Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing criticism from some prominent Michigan Democrats — including Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is running against him in the Democratic primary — for his decision to host campaign rallies with Hasan Piker, the far-left political streamer with a history of antisemitic remarks.
“That’s the exact opposite of someone I’d be campaigning with,” Stevens told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “We have to be serious here about who’s going to be the best general election candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan to beat [Republican] Mike Rogers, and someone who’s campaigning with someone like that is not going to win in Michigan.”
Slotkin told JI that she is not familiar with much of Piker’s language but that what she knows of his rhetoric raises concerns for her.
“Any equating of all Jews or American Jews with Israel and the Israeli government is a problem right off the bat, and then it sounds like, from there, a cascading set of antisemitic tropes and just the kind of rhetoric that is — I want to read for myself, but sounds deeply antisemitic, consistently, and therefore not someone that should be helping anybody out in the Michigan political environment,” said Slotkin.
