Democrat Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed spent the final hours of his campaign Monday at a content creators pool party in Detroit, where left-wing streamer Hasan Piker was among the guests.
El-Sayed made the stop on the eve of Tuesday’s Democrat primary, according to a reporter who documented the gathering. Also in attendance were Michigan state Rep. Donavan McKinney, along with progressive congressional candidates Melat Kiros and Chris Rabb.
Piker has become one of the more contentious figures in El-Sayed’s circle. The Twitch streamer, who holds millions of followers made up largely of men under 30, rallied with El-Sayed on Michigan college campuses this spring in appearances that drew condemnation from the candidate’s primary rivals.
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) has kept her distance. When asked if she would back El-Sayed, she declined to answer and pointed instead to Piker’s record. She singled out a 2019 comment in which the streamer said America “deserved” the September 11 attacks. Piker called the remark “inappropriate” and apologized for it that year.
The poolside stop capped a campaign that turned Michigan’s Democrat primary into a proxy war between the party’s progressive and establishment wings. El-Sayed held a 15-point lead over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in an Emerson College poll from last week. He pulled 54 percent to her 39 percent. The former Wayne County health director has run on abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and passing Medicare for All.
The guest list showed how far El-Sayed’s movement has spread down the ballot. McKinney, a Democratic Socialists of America member, is running against incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th District. Kiros and Rabb come from the same wing. Both won recent Democrat congressional primaries, Kiros in Colorado and Rabb in Pennsylvania.
The pool party followed the campaign’s final debate by a matter of days. El-Sayed and Stevens spent that night trading shots over super PAC spending and socialism. They also fought over which of them could actually hold the seat in November. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and affiliated groups have spent close to $30 million backing Stevens.
Tuesday’s winner moves on to face former Rep. Mike Rogers, the presumptive Republican nominee. The two are competing for the seat left open by retiring Democrat Sen. Gary Peters. A Glengariff Group poll put Rogers ahead of El-Sayed by 10 points.
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