2026-08-29T20:24:33.081Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/29/politics/el-sayed-michigan-jewish-democrats-synagogue
密歇根州兰辛——
密歇根州民主党参议员候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔赛义德本周末正积极争取持怀疑态度的犹太民主党人支持——他单独会见犹太政党领袖团体，并为自己过去有争议的言论致歉，试图在11月大选前团结分裂的民主党。
但他淡化了自己与哈桑·皮克的关系重要性。皮克是极左翼Twitch主播，曾在初选期间为埃尔赛义德助选，尽管本月早些时候皮克曾对观众表示，以色列已经变得如此“有毒”，支持以色列的美国犹太人可能会遭遇暴力。
“我从不想我的言论伤害任何人的感情。对我而言，让人们明白我认真对待本州所有社区的痛苦至关重要，”埃尔赛义德对CNN表示。“但我不想谈论在加利福尼亚的一名Twitch主播，这不是一场严肃的讨论。”
这位激进派旗手埃尔赛义德在本月初竞争激烈的初选中击败了众议员黑利·史蒂文斯。史蒂文斯是温和派议员，获得了与美国以色列公共事务委员会相关的数千万美元资助。他正寻求在11月中期选举与共和党前众议员迈克·罗杰斯的对决前团结民主党。
这场竞选对参议院多数席位的整体争夺战至关重要。民主党需要净增四个席位才能夺回参议院控制权，如果他们失去密歇根州即将退休的民主党参议员加里·彼得斯的席位，这一路径将变得更加复杂。
周六在兰辛举行的州党代会上，初选留下的分歧几乎消失殆尽。当埃尔赛义德被介绍出场时，数百名民主党人组成的人群为他献上了当日最响亮的欢呼之一，并在他九分钟的演讲中为他抨击罗杰斯和唐纳德·特朗普总统的言论鼓掌。
79岁的诺玛·麦克丹尼尔是来自英克斯特的代表，就职于底特律选举部门。她表示自己在初选中反对埃尔赛义德，周六到场时对他的候选资格存在严重担忧，但他的演讲说服了她。
“他非常善于表达，知道该抓住哪些要点，也知道如何触动人心。他今天打动了我，”她说。“我们必须团结民主党人，对抗华盛顿正在发生的一切。”
值得注意的是，埃尔赛义德周六在台上的讲话中并未抨击他在初选期间最常攻击的目标之一：美国以色列公共事务委员会。他提到该竞选期间有超过6000万美元的资金用于攻击他，但并未点名该出资组织。
这是埃尔赛义德利用党代会努力争取党内最活跃的犹太成员支持的方式之一。
本次党代会的人群规模比密歇根民主党春季集会小，也没那么喧闹。春季集会上，支持巴勒斯坦的激进活动人士曾对他们认为对以色列与哈马斯战争中的行动批评不够的民主党人发出嘘声。州总检察长达纳·内塞尔缺席了周六的党代会，称她担心自己会再次遭到骚扰并被嘘下台。
内塞尔是最尖锐的民主党批评者之一，指责埃尔赛义德对3月底特律附近西布卢姆菲尔德镇以色列圣殿 synagogue遇袭事件的回应不力。
官员表示，来自黎巴嫩的归化美国公民艾曼·加扎利驾驶一辆装满炸药的车辆撞向教堂，引发火灾。袭击者当场自杀，他的家人在密歇根袭击发生一周前的以色列对黎巴嫩的空袭中丧生。
当时，埃尔赛义德谴责了这起袭击和广泛的反犹主义，但同时表示“暴力是一种循环”，且“受伤的人会伤害他人”。
他周六向密歇根民主党犹太核心小组为这些言论致歉，一些人将这些言论解读为为暴力行为辩护。
“我的评论可能被误解为为我无意为之的事情辩护，”他事后对记者表示。“对于任何觉得我的言论可能伤人的人，我真的很抱歉。那不是我的本意。”
“我们谴责了那次恐怖袭击，明确地谴责了它。我当时试图做的是为袭击发生的原因提供背景，但那不是适合提供背景的时候。你永远不想践踏他人的痛苦，”埃尔赛义德说。
罗杰斯周六针对埃尔赛义德的言论回应称，他“试图欺骗密歇根民众，让他们以为自己的信仰已经改变。让我明确一点：没有改变。”
“阿卜杜勒有六个月的时间为他针对以色列圣殿袭击事件的极其可怕的言论道歉，”罗杰斯在社交媒体上表示。“相反，他选择与恐怖主义同情者以及国内一些最著名的反犹主义者为伍。”
在场聆听埃尔赛义德发言的犹太民主党人表示，他们认为他的道歉是真诚的。
“这是我第一次听到他如此明确地表达这一点，”来自安阿伯的密歇根大学传播部门工作人员丹尼尔·里夫金说，他也是本次党代会的代表。
“我认为目前正在进行大量对话，而且对话还将继续，”里夫金说。“我们必须争取每一张选票。我认为那些真正的进步人士仍在挣扎。”
埃尔赛义德计划在周日的更长时间会面中再次争取该组织成员的支持，届时他将在密歇根民主党犹太核心小组夏季喜乐庆祝活动上发表讲话。
这场聚会是非公开的。当记者请埃尔赛义德预览他对该团体的讲话内容时，他表示“我们可能不会在所有问题上都达成一致。”
“在外交政策方面，我坚信巴勒斯坦人和犹太以色列人都享有平等的和平、尊严和自决权。我不会因为我们为剥夺巴勒斯坦自决权花费的资金本应花在国内而停止为巴勒斯坦自决权而战，对吗？”埃尔赛义德说。“我们如何使用税收资金的问题——这应该是理所当然的。这笔钱应该花在国内。”
“我们可以在6000英里之外的这些问题上展现出如何友好地持不同意见，并表明我们可以携手并肩，保护我们国内所有人的福祉，”埃尔赛义德说。
不过，周六的情况很明显，埃尔赛义德并未完全迁就一些犹太民主党人对其候选资格提出的所有担忧。
他对人们对他与皮克关系的担忧基本不予理会。皮克是以色列的尖锐批评者，最近曾暗示美国犹太人对以色列的支持会加剧反犹主义并招来暴力。皮克称自己的言论并非意在反犹。
皮克在初选期间曾多次与埃尔赛义德一同出现在竞选活动中。埃尔赛义德表示，他希望接触皮克庞大的年轻进步主义者受众群体。
皮克最近因批评民主党国会候选人、犹太州参议员杰里米·莫斯未背书埃尔赛义德而受到审视。埃尔赛义德试图与皮克保持距离，在一份声明中表示“除了我和我的竞选发言人之外，没有人能代表这场竞选。”
但这对一些民主党人来说还不够，包括众议员希拉里·斯科尔滕，她表示只要埃尔赛义德与皮克来往，她就不会与埃尔赛义德一同助选。她本周早些时候在X平台上表示，皮克“正在损害民主党在11月获得多数席位的机会。”
周六当记者就犹太民主党人对皮克的担忧追问埃尔赛义德时，他一再坚称“这场竞选不是关于加利福尼亚的一名主播的。”
“这关乎密歇根的民生；任何曾经说过自己极度担忧唐纳德·特朗普的人；任何曾经说过他们相信宗教多元主义和按照自己的意愿祈祷的权利的人，”他说。“我们珍视的一切都岌岌可危。现在是我们团结起来共同应对这一挑战的时候了。”
El-Sayed apologizes to Jewish Democrats as he seeks to bridge party divides
2026-08-29T20:24:33.081Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/29/politics/el-sayed-michigan-jewish-democrats-synagogue
Lansing, Michigan—
Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee, is scrambling this weekend to try to win over skeptical Jewish Democrats — meeting individually and with groups of Jewish party leaders and apologizing for controversial past remarks as he tries to unite a fractured party before November.
But he downplayed the importance of his relationship with Hasan Piker, the far-left Twitch streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed during the primary — even after Piker told his audience earlier this month that Israel has become so toxic American Jews who support the country could be met with violence.
“I don’t ever want my comments to hurt anybody’s feelings. It’s important to me that people understand that I take seriously the pain of all communities in this state,” El-Sayed told CNN. “But I don’t want to have a conversation about a Twitch streamer in California. It’s just not a serious conversation.”
El-Sayed, the progressive firebrand, defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate who was supported by tens of millions in spending linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in a hard-fought primary early this month. He is seeking to unify the Democratic Party ahead of his matchup with Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in November’s midterm election.
The race is critical in the larger battle for the Senate majority. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to flip the chamber, and that path would grow much more complicated if they lost the seat of Michigan’s retiring Democratic senator, Gary Peters.
At a state party convention Saturday in Lansing, the fissures from the primary had all but disappeared. The crowd of several hundred Democrats gave El-Sayed one of the day’s loudest cheers when he was introduced, and applauded his jabs at Rogers and President Donald Trump during his nine-minute speech.
Norma McDaniel, a 79-year-old delegate from Inkster who works for the Detroit Department of Elections, said she opposed El-Sayed in the primary and arrived Saturday with serious concerns about his candidacy — but that his speech won her over.
“He’s very articulate, he knows what points to hit, and he knows how to hit people’s hearts. He reached my heart today,” she said. “We have to unify the Democrats against what’s going on in Washington.”
Notably absent from El-Sayed’s remarks onstage Saturday was an attack on one of his most frequent targets during the primary: AIPAC. He pointed to more than $60 million spent against him during that race, but did not mention the group responsible for that spending by name.
It was one of several ways El-Sayed used the convention to seek to make inroads with the party’s most active Jewish members.
This convention featured a much smaller, less raucous crowd than the Michigan Democratic Party’s spring gathering, where progressive pro-Palestinian activists booed Democrats they viewed as insufficiently critical of Israel’s actions in its war with Hamas. State Attorney General Dana Nessel skipped Saturday’s convention, saying she feared she would again be harassed and booed off the stage.
Nessel was among the sharpest Democratic critics of El-Sayed’s response to the March attack on the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit.
Officials said Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon, drove a vehicle laden with explosives into the synagogue, which caught fire. The assailant, who killed himself at the scene, lost family in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon a week before the Michigan attack.
At the time, El-Sayed condemned the attack and antisemitism broadly, but also said that “violence is a cycle” and that “hurt people hurt people.”
He apologized Saturday to the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus over those comments, which some interpreted as justification for the violence.
“My comments might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” he told reporters afterward. “To anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
“We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright. What I was trying to do is offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context. And you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain,” El-Sayed said.
Rogers responded to El-Sayed’s comments Saturday by accusing him of “trying to con Michiganders into thinking his beliefs have changed. Let me be clear: they have not.”
“Abdul has had six months to apologize for his incredibly horrific remarks regarding the Temple Israel attack,” Rogers said on social media. “Instead, he chose to surround himself with terrorist sympathizers and some of the most notable antisemites in the country.”
Jewish Democrats who were in the room for El-Sayed’s comments said they considered his apology sincere.
“That was the first time that I’ve heard him say it in that explicit way,” said Daniel Rivkin, a University of Michigan communications staffer from Ann Arbor who is a delegate at the party’s convention.
“I think there’s a lot of dialogue going on, and that the dialogue will continue,” Rivkin said. “We have to work for every vote. I think that we have progressives who are real progressives who are nevertheless still struggling.”
El-Sayed plans to court that group’s members again in a longer meeting Sunday, as he speaks at the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus Summer Simcha celebration.
That gathering is private. When El-Sayed was asked by reporters to preview his message to the group, he said that “we may not agree on everything.”
“When it comes to foreign policy, I believe deeply in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for Palestinian and Jewish Israelis alike. I’m not going to stop fighting for Palestinian self-determination because all of the money that we have spent to foreclose on it is money that should have been spent here, right?” El-Sayed said. “The question of where we spend our tax dollars — that should be a foregone conclusion. It should be spent here.”
“And we can show here in Michigan how we can disagree agreeably on some of those issues having to do with what we do 6,000 miles away, and show that we can stand arm in arm to protect the well-being of all of us here at home,” El-Sayed said.
Still, it was clear Saturday that El-Sayed isn’t conceding all of the concerns some Jewish Democrats have raised about his candidacy.
He remained largely dismissive about concerns over his relationship with Piker, a strident critic of Israel who recently suggested that American Jews’ support of Israel will make antisemitism worse and invite violence. Piker has said his comments weren’t meant to be taken as antisemitic.
Piker appeared with El-Sayed multiple times on the campaign trail during his primary race. El-Sayed said he wanted to reach Piker’s massive audience of young progressives.
Piker recently drew scrutiny for criticizing a Democratic congressional candidate, state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is Jewish, for failing to endorse El-Sayed. El-Sayed has sought to keep Piker at arm’s length, saying in a statement that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.”
That wasn’t enough for some Democrats, including Rep. Hillary Scholten, who said she won’t campaign with El-Sayed as long as he associates with Piker. She said on X earlier this week that Piker is “hurting the chances of a Democratic majority in November.”
Pressed by reporters Saturday about Jewish Democrats’ concerns about Piker, El-Sayed repeatedly insisted that “this is not a campaign that is about a single streamer in California.”
“This is about affordability in Michigan; anybody who’s ever said that they’re existentially worried about Donald Trump; anybody who’s ever said that they believe in religious pluralism and the right to pray as you choose to pray,” he said. “All that we hold dear is on the line. It is time for us to unite around taking that on.”