Photo by: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Is Abdul El-Sayed the new Radical Chic Democrat?
Michigan’s U.S. Senate race is viewed as one of the most consequential and contentious elections of the 2026 cycle. The three-way Democratic primary contest to replace retiring incumbent Gary Peters — between moderate Congresswoman Haley Stevens, progressive state senator Mallory McMorrow, and far-left podcaster-physician Abdul El-Sayed — has emerged as a proxy war over the soul of the Democratic Party. As Politico noted last month, the race is a “catch-all for every question and problem plaguing Democrats politically and tactically.” Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats to win a Senate majority. Michigan is not optional.
But two weeks ago, the national spotlight on the Great Lakes state got a little brighter. Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon living in Dearborn Heights, collected arms and drove an explosive-laden truck into the preschool at Temple Israel in my hometown of West Bloomfield — the nation’s largest Reform synagogue in the heart of Michigan’s Jewish community. By some miracle, security guards engaged him and stopped the violent rampage before he could kill the nearly 140 children and their caretakers inside.
The attack was an act of Islamic terrorism, possibly carried out as revenge for a conflict between combatants on the other side of the globe. Ghazali’s brother was a commander in the Hezbollah terrorist organization, killed in a recent Israel Defense Forces airstrike. But Ghazali’s desire to sow terror could’ve also been incubated in Michigan. He lived next to “America’s jihad capital,” a community where, in the days after October 7th, 2023, thousands marched through the streets celebrating Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,200 innocent men, women, and children — including 46 Americans.
In the week following the West Bloomfield attack, one might expect a Michigan Senate candidate to take pains to lower the temperature. El-Sayed chose differently. Six days after the near-massacre at Temple Israel, he posted a smiling photo of himself appealing to fans of Hasan Piker. Shortly thereafter, his campaign announced joint appearances with Piker at rallies on the trail.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Daily Wire
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Jesse Arm is the director of external affairs and presidential initiatives at the Manhattan Institute.