DETROIT — The text from “Ben with Empowering Black Americans” landed as Alisha Jackson walked a majority Black neighborhood trying to encourage reluctant voters to show up to the polls.
It warned her that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat she wants elected to the Senate, “has been disrespectful and dishonest with Black voters. Are you supporting him?” it asked.
Empowering Black Americans, it turns out, is a super PAC with one known donor in federal records: a White businessman from Pittsburgh who donates to Republican causes.
“Politics is so dirty. So dirty,” said Jackson, who is Black.
The group spent $1.5 million on messages like these opposing El-Sayed, who would be the country’s first Muslim senator.
It’s a drop in the unusual, multimillion-dollar effort by Republicans to aggressively court a group long loyal to the Democratic Party in this swing state.
Michigan’s tight race between El-Sayed and Republican former congressman Mike Rogers is crucial to each parties’ path to controlling the Senate — and so is winning enough Black voters to claim victory. Democrats have brought in high-profile names to the state to counter anti-Muslim rhetoric, some stirred by the GOP, that could depress turnout among Black voters.
“It’s a lot of division and misinformed voters,” Jackson, 41, said as she walked to the next door. “People say they’re worried about sharia Law. … Do you even know what sharia Law is?”
Both parties expect most Black voters to support El-Sayed, but persuading enough to stay home or switch parties could tip a razor-thin margin statewide into a Republican win.
The overture to shrink Democratic margins in Detroit comes in two flavors: an appeal on the issues, where Black voters tend to be more moderate than progressive Democrats like El-Sayed, and against his identity.
“I think of it as the most aggressive play that the Republicans have made for African American voters in Detroit in a long time,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D) said.
Rogers has portrayed El-Sayed as a national security concern, launched “Democrats for Rogers” events that feature Black voters and deployed traditional retail politicking in the city to build an argument that Detroit would be better off with Republicans than with El-Sayed.
“He is dismissive in Detroit. We have just dozens of Black pastors that we have talked to, neighborhood leaders in the city of Detroit that we’ve talked to. They’re looking for a change,” Rogers said on Fox News. His campaign declined an interview request.
Rogers and his wife, Kristi Rogers, handed outgift certificates for gas at a Detroit-area station. He has opened a Detroit campaign office, tended bar in the city, held a news conference on a vacant lot to discuss his housing affordability plans and laid out a literacy program at a Detroit high school, steps atypical for a Republican running statewide in Michigan.
That retail effort is backed by big money.
More than $125 million has been spent on television ads in the Detroit region since the Aug. 4 primary, according to the advertising tracking firm AdImpact. Almost 60 percent of that is spent by Republican-aligned groups, and the majority of that on attack ads against El-Sayed.
Some have been working.
Leslie Tannyhill, 66, said he planned to leave the Senate race on his ballot blank because of some the ads he saw about El-Sayed, even though he’ll vote for a Democrat in every other race.
“I don’t like my options,” Tannyhill, who is Black, said at a tailgate for the Detroit Lions in the Eastern Market neighborhood last weekend.
A few minutes later, an SUV with “Abdul for Senate” signs and American flags affixed to the side drove by.
Cousins Kelli Lewis and Raven Lewis, who are Black and from Macomb County north of the city, shook their heads as it passed.
“It’s really about picking the lesser of two evils,” Kelli Lewis said. Raven Lewis added, “I’m not hearing anything to like.”
Both said they will probably end up voting for El-Sayed, but without enthusiasm.
On Tuesday, a super PAC aligned with President Donald Trump began airing $1.4 million worth of ads in Detroit featuring Black voters saying they’re lifelong Democrats who will be voting for Rogers.
And Trump, who has called El-Sayed a jihadist and falsely accused of him of being part of the Muslim Brotherhood, addressed Michigan’s Black voters at rallies this week.
“If you’re Black or you’re Jewish and you vote for El-Sayed, you’re crazy,” the president said Thursday in South Carolina.
Democrats have brought in heavy hitters to help shore up Black support, including former president Barack Obama, former vice president Kamala Harris, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and actress Kerry Washington, a show of political force when Democrats elsewhere in the country are focused on flipping red-leaning districts. But in Michigan, Democrats are using that star power to try to hold on to the seat vacated by Sen. Gary Peters (D), who is retiring.
South Carolina’s Rep. James E. Clyburn (D) and Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D), two of the prominent Black members of Congress, are scheduled Sunday to campaign with El-Sayed.
El-Sayed’s campaign has combated the heavy TV spending by reaching deeply to Black new media spaces, recording podcast and radio interviews with more than a dozen Black influencers and journalists, including Steven A. Smith, Vic Mensa, Charlamagne Tha God, Jemele Hill and The Root.
El-Sayed has dismissed the Republican push as marketing without substance and a distraction from cost-of-living issues, which polls consistently rank among voters’ top concerns.
“The reality of it is that there are narratives that people want to create, and then there are the facts on the ground,” El-Sayed told reporters. “And the facts on the ground is that people can’t afford their gas, they can’t afford their groceries, they’re worried about seeing a doctor, they want people who are going to stand up to the corruption that Donald Trump’s office has created in our country.”
El-Sayed has been building a coalition that might buoy him even if Republicans attract a meaningful chunk of Detroit’s Black voters. He’s attracted some disaffected Trump supporters who once found a home with Republicans, launching a well-attended series of town halls in the state’s ruby red Upper Peninsula.
Democrats have mounted an aggressive courting of Detroit voters.
They convened a “Detroit For Abdul” news conference in a United Auto Workers union hall last week to show El-Sayed shoulder-to-shoulder with at least two dozen Black Detroit leaders. Some said they were concerned that not enough of the city’s voters would show up for El-Sayed.
“That’s why we’re here today,” City Council member Scott Benson (D) said in an interview. “We don’t want to take anything for granted, and both parties have taken Black voters for granted for decades.”
El-Sayed led Rogers by six percentage points in a Detroit News and WDIV-TV poll this week, with support from 87 percent of likely Black voters.
In a state where victory can hinge on only a few voters per precinct statewide, whether enough of majority-Black Detroit shows up for Democrats could determine whether Michigan sends El-Sayed or Rogers, a Trump ally and former FBI agent, to Washington.
Black voters’ loyalty to Democrats cracked some in 2024, when some voters — particularly younger Black men — voted for Trump, largely over economic concerns, and helped him win Michigan.
At the UAW news conference, Michigan’s Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist looked into the TV cameras to directly address the city’s Black voters.
“I want to talk to you as a Black man who lives in the city of Detroit,” he said. “There’s some things that Abdul and this campaign have in common with Detroit — and with Black folks who live in Detroit. We’re used to people lying about us. We’re used to people making assumptions about us before they see us or meet us.”
Standing outside the Obama rally, Rose Davis said she and almost everyone she knows are enthusiastic to vote for El-Sayed. She recently severed a friendship with another Black woman who joined the Democrats for Rogers coalition. “She was sending me messages, trying to get me to come to her stupid stuff, and so I blocked her. It’s all a stunt.”
For some Black voters in Detroit, the negative messages around El-Sayed’s campaign stuck.
“That leaves a stain on you,” said Janeane Cato, 57.
She voted for Rep. Haley Stevens (D) in the primary, part of the coalition that helped Stevens win Detroit. Cato voted early for the general and supported every Democrat on her ballot except in the Senate race, where she reluctantly voted for Rogers.
“I made my choice, and I just pray whoever gets in there does right by us,” she said.
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