Michigan Democrats handed the pro- Israel lobby the costliest defeat in its history Tuesday, nominating Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate over Michigan Representative Haley Stevens, a Democrat, by the slimmest of margins, after American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and allied groups spent close to $30 million trying to stop him.
It was the largest sum AIPAC has ever committed to a single race. Counts that fold in other outside groups put the total spent on Stevens’ behalf far higher. Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Newsweek show more than $54 million from pro-Stevens committees. Fox 2 Detroit put the AIPAC-linked figure at more than $46 million. El-Sayed spent about $3.2 million from his own campaign account on advertising.
The result makes El-Sayed, a physician and the former health director for Detroit and Wayne County, the first Muslim Democrat nominated for the U.S. Senate. He ran on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and a nonstop attack on the money backing his opponent.
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He is set to face former Michigan Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican, in November. Rogers drew no primary opposition and lost the state’s 2024 Senate race by roughly 19,000 votes. The seat is open because Michigan Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, is retiring, and control of the chamber may turn on it.
The AIPAC Defeat
The Forward described the contest before the vote as a proxy fight over the Gaza war and a referendum on the influence of Israel’s supporters in Democratic politics. The money made it one.
Stevens rarely engaged the question. Asked twice about AIPAC at a July campaign stop in West Michigan, she answered at length without naming the group. Israel came up once, when she said she wanted the United States and Israel working together to rebuild Gaza. Asked by The Associated Press whether she welcomed the support, she said donors were “supporting me because of my dedication to the people of Michigan.”
Most of the ads never mentioned Israel. They ran on manufacturing and featured former President Barack Obama.
El-Sayed made the spending his closing argument. At the final debate, he tied Stevens’ vote against an amendment blocking military aid to Israel to the outside money, calling it “the pro quo that comes with the quid of $30 million.” Stevens said her positions reflect her own convictions and noted she supports a two-state solution.
Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist at Upshift Strategies, told Newsweek the outcome was unambiguous.
“There is no question that an El-Sayed victory would be a huge defeat for AIPAC and another sign of how toxic their brand has become within Democratic politics,” Gordon said.
Not everyone accepts that reading. Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, the progressive group that emerged from Senator Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign and backed El-Sayed, told Newsweek the defeat reflects the influence of outside spending generally rather than any single lobby.
“I think that’s too small a frame,” Geevarghese said. “This election is ultimately a test of whether unlimited outside spending can substitute for genuine grassroots organizing. Regardless of where the money comes from, voters are demonstrating that there are limits to what money alone can buy.”
He added: “We’ve been outspent. We have not been out-organized.”
Is Israel Toxic for Democrats?
Michigan appears part of a pattern. AIPAC-backed candidates fell in primaries in New Jersey, Illinois, New York and Colorado this year. The group’s brand had grown so toxic in Democratic primaries that its support was damaging candidates who had taken its money only once.
The Michigan candidates gave voters an unusually stark choice.
Stevens has called herself a “proud pro-Israel Democrat,” a phrase she used while accepting the endorsement of Democratic Majority for Israel last November. While she has criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he has endangered Jews in America and around the world, she voted in January 2025 to sanction the International Criminal Court over its arrest warrants for him. She also cosponsored the United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act and voted last month against an amendment that would have cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.
VoteLog, which tracks congressional activity on Israel and Palestine, scores her at +41 net pro-Israel points across 45 points of recorded activity, including 14 cosponsored bills, placing her among the more pro-Israel Democrats in the House.
El-Sayed, however, has described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, a term that has become a litmus test for Democrats in recent election cycles. He has said the Israeli government is as evil as Hamas, declined to endorse a two-state solution, and told CNN in July that Israel is “certainly a rogue state.” He has also campaigned with left-leaning streamer Hasan Piker, whose comments about Israel and the October 7 attacks have drawn accusations of antisemitism from Jewish organizations.
Those positions drew accusations of antisemitism from Stevens herself. After El-Sayed told the outlet MuslimGirl that AIPAC had picked the least capable candidate in America, Stevens wrote on X that “everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”
El-Sayed rejected it. “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said. He has argued that his critics conflate the Israeli government with Jewish people, and he courted Jewish voters through the spring without softening his position on Israel.
He also drew prominent Jewish support. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, campaigned for him in Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids. Former Michigan Representative Andy Levin, a Democrat who lost a 2022 primary to Stevens after AIPAC spent millions against him, endorsed him and dismissed the antisemitism accusations. Jewish Voice for Peace Action, an anti-Zionist group, gave El-Sayed the first Senate endorsement in its history, with political director Beth Miller calling him “a stalwart and unapologetic defender of Palestinian rights and freedom.”
Other Jewish Democrats reached the opposite conclusion. Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which endorsed Stevens and made roughly 10,000 calls for her, said El-Sayed’s response to the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield troubled her and that a senator “must demonstrate an ability to stand with that community.”
Jewish voters make up about 1.4 percent of Michigan’s electorate. The state has close to 130,000 Jewish residents.
Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist organization Third Way, told Newsweek that the arithmetic favored El-Sayed from the start.
“It is important to remember that no state has a higher percentage of Arab-American residents in the U.S. than Michigan,” Kessler said. “The Jewish population is less than half that of the Arab-American population there.”
“Israel will continue to be a dividing line in Democratic politics,” he said. “That will be the case no matter who wins.”
What the Polling Shows
The Michigan result tracks a broader collapse in Democratic support for Israel.
Gallup, surveying 1,001 adults between February 2 and February 16, found 65 percent of Democrats sympathizing more with Palestinians and 17 percent with Israelis. A decade earlier, the split ran the other way, with about half of Democrats siding with Israelis and roughly a quarter with Palestinians. Nationally, Gallup recorded Palestinians ahead of Israelis for the first time, 41 percent to 36 percent.
A Quinnipiac University poll in June found 66 percent of Democrats saying the United States is too supportive of Israel, up from 20 percent when the question was first asked in 2017. Among all voters, the figure was 48 percent, up from 16 percent.
Quinnipiac found in August 2025 that 75 percent of Democratic voters opposed sending more military aid to Israel and 77 percent said Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
The erosion has coincided with Netanyahu’s declining standing in Washington. A July YouGov/The Economist poll found that 49 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should arrest Netanyahu, in line with the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Twenty-seven percent opposed such an arrest, while 23 percent were unsure.
Congress has moved with the voters. In July, 103 of 212 House Democrats voted for a failed amendment eliminating the $3.3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, a tally that would have been unthinkable before the Gaza war. Stevens voted against it, a vote El-Sayed cited repeatedly.
Israeli officials dispute that the alliance is unraveling. Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told The Detroit News last week that support for Israel “remains firmly in the mainstream” across broad segments of both parties.
Gallup also found 57 percent of American adults favor an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, against 28 percent opposed, a number that has moved less than the sympathy figures.
The Electability Question
Stevens’ central argument was that El-Sayed cannot win in November, and the independent polling supports her.
A Glengariff Group survey for the Michigan Education Association and Business Leaders for Michigan, conducted July 22 to 24, put Stevens within a point of Rogers while El-Sayed trailed him by 10, with Rogers ahead by nearly 28 points among independents. An EPIC-MRA poll completed on July 31 had Rogers over El-Sayed 46 percent to 43 percent, and Stevens over Rogers 44 percent to 42 percent. PollingSource’s average of recent public polls shows Rogers ahead of El-Sayed by about 4.5 points.
The polls pointing the other way were commissioned by El-Sayed’s allies. A Data for Progress survey for the Working Families Party in July found El-Sayed leading Rogers 47 to 46 while Stevens trailed, and found Stevens the least popular candidate in the race. Prediction markets price a Democratic hold at roughly 65 percent.
Kessler cautioned primary results do not transfer. “The primary is one set of voters and the general is another,” he said. “Even though this is shaping up to be a blue wave for Democrats in November, El-Sayed still has work to do to win the decisive middle in a swing state like Michigan.”
Some Stevens voters said as much at the polls. David Salama, 48, an anesthesiologist from West Bloomfield, said: “If Abdul wins today, I will vote for Mike Rogers in November.”
Yet Geevarghese from Our Revolution called the premise outdated. “The conventional wisdom has often assumed that bold economic populism is somehow less electable,” he said. “Increasingly, the evidence points in the opposite direction.”
Andrea Pringle, president of March On PAC, which supported El-Sayed, said the result reflects an appetite for confrontation. “Michigan reflects a growing appetite for courageous leadership rooted in values, not political calculation,” Pringle said.
What’s Next
Gordon said the calendar is the harder problem. “The winner will now have less than 100 days to bring the party together and win a key Senate seat,” he said. “A tall task.”
Michigan’s general election is November 3.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas