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(RNS) — There’s probably no other midterms race in which support for Israel and the direction of U.S. foreign policy has figured as prominently as the race for the U.S. Senate in Michigan.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate, has been described as the fiercest critic of the U.S.-Israel alliance as any candidate ever running for a Senate seat. His challenger, former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, has trumpeted his support for Israel, in line with longstanding financial and military support the U.S. government has offered to what policy hawks often call America’s greatest Middle East ally.
On Sunday (Nov. 1), when Rep. Haley Stevens, El-Sayed’s primary opponent, shook up the Senate race by revoking her endorsement of El-Sayed and instead backing Rogers, Israel once again broke through to become a lightening rod issue in the race.
Here are five takeaways from the race and how it has affected Michigan Jews:
Haley Stevens is known for being a staunch Israel supporter.
During her four terms as a Democratic congresswoman, Stevens has repeatedly said she would fight for Israel.
She accepted a record-breaking $30 million in support from the Israel lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliated PACs. Those funds were mostly spent on negative ads against El-Sayed.
She earned the gratitude of many Jews heavily concentrated in Detroit’s northern and western suburbs who enthusiastically campaigned and voted for her.
After her defeat in the primary in August, her main source of tension with El-Sayed remained over Israel. This past weekend, she called upon El-Sayed to forcefully condemn a political ad produced by an outside group that blamed rising prices of groceries on U.S. spending for Israel.
El-Sayed had said he was not responsible for the ad. But Stevens asked him to go further and apologize for comments he had made about Israel, as well as to take down an ad from his campaign featuring a line from Tucker Carlson.
When El-Sayed demurred, she walked back her endorsement and appeared with Rogers at a Sunday service in a predominantly Black church, Perfecting Church in Detroit, led by Pastor Bishop Marvin L. Winans.
For Stevens, love for Israel and for Judaism appears to be not just political. It’s personal.
Stevens is not Jewish. She grew up a Protestant Christian, but she attended a Jewish sleep-away camp as a teenager.
In 2023, during a Hanukkah menorah lighting in Detroit, Stevens said, “Israel comes to me in my dreams.”
In August, Stevens announced her engagement to Jason Turkish, a lawyer who is Jewish and an AIPAC donor. Last week, Turkish publicly endorsed Rogers and appeared at a campaign event with him.
Turkish told The New York Times that El-Sayed’s response to a question in a debate with Rogers was the tipping point. During the October debate, El-Sayed did not fully answer a question about whether Iran or Israel poses a greater danger. Turkish said he felt his own safety would be in jeopardy if El-Sayed were elected to the Senate.
Also in October, Stevens said she was considering converting to Judaism and had met with a rabbi.
El-Sayed represents a new kind of Democratic candidate who is outspokenly critical of Israel.
Like Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, El-Sayed is Muslim and willing to challenge the 78-year-old U.S. allegiance to Israel.
El-Sayed has called Israel’s war in Gaza, where more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, a genocide. He said he would vote to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel and went so far as to say he did not consider Israel an ally.
The Democratic Party’s support for Israel has been eroding. In July, almost half of Democrats in the House of Representatives (103 out of 212) voted to cut all $3.3 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Israel from a foreign affairs spending bill. The bill failed.
But few national candidates have been as fiercely critical of Israel at a time when there is no consensus on the issue in the Democratic Party. Throughout his campaign, El-Sayed pledged to work to shift U.S. tax dollars away from foreign military aid to countries like Israel and Egypt and toward domestic priorities in Michigan, such as public schools, roads and healthcare.
On Israel, Rogers represents the status quo.
Rogers supports U.S. military aid for Israel and has said he supports Israel’s “right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.”
Rogers supported U.S. strikes on Iran and has said the U.S. should preserve the option of future military action if Iran rebuilds nuclear capabilities.
Many Jews in Michigan have found Rogers’ support for Israel, and for the Trump administration’s policies supporting Israel, a source of comfort and have said they will switch their traditional Democratic allegiance to vote for him.
Rogers has eagerly courted them.
On Sunday, Drop Site News reported that two staffers on Rogers’ Senate campaign — Abigail Ronson and Jesse Stokes — are registered foreign agents for the state of Israel. The Foreign Agent Registration Act recognizes a foreign agent as someone who, within the United States, engages in “political activities on behalf of a foreign principal.”
The Israel issue has deeply divided Michigan Jews.
In March, after a Lebanese-born man crashed his car into Temple Israel outside Detroit, El-Sayed remarked that “hurt people hurt people.” (The attacker was known to have lost family members in an Israeli airstrike.) El-Sayed later apologized, but the remark stuck, and many Jewish Michiganders were offended by the comment, which they viewed as justifying or excusing the attacker’s actions.
In August, a letter from prominent Detroit-area Jews began circulating urging Jewish Democrats in the state to sign their names in support of Mike Rogers. Another letter from a group of Michigan rabbis and Jewish community leaders, called “Nonnegotiable Michigan,” said the group would withhold support from El-Sayed if he does not change some of his positions and rhetoric on Jewish safety and Israel. The issue has become increasingly polarizing. Other Michigan Jews have backed El-Sayed — about 1,000 signed a petition saying they thought Rogers’ “right-wing political agenda” would make Jews less safe.
Rabbi Aaron Starr of Southfield’s Congregation Shaarey Zedek, a large Conservative synagogue, and one of the leaders of the Nonnegotiable movement, has made clear he will not vote for El-Sayed.
“(El-Sayed’s) hyper fixation with Israel and with American supporters of Israel causes us concern,” Starr told RNS. “We believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, and we expect our candidates and elected officials to recognize and affirm that right.”
On a Sunday afternoon Zoom call, hours after Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers, Starr praised Stevens for her “bravery.”