After spending more than $30m on a candidate who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary on Wednesday, the leading pro-Israel lobbying group in the US has now indicated it will pivot to the Republican in that race come November.
The move highlights how the one-issue behemoth does not see itself as ideologically bound to one party or the other.
“Our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda,” the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) said in a statement. “Our community is proud to support pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans who stand for our values.”
The race between pro-Israel Congresswoman Haley Stevens and former Detroit public health official Abdul El-Sayed quickly became the most expensive Democratic primary race of all time.
Stevens was backed by a further $30m from outside groups who bankrolled round-the-clock attack ads on Sayed.
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Sayed, an Egyptian-American Muslim who has never held elected office, won the exceptionally tight race by one percentage point, in what was a stunning upset for establishment Democrats, and a boon to the progressive wave taking hold across the country.
Half a million more Democratic voters showed up to the polls than in previous primary races, which typically see low turnouts, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel said on Wednesday.
Sayed has repeatedly said he’s never met with corporate lobbyists. Last quarter, he out-fundraised Stevens in small-dollar donations, according to data analysed by the campaign finance tracker, OpenSecrets.
“An average of $95 was spent for every vote against Abdul, more than 10 times as much as Abdul’s $9 per vote average,” his campaign said in a statement.
But outside spending by groups that don’t coordinate with the candidate – which, according to US law, can be unlimited – is how Aipac and other special interest outfits have gained what seemed like a permanent foothold in US politics.
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the non-profit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told Middle East Eye that in 95 percent of US electoral races, “whoever spends the most, wins”.
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“Yes, money buys elections. It’s very effective, and that’s why these candidates work overtime continually raising money,” he said.
Few groups are willing to spend as much as Aipac does – especially in a climate where emboldened criticism of Israel has proliferated both the left and the right of the political spectrum in the US.
In 2022, Aipac helped Stevens secure her seat in the House of Representatives by ousting longtime lawmaker Andy Levin for his support of US policies to punish violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
“Today, Michigan launched a new chapter in our political history,” Levin wrote on his Instagram account on Wednesday, accompanied by a photograph of him hugging Sayed.
“Out with all the big money, dark money and corporate and special interest control of our politics. We the people hunger for authenticity.”
Earlier this year, Aipac helped oust Republican Thomas Massie, who voted against US foreign aid to Israel, in his Kentucky primary race by spending more than $4m against him through its United Democracy Project political action committee.
That was just part of a coalition of pro-Israel groups that spent $9m against him.
‘Truth and justice’
The IMEU Policy Project – an outfit less than three years old that advocates for Palestinian rights – revealed that it contributed $400,000 in support of Sayed’s campaign.
Sayed has described Israel’s nearly three-year-old assault on Gaza as a genocide, echoing language used by leading human rights organisations, genocide scholars and the United Nations.
Israel, as well as most US lawmakers, reject the term.
His position resonated strongly with many voters in Michigan who played a crucial role in organising against former President Joe Biden during the 2024 election, given his immovable support for Israel, even as Palestinian casualties mounted in the tens of thousands.
Certain suburbs of Detroit, which house more than 200,000 registered Arab-American voters, voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump at the time.
This was despite Wayne County on the whole backing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris with more than 62 percent of the vote. But Trump ended up winning the entire state by just over one percentage point.
“People in Michigan, they’re looking for leaders that are going to call out bold solutions and that are going to try and speak out against the status quo because the status quo hasn’t been working,” Alabas Farhat, a member of the Michigan House of Representatives who appeared in a social media video backing Sayed, told MEE.
“The status quo has led to our state being 49th in unemployment. It’s led to us being 47th in third grade literacy. It’s led to our middle class having less wealth than they did in previous years,” he added.
“Trump came along, and he sold a false bag of goods, but he was at least willing to say things were wrong. Now comes Abdul El-Sayed, somebody who has made truth and justice two central pillars to his campaign.”
The tactic is similar to that of a recent spate of winning progressive Democratic candidates around the country, from New York to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.
But according to Sally Howell, an expert on Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Sayed’s polling numbers actually went up after he pivoted away from incessant talk of Aipac funding and moved to getting “money out of politics” entirely – a tagline that became central to his campaign.
“He started talking about not getting money from DTE, the energy company here in Michigan… and this issue of the AI data centres, and how they would drive up our water bills,” she said.
“These are issues that really matter” to Michiganders across the political spectrum, she added.
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In his victory speech on Wednesday, Sayed said he spoke to Stevens and was assured of her endorsement as he gears up to face former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in November.
Hertel, the state Democratic Party chair, insisted in his remarks that Democrats are now “united” to defeat Donald Trump-backed candidates in November.
The outcome of that vote may tip the balance of the US Senate, and turn the chamber blue for the final two years of President Trump’s term in office.
If Sayed wins, he would become the very first Muslim elected to the upper chamber on Capitol Hill.
Writing on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump called Sayed “a Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel”, but added that his win is also “great news for the Republican party”, suggesting that he will be easy to defeat.
“I think that it’s going to go a lot darker than the negative campaigning we’ve seen, and it’s going to be very anti-Arab and a lot more Islamophobic,” Howell said of the race between now and November.
For his part, Sayed told supporters and the media on Wednesday that the focus on his name and identity is “the only play they got” against him.
“It’s like, wow, he’s different,” he said of Republican attacks.
“That’s the best you got? You can’t actually talk about what you want to do? My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries.”
