With only 16 days until the election here in America, things are heating up worldwide. Unfortunately, as I was chilling, reading about the havoc going on in France, my attention was drawn back home here to Michigan.
Can't say that I did not try to culture myself first with the international stuff, but alas, home sweet home beckons.
Well, for starters, the Democrat nominee running for the United States Senate seat in Michigan is getting hit with more questions about the people around him. Abdul El-Sayed is trying to stay relevant in a way that most political consultants would not advise, and some of this he can’t help.
Yet if you knew this stuff before you ran, why run?
Personally, I would never do this.
From Fox News
El-Sayed was confronted by Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin about court documents identifying his sister-in-law, Mariam Jukaku, as a plaintiff in a 2016 lawsuit challenging her alleged placement on the federal Terrorism Screening Database, commonly known as the terrorist watchlist.
"There's reporting in a lawsuit that now backs it up. And documentation with the lawsuit that Mariam Jukaku, who's your sister-in-law, that she was on the terrorist watch list?" Tobin asked.
Tobin got him... right?
Not really.
"Yeah," El-Sayed responded.
El-Sayed does not sound worried. In fact, he goes into a spiel about his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed then defended his sister-in-law, insisting she had committed no wrongdoing and turning his criticism toward Republican Senate rival Mike Rogers.
"She did nothing wrong and was captured on that and then sued and got off," El-Sayed said. "You've got this system where folks are guilty until proven innocent because they've got different kinds of names, because of the infrastructure that people like Mike Rogers set up."
This is literally what makes Michigan politics absolutely maddening.
How in the Hades is Abdul El-Sayed not being crushed in this race at this moment, but possibly in the lead? Currently, one of the latest polls that I looked at had El-Sayed up by about 3.2 points on MS-NOW.
I have actually opined on this space that I thought El-Sayed would be the best person for Rogers to face in the general, as opposed to Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11). I actually still do believe that, but being this close to the end, I would rather have polling flipped to feel more comfortable about it.
This election, particularly being for the United States Senate, is pretty critical in my opinion, and it is crucial for the GOP to win here to keep control of it.
The last time the GOP elected somebody in the state to go to Washington, D.C., and serve in the Senate from the Republican Party was 1994, and the gentleman's name was Spencer Abraham. In 2000, Abraham lost his bid for reelection against Democrat Debbie Stabenow. She went on to serve for 24 years until she retired in 2024 and was replaced by Democrat Elissa Slotkin.
Pretty rough ride politically for those of us living here in the Great Lakes State.
El-Sayed has a track record of saying dumb things but not really accomplishing much else in his 41 years. Yet Michigan is playing with the idea of sending him to the upper chamber in Congress, and it literally stumps me as to why.
Way too many stories like the one above with his sister-in-law should make everyone stop and wonder what's going on. That is not an unfair question to ask, but it is a common-sense point of view to at least stop for a moment and wonder: is this normal?
Maybe it gets to damn cold here in the winter (having lived here all my life, I can attest to that), and our brains are frozen. However, maybe Donald Trump was actually the only GOP type that could win this state, as he did in 2016 and 2024.
We will find out for sure in just a lil over two weeks.