Unlike influencers like Hasan Piker, working-class voters mostly showed up to support Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.
Detroit — Throughout Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign, he repeated these three taglines: “Medicare for all,” “Money out of politics,” and “Money in your pocket.” He claimed to be a champion for the working man, but the results of last night’s Democratic primary election for the Senate show that his opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, outperformed him with the very demographic he so vocally claimed to represent.
This morning, after a much tighter race than pollsters had anticipated, the election was called for El-Sayed.
Stevens bested El-Sayed in the state’s more rural, working-class counties, as well as among black voters in inner-city Detroit. In Michigan counties where fewer than 30 percent of voters are college-educated, Stevens earned almost 52 percent of the vote, Politico reported. Similarly, in counties where more than 30 percent of voters have earned a bachelor’s degree, El-Sayed clinched almost 60 percent of the vote. In Kent County, for example, one of the wealthiest counties in the state, where 40 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, El-Sayed won by 26 points.
Looking around El-Sayed’s primary party in Detroit on Tuesday night, these results made sense. Influencers floated around the room in fancy outfits. Young, college-age voters waved keffiyeh scarves and took selfies, and some guests flew in from out of state to see the fanfare.
Yousuf Kadir, who has lived in Chicago and New York, flew in for the party because his father-in-law supported El-Sayed’s campaign. He was wearing a Zohran Mamdani shirt, which is what prompted me to approach him. Kadir had a simple message for the Democratic establishment: “You won’t be in office much longer.” He also said that a Stevens win would be a “win for Israel,” while an El-Sayed win is “a win for America.” Notably, Kadir is not a Michigan voter.
At the event, the El-Sayed campaign was selling three mocktails named after his three platform taglines. While there was no alcohol in the drinks, the scene reeked of champagne socialism — the campaign charged $6 for a Sprite.
Tony Dicameglio, co-chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Progressive Caucus, was wearing a keffiyeh and a sticker that read “LGBTQ for El-Sayed.” He told National Review that, if Stevens had won last night, he would certainly vote third party or not at all. Dicameglio said El-Sayed has “the imagination that I really feel Democrats need to meet the moment of fascism rising in the country that we’re facing right now.” He thinks that El-Sayed “understands the urgency of the crisis that we’re facing and is willing to go all the way and fight for the working people of this state, and that’s that’s the fighter that we need.”
The concern among El-Sayed voters is that the Democratic establishment isn’t doing enough, is bought by corporate interests, and has ignored working-class voters.
Outside of a polling location, Michael Howard, a black man who is a Macomb County commissioner and is running for the Michigan House of Representatives, told National Review that he voted for Stevens. “My dad is a teamster. He’s been a teamster nearly my entire life, and so the Detroit Auto Rescue and the work that she’s [Stevens] done since is really important to our family.” Howard also said, “She was able to get legislation passed even in a Republican majority under a Trump administration.”
At El-Sayed’s victory party, National Review spoke with Chris Rabb, a Democratic Socialists of America–backed Pennsylvania state representative who is running for Congress in the bluest district in the country. He claimed that El-Sayed’s platform — and the DSA broadly — is for everyone, not just the elites.
“He’s not supposed to win, but when he wins by a large margin, it will destroy the trope that this only works in coastal elites and that sort of thing, and that this message, this populist message, this progressive message, resonates across many demographics,” Rabb said. “I am confident you can send me, just like you can send Dr. Abdul to any place, and he will be able to connect his message because it’s authentic, it’s bold, and it’s substantive.”
As influencers, upper-middle-class politicos, and streamers like Hasan Piker strolled through El-Sayed’s primary victory party with their $6 Sprites, however, working-class voters showed up to support Stevens.