One after another, mainstream Democrats have lost high-profile primary races this year to progressives who campaigned on ending U.S. military support for Israel.
Haley Stevens is trying to defy that trend.
Ms. Stevens, a moderate Michigan congresswoman backed by Democratic leaders in Washington and the leading pro-Israel super PAC, is aiming to win one of the party’s most important Senate primaries as a firm supporter of the Jewish state.
She does not believe there has been a genocide in Gaza. She supports maintaining U.S. military aid to Israel without conditions. And she makes no apology for receiving more than $28 million in advertising help from the nation’s leading pro-Israel super PAC, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. (Despite calling “for an end to dark money in this country” in an interview with The New York Times, she has received another $20 million in help from four other super PACs with undisclosed donors.)
Ms. Stevens was first elected to the House in 2018, before the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, set off a devastating war in Gaza that has turned many Democratic voters against Israel. She combines her backing of Israel with calls for a two-state solution — the mainstream party position before 2023.
The politics of Israel are at the center of her fiercely competitive Aug. 4 primary against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official who has emerged as one of his party’s most outspoken critics of American policy in the Middle East. Savvy on social media and keenly aware that Democratic voters are in an anti-establishment, Israel-skeptical mood, Dr. El-Sayed has pushed relentlessly to tie Ms. Stevens to pro-Israel and corporate interests.
In an interview, she made clear that she would prefer to talk about rising costs and Michigan manufacturing companies that are struggling under Mr. Trump.
“The No. 1 thing I hear is, Why are we getting screwed over by Donald Trump as Michiganders?” she said. “‘Why has millions of dollars of investment in Detroit gone away because of tariffs?’”
Israel, she said, “is something that Abdul wants to make this race about, and it’s an important issue to him.”
The country also remains firmly in the news. Months into the war that President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel started against Iran, fighting has flared up again, putting a fresh focus on America’s support for the Jewish state. On Wednesday, a House vote to eliminate U.S. aid to Israel split Democrats, with almost half of them supporting the move.
Now Ms. Stevens — who once said at a Hanukkah celebration that “Israel comes to me in my dreams” — is testing whether Democratic primary voters will embrace a pro-Israel candidate in a race where Middle East politics are a major issue.
In an interview last week on a park bench outside her campaign headquarters in Detroit, she said her position on Israel was based on her belief that the peace and the security of both countries required the United States to continue sending both offensive and defensive weapons to Israel.
“I’m not a wardrobe in search of a bedroom, shopping around policy positions,” she said. “You know, I’ve got an opponent who wants to make this race all about one matter. I’m not denying that it’s a matter we disagree on. I’m also not ignoring that there is real pain and rolling of Michiganders going on right now because of Donald Trump and his reckless bullcrap policies.”
She added, “I am not a Netanyahu apologist, all right?”
A Vital Race in the Land of ‘Uncommitted’
In Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, Democratic primary voters have rejected candidates who defended Israel and backed a two-state solution in favor of those who labeled the war in Gaza a genocide.
Those primaries all came in deep-blue House districts. Michigan is a different story.
The state is a presidential battleground that in 2024 backed both President Trump and Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who won her Senate bid that year. Home to large numbers of Jewish and Muslim American voters, it will hold one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races this fall.
It is also the birthplace of the “uncommitted” movement, which in 2024 encouraged Democrats to cast presidential primary protest votes against President Joseph R. Biden Jr. over his support for Israel in the Gaza war.
More than 100,000 Democrats — about 13 percent of the state’s 2024 primary voters — chose “uncommitted,” making Michigan the first of a series of states in which Democrats rebuked Mr. Biden over his Israel policy.
Now, former Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican who narrowly lost to Ms. Slotkin two years ago, is running again and is unopposed for the G.O.P. nomination.
The race is critical to Democrats’ hopes of retaking a Senate majority. The party must hold its own seats — including the one in Michigan, where Senator Gary Peters is retiring — and flip at least four Republican-held seats.
Ms. Stevens, 43, has worked in and around politics since she graduated from American University in 2005. She has been such a supportive Democrat that, on the day that Mr. Biden ended his re-election campaign in July 2024, she hosted an event for him in the morning and then, after he dropped out, stumped for Vice President Kamala Harris in the evening.
“I’m on the team,” she said in the interview.
The core of Ms. Stevens’s political argument is that she is best equipped to face Mr. Rogers. At a debate last week, she accused Dr. El-Sayed of being the preferred choice of Michigan Republicans because they believe he would be easier to defeat.
The Democratic establishment agrees with her. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, has said she is more likely to win in November, and she has endorsements from Mr. Peters and other prominent Michigan Democrats.
A Rival Betting on Democrats’ Shifting Views
One way to tell how Israel is playing in Michigan’s primary is how eager the two candidates are to talk about it.
For Dr. El-Sayed, altering the American relationship with Israel and beating the powerful corporate interests including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee make up the core of his stump speech.
A Michigan-born son of Egyptian immigrants, Dr. El-Sayed, 41, believes Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. He would end American financial assistance to the country. He says Israel should not exist as an explicitly Jewish state. And if he wins, he says, he will aim to change the Democratic Party’s relationship with Israel.
“I don’t believe in ethno-states, and I certainly don’t believe that our country is responsible to sustain ethno-states,” Dr. El-Sayed said in an interview in Ferndale, a liberal Detroit suburb.
He added: “I want the whole party to get right on this issue. I want AIPAC to cease to be a force in Democratic elections, in Democratic primaries. And I think the best way to do that is to defeat them in a state like Michigan.”
He is making a bet on Democratic voters’ shifting feelings on Israel.
In a New York Times/Siena poll in May, 60 percent of Democratic supporters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. Just 15 percent were more supportive of Israel.
“I don’t pay my taxes thinking, Man, I can’t wait for Israel to get another tank,” Dr. El-Sayed told supporters at a town hall meeting last week in Ferndale.
Ms. Stevens, who holds far fewer campaign events that are open to the public than Dr. El-Sayed does, is not eager to discuss the subject of Israel. In April, she was booed at the Michigan Democratic Party convention over her pro-Israel stance. During a televised debate in late May, she dodged a question about what AIPAC would receive from her in return for its support.
Ads Starring Obama, Paid For by an AIPAC Group
While Dr. El-Sayed is planning rallies in Michigan this weekend with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ms. Stevens’s allies are leaning on a popular Democrat who has not weighed in on the race: former President Barack Obama.
AIPAC, through its main super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has blanketed Michigan’s airwaves and screens with an ad showing Mr. Obama praising Ms. Stevens in 2018. In the ad, the former president calls Ms. Stevens, who served as chief of staff for the task force in charge of the 2009 bailout of the American auto industry, “a critical part of my team.”
The United Democracy Project has spent more than $6.2 million on that ad alone, according to AdImpact. That figure represents the highest ad purchase of the Senate race and is nearly twice the amount Dr. El-Sayed has allocated to advertising in total. None of the AIPAC-tied ads in the race mention Israel.
The Obama-centric ads seem to have helped Ms. Stevens build large advantage over Dr. El-Sayed among Black voters in Michigan, according to a poll released on Tuesday by The Detroit News that showed Ms. Stevens with a statewide edge.
Ms. Stevens has campaigned hard to win over Black voters. During an appearance at a Black church in Detroit this month, she moved into a near-preaching cadence.
“We got an election coming, and I’ve got to let it rip,” she told parishioners at the Citadel of Praise in Detroit, adding: “God bless all of you. You tell ’em that you made friends with Haley Stevens this morning.”
LaMar Lemmons III, a former Michigan state legislator who is neutral in the Senate race, said that “the only reason she’s even a contender” was her affiliation with Mr. Obama. Mr. Lemmons, who is Black, said Dr. El-Sayed would do better with Black voters if they knew more about him.
“His positions are more aligned with the Black community; they just don’t know about it,” Mr. Lemmons said. “People see the ads with Obama — they assume that she has his support.”
Ms. Stevens’s supporters struggle to explain how her position on Israel could be a net benefit for her campaign.
“It’s helpful because that’s what she believes,” said Joe Tate, a former speaker of the Michigan House who dropped out of the Senate race last summer and endorsed Ms. Stevens. “It’s a diverse state, so you can have differences of opinions.”
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