It looked on Thursday night as if feuding Democrats in Michigan had made peace on the eve of a pivotal Senate election. But by Friday evening, the tensions were only mushrooming.
Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive who won the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan, said in a statement late Friday that the moderate candidate he defeated in the primary, Rep. Haley Stevens, was “intent on relitigating” their race. The accusation came hours after Stevens, a supporter of Israel, issued a statement demanding an apology for comments he had made criticizing the country.
It was a dizzying exchange that came a day after Stevens had said she would campaign with El-Sayed this weekend -- a step that had briefly given Democrats hope that they were moving past a series of recent public criticisms she had made of him.
And it all came just four days ahead of an election in Michigan that could be critical in the battle for Senate control.
In a statement on Friday morning promoting her plan to join El-Sayed on the campaign trail, Stevens said that she expected El-Sayed to apologize for comments he had made about Israel and that she anticipated that he would disavow what she described as an antisemitic ad from an outside group. She also called on him to take down an ad from his campaign featuring Tucker Carlson.
“Abdul promises to get money out of politics,” Stevens said in the statement. “He can begin by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford.”
El-Sayed, a forceful critic of Israel, said in his statement on Friday evening that he had overcome millions of dollars in spending from corporations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, during the primary.
“Now the stakes are even higher -- defeating Trump’s hand-picked candidate, taking back the Senate, and defending our democracy,” El-Sayed continued. “That should be the priority for all of us right now. So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand.”
It was not immediately clear what the dueling statements would mean for their planned appearance together on Sunday. A spokesperson for El-Sayed, Roxie Richner, said Friday evening that “I don’t have anything else to share at this time.”
The exchange was the latest turn in an unusual and tense dance between El-Sayed and Stevens that has involved a widening circle of Democrats, including Reps. Debbie Dingell of Michigan and James Clyburn of South Carolina, one of the highest-ranking African Americans in Congress.
The friction has added turbulence to the final week of a crucial race, raising concerns in the party about divisions that could be costly as Election Day nears.
Stevens, a centrist who lost to El-Sayed by less than 1 percentage point in a bitter August primary, has not been seen publicly with El-Sayed in the final stretch of the race, despite pledging during the summer to campaign with him.
Instead, Stevens, a strong supporter of Israel, has made a series of cable news appearances in which she has questioned his outreach to Black and Jewish voters.
Her fiance, a Jewish Democrat, said Wednesday that he was backing El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee. The same day, Stevens said she would not campaign with El-Sayed before the election Tuesday.
Wednesday’s events left Dingell, a leader of the party’s congressional delegation from Michigan, frustrated.
So, she said, she called El-Sayed and Stevens and told them that they should campaign together with Clyburn, the Democratic power broker from South Carolina.
By Thursday, a joint appearance with El-Sayed, Stevens and Clyburn had been scheduled for Sunday at a Black church in Detroit.
“I’m the one that made this happen,” Dingell said Friday morning, adding the problem had been that El-Sayed and Stevens “weren’t talking.” When pressed by Dingell, “They said, OK,” she recalled.
“It was that simple,” she said.
Stevens said in an interview Friday that she had agreed to attend a church service with El-Sayed and Clyburn because Clyburn asked her to do so.
“My buddy Clyburn called,” she said. “He’s just like, ‘I’m coming in.’”
She insisted there was not more to it.
“We’re not like, let’s all get on a Zoom and talk for two hours about an event and how to work with this and have a deal,” she said. “We’re not trying to broker or have a deal. You know, we’ve had a Black-Jewish working class alliance in the Democratic Party.”
But the dynamic between El-Sayed and Stevens is hardly simple.
And even as Stevens agreed to join El-Sayed, she suggested that her appearance was the product of an upcoming concession by El-Sayed -- and sought to secure another.
In her statement, she said she understood that El-Sayed would disavow the ad from the outside group -- a left-wing political action committee called Rebellion PAC -- adding that she’d heard of those plans from party leaders and the news media. “That is why I accepted Congressman Clyburn’s invitation to appear with Abdul,” Stevens said.
The ad, set at a grocery store, suggests U.S. aid to Israel is the source of rising prices in America. It shows a shopper telling a man not to buy eggs because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.”
Stevens argued in her statement that the ad “did not invent its argument” but advanced one that she said El-Sayed had been making on the campaign trail. “I therefore expect him to apologize,” she said.
Cenk Uygur, the founder of Rebellion PAC, argued that Stevens had a “strange” interpretation of the ad and that it was criticizing the Israeli government, not Jewish Americans.
But he said it would not bother him if El-Sayed denounced the commercial.
“He’s running a campaign,” Uygur said. “I’m running a PAC. He can say whatever he wants. I’m OK with it. We don’t speak with each other.”
In her statement, Stevens also called on El-Sayed to take down an ad from his campaign that features Carlson and other conservative figures weighing in on the race. Carlson, who has frequently embraced conspiracy theories and has said white supremacy is “not a real problem” in America, has spoken out against Rogers and defended El-Sayed’s criticism of U.S. foreign policy. Stevens said El-Sayed should pull the ad out of “respect for Michigan’s Black community.”
It was not clear if Stevens and El-Sayed had any direct communication.
Clyburn, who endorsed Stevens in the primary, said he would not discuss the planning of the Sunday event but acknowledged he had spoken with Dingell.
“I don’t know who else she talked to,” he said. “But she did talk to me.”
The arrival of Clyburn comes as El-Sayed is trying to overcome tension between Black and Arab American voters in the Detroit area.
He is also facing skepticism from some Jewish Democrats, who object to his fierce criticism of Israel. In late August, he apologized to a group of Jewish Democrats for using a phrase in March -- “hurt people hurt people” -- after an attack on a synagogue near Detroit.
“Nobody deserves to have their pain trampled on,” he said in his apology.
The primary race between El-Sayed and Stevens was personal and centered heavily on Israel. El-Sayed, highlighting Stevens’ support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, once said the group had chosen to back the “least capable candidate in America.” Stevens said El-Sayed wanted to blame his “problems on Jewish Americans.”
After El-Sayed won, Stevens quickly endorsed him and they appeared together at a unity breakfast. She said the party had a “good ticket going” and was united.
But her fiance, Jason Turkish, said Wednesday that he remained disappointed months later that El-Sayed had not appeared with Stevens at a news conference the day after the primary, and had instead joined Mallory McMorrow, another candidate who dropped out of the race in July and finished a distant third.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.