Republican attacks branding Abdul El-Sayed an extremist have intensified in the final days of Michigan’s crucial Senate race, prompting accusations of Islamophobia and alienating some Arab and Muslim voters who previously supported Donald Trump.
Trump has repeatedly mocked and mispronounced the Michigan-born Democrat’s name, calling him a “jihadist” at a rally for Republican candidate Mike Rogers in Port Huron on Sunday. He also said Mr El-Sayed would “be unable to get a seat on an airplane”.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health and human services secretary, made disparaging remarks about Arabs at a Rogers campaign event in Grand Rapids on Monday. Senator Ted Cruz, campaigning for Mr Rogers in Michigan on Wednesday, referred to Mr El-Sayed as a “jihadist leprechaun”.
Television adverts by the Rogers campaign and allied Republican groups have attacked Mr El-Sayed over alleged links to Muslim organisations. The Senate Leadership Fund, the leading Republican Senate super PAC, has claimed that Mr El-Sayed receives “dirty money” from an “Islamic extremist group” tied to Hamas.
Mr Rogers has also questioned donations to Mr El-Sayed from people associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a Muslim advocacy group that Republicans have long attacked as a terrorist organisation, although the US government has not designated it as such.
He has alleged links between Mr El-Sayed’s family and the Muslim Brotherhood, citing the involvement of the candidate’s father-in-law with CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America. Mr El-Sayed’s campaign referred to previous statements from both organisations denying any affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr Rogers has also referred to work by Mr El-Sayed’s mother for a charity that was classified by the George W Bush administration as supporting terrorist groups. Mr El-Sayed has rejected any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, saying his family has “no” ties to it.
His campaign said that while Mr Trump and Mr Rogers “lie and resort to desperate, bad faith attacks”, Mr El-Sayed remained focused on reducing costs and challenging “the chaos and corruption in Washington”.
Backlash among Arab American voters
The attacks have angered some of Mr Trump’s former Arab and Muslim allies in Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States. Hassan Nehme, a Republican statehouse candidate and former vice-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said some people who had worked to elect Mr Trump and other Republicans had changed their position.
“You turned off a lot of people. Even people that were working to get Trump elected and get people to vote Republican here have flipped,” Mr Nehme said. “We did all this work for them to turn around and use us as enemies, to be able just to win an election.”
Mr Nehme, who is undecided in the Senate race, added: “It’s to the point [where] I’m like, why am I even fighting to be in this party?”
Bishara Bahbah, who founded Arab Americans for Trump and helped with the former president’s 2024 outreach to Michigan’s Arab community, said Mr Trump’s comments had crossed “a red line”.
“The only consequence that I can see from these comments is a complete reversal of the support in Michigan and other states where Arabs and Muslims vote, toward the Democratic Party,” he said.
Abdullah Hammoud, the Democratic mayor of Dearborn, where the population is predominantly Arab and which is backing Mr El-Sayed, said racism remained a factor in the battleground state.
“If you have folks who refuse to vote for somebody because of the direction in which they pray, it most certainly has an impact,” Mr Hammoud said. He believes most voters will look beyond the attacks.
El-Sayed campaign responds
Mr El-Sayed has sought to counter the Republican campaign through door-to-door canvassing and television adverts. One advert features his white step-grandparents rejecting claims that he is a communist, saying: “Communist? We’re Presbyterian!”
Another includes images of a menorah and Mr El-Sayed praying with black parishioners. Dana Harris, director of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, said his Muslim faith might concern some voters but added: “At the end of the day. he’s a human being like the rest of us. And he wants change.”
Mr El-Sayed said he was not worried by the attacks, telling reporters at a Detroit union hall: “Because just like I did 18 months ago when I kicked off this campaign, I am taking a bet on the bigness of Michiganders.”
Barack Obama, appearing with Mr El-Sayed at a Detroit rally on Saturday, said: “This stuff didn’t work on me, not in Michigan. It’s not going to work on Abdul.”
Mr Rogers has denied that his criticism is directed at Islam or at the way Mr El-Sayed prays. “It is about his adherence to this radical Islamic agenda,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
A White House spokesperson, Davis Ingle, said Mr Trump would “continue to unapologetically fight for American greatness and call out extremists like Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed without apology”.
