. Smith later apologized, and the Stevens campaign distanced itself from her comments.