The Panic Button Is Hit As Trouble Brews for Michigan Dems in Hotly Contested Senate Primary

As my colleague and Michigan legend Thomas LaDuke recently reported, the 2026 Senate primary race in the Wolverine State is heating up on the Democrat side.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for instance, has already announced her choice for the seat, endorsing Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of what is anticipated to be a hotly contested primary that has the potential to expose the sharp divide between pro-Israel and pro-Hamas factions in the state.

In fact, Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell is already sounding alarm bells in hopes of sidestepping that entire issue, but a not-so-insignificant nugget of information (the Rashida Tlaib-backed "Uncommitted" movement from the 2024 Democrat presidential primary) is a good indicator that attempts at avoiding it are likely to be futile.

Dingell has reportedly warned Michigan Democrats behind the scenes that it would be a bad idea for a "proxy battle" between the party's primary candidates to take place:

Democrats are gearing up for another potentially brutal intraparty fight brewing in their Senate primary. And Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) is privately warning candidates and party officials that there’s a real risk it could become a costly “proxy battle” between AIPAC and the pro-Palestinian “Uncommitted” movement. “I want both of them to work to make sure it doesn’t,” Dingell told us, ostensibly referring to candidates Rep. Haley Stevens, who many Washington Democrats are backing, and Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive favorite with the backing of Bernie Sanders.
A replay? “I do think that if AIPAC comes in and goes negative on [El-Sayed’s] campaign, they’re going to alienate a broad swath of Arab and Muslim voters who already demonstrated in 2024 that they’re extremely frustrated with AIPAC coming in and dictating elections for them,” said a person involved in the race.

New: Rep. Debbie Dingell is privately warning candidates and party officials that there’s a real risk Michigan's Senate primary could become a costly “proxy battle” between AIPAC and the pro-Palestinian “Uncommitted” movement. pic.twitter.com/0bADkwaj8Z
— Adam Wren (@adamwren) May 30, 2025

Though his social media has mostly centered around the economy and jobs, El-Sayed has also peppered his messaging with pro-Hamas propaganda:

Why are we sending tens of billions of dollars of our money to foreign militaries to drop bombs on other kids' schools instead of investing it in OUR kids' schools? pic.twitter.com/tl35NPynLh
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) May 25, 2025

Stevens, on the other hand, has tried to do as then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin did in the aftermath of the start of that war: walk the fine line between standing with Israel and claiming she understands the "concerns" of the other side. Stevens has also distanced herself from antisemitic "Squad" members like Rep. Tlaib.

Though Slotkin ultimately prevailed in her bid for the open Senate seat in 2024 on a night that was otherwise a terrible one for Democrats (with Donald Trump winning the state and the election), she did so by a razor-thin margin, getting 48.64 percent of the vote to GOP nominee Mike Rogers' 48.30 percent (a difference of around 19,000 votes out of the nearly 5,600,000 that were cast).

As LaDuke noted, it's been a long time - over 30 years, since a Republican has won a Senate race in Michigan, but a fractured primary process for Democrats will only weaken the eventual nominee and leave the door wide open for a Republican, Trump-backed candidate to make what hopefully would be a convincing case to the state's voters. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

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