El-Sayed's Campaign Is Panicking Over His Black Voter Problem
The morning after his nearly all-white rally in Detroit, he started pandering to black women on social media
Who’s afraid of Angie Smith? Let’s start with some context.
The Michigan Democratic Senate Primary between Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed is a stress text for the Democratic Party’s big tent coalition.
At issue is Michigan’s traditionally monolithic black voting bloc. The current problem for Democrats is twofold: They’re bleeding less progressive black voters, and Arab voters have quickly become a more energized and sought-after faction for progressives.
At the center of this shift is Abdul El-Sayed.
According to polling, and the optics of his political events, El-Sayed is wildly popular with downwardly mobile college-educated liberals who’ve embraced socialist motifs and anti-Americanism. But at the same time, El-Sayed appears deeply unpopular with black voters in Detroit.
This has been clear for weeks given the the complete lack of El-Sayed yard signs in Detroit, but the reality hit home for the campaign during a much publicized rally with Bernie Sanders and AOC earlier this month at the Detroit Opera House. The crowd was whiter than a high-school hockey game.
Within hours of that event, a source within the El-Sayed campaign informed Michigan Enjoyer that the optics of the event—a mostly white crowd in a majority black city—caught the campaign off-guard and stirred alarm within their ranks. They had apparently presumed that El-Sayed has Detroit’s black voters in the bag.
So the next day, El-Sayed began tweeting furiously at black voters, targeting black women specifically, and hyping his own credibility with black working-class Detroiters. Ham-fisted is one way to describe it; desperate is another.
El-Sayed’s mostly white Democratic Socialist-aligned supporters are not bound by the same rules as corporate dems who are used to pandering to black voters. For the DSA, Palestinians in Gaza have replaced blacks on the hierarchy of victimization, and that hasn’t been good for El-Sayed.
White liberals, isolated in the suburbs, turned a blind eye to the reality that their harmonious coalition was a complete a facade.
Michigan’s Muslim Arab community, mostly isolated in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, doesn’t mesh too well with nearby black Detroiters. Most of the gas stations in Detroit are owned and operated by Arab Americans, creating a thinly veiled tension.
Establishment Democrats, who’ve traditionally leaned heavily on black voter support in Metro-Detroit to win state-wide races, probably should have realized years ago that Muslim Americans were not fully on board with their cosmopolitan ideals. In 2022 Muslim parents revolted against the Dearborn school system when LGBTQ motifs were quietly added to the curriculum.
Further undergirding El-Sayed’s issues with black voters is his distaste for Barack Obama. While studying as a Rhodes scholar, El-Sayed received early minor fame within progressive circles for sharp criticism of the Obamas, blasting the now former president for being too chummy with Republicans and snarling at Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that criticizing the nation’s first black president and first lady might leave black voters cold.
Remember Angie Smith? Let’s get back to her. Smith is a black school board trustee with the Farmington school district. She made brief headlines a few years ago for school district chaos nobody remembers or cares about, but she apparently gives no f—s about speaking her mind.
At a political event last weekend, when asked who she supports, she threw her lot in with Stevens, but pontificated further on her thoughts about El-Sayed: “You have to know how to work the room, don’t just come in here speaking Arabic, don’t come out with your Arabic music on.”
The video clip, posted by local journalist Sam Robinson, ignited a firestorm of pearl clutching, leftist meltdowns, fainting spells, and some, shall we say, aggressive responses by Metro Detroit’s socialist community. Indeed, the video went national and ultimately global as prominent influencers including Hasan Piker and Mehdi Hasan raged against the Democrat machine and condemned Haley Stevens.
Smith, for her part, appears unmoved by the attention. Why? She’s saying exactly what is taken for granted in her community.
And that one comment seemingly laid bare the disconnect and contempt black voters have for Abdul El-Sayed.
