- Haley Stevens, Abdul El-Sayed go head-to-head in final debate before contested Democratic US Senate primary
- The election is one of the most closely watched in the country as Michigan voters weigh in on the party’s future
- Winner of next week’s primary will take on Mike Rogers, a former GOP member of Congress and 2024 candidate
SOUTHFIELD — In their final debate before next week’s Michigan primary, Democratic US Senate candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens clashed over money in politics and electability while pitching themselves to undecided voters.
During the hourlong debate on Fox 2 Detroit, Stevens called herself “Michigan’s manufacturing geek” and said she would take her “passion for the bread and butter of our state and her unique understanding of it” to the Senate to combat Republican policies.
“So when Donald Trump and Mike Rogers go to lick the bootstraps of China and start a trade war with Canada, screwing us over and selling us down the river, I will be standing up for us,” she said.
Related:
- Fact check: El-Sayed, Stevens clash over cash in US Senate debate
- El-Sayed outraises Stevens, but super PACs dominate Senate race
- What to know about Michigan’s most interesting primary
El-Sayed, meanwhile, touted his progressive policy agenda of affordability, a “Medicare for All” health care system and limiting business interests’ influence on politics. He also sought to distance himself from the “democratic socialist” label of some of his peers.
“I’m not a socialist. I’m just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works,” he said. “I think government ought to be there to regulate monopolies and oligopolies so that everybody can actually participate in the economy without having to be forced to pay more or get paid less.”
The race between El-Sayed and Stevens is one of the nation’s most closely watched primaries as Democrats fight for majority control of Congress and chart the party’s ideological future.
Michigan’s open US Senate seat, soon to be vacated by retiring Democrat Gary Peters, is a must-win for the party if it hopes to wrest control of the Senate from Republicans. Mike Rogers, a longtime GOP member of Congress who narrowly lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024, will not make it easy for them.
Stevens has garnered support from establishment Democrats like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Peters, while El-Sayed is a favorite of progressives like US Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Democratic candidates have both pledged to support whoever wins in November, but the debate was a coda to months of intraparty conflict as voters mail back their ballots or prepare to head to the polls.
Fact check: AIPAC, Israel funding
“Just last week, our friend here voted to send $3.3 billion of your tax dollars to a foreign government,” El-Sayed said in a heated exchange. “That is the pro quo that comes with the quid of $30 million spent by AIPAC.”
That was among a series of accusations El-Sayed made about outside groups spending large sums to elect Stevens, particularly those that support Israel amid ongoing wars that El-Sayed has been a vocal critic of.
As of Friday, a super PAC called the United Democracy Project had spent nearly $25 million supporting Stevens or criticizing El-Sayed.
The group is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and additional ad reservations in the race will push its total spending to more than $30 million in the race, according to AdImpact.
As for the vote El-Sayed mentioned, Stevens was one of a minority of House Democrats who opposed an amendment to block $3.3 billion in US aid to Israel. US Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, was the only Michigan lawmaker to support the amendment, which failed by a wide margin.
In a statement after her vote, Stevens said it would have “stripped humanitarian and peace-building funding from Israel and the region and emboldened terrorist organizations including Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Stevens declined to answer multiple, direct questions about the AIPAC support but said she has consistently supported a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
“I have been very clear, consistent, and transparent, and I have continued to be: I want to see long-term peace,” she said. “I want to see a two-state solution. I am deeply proud to represent one of the largest Jewish populations in a congressional district in the country.”
Fact check: Super PAC for El-Sayed, too?
Pressed again about the AIPAC funding and whether it could influence her votes, Stevens shifted the focus: “I don’t think there’s much difference between super PACs going in for Abdul or super PACs going in for me. We have a problem with campaign finance reform in this country.”
Stevens was referencing Fighting for Michigan, a pro-El-Sayed super PAC that had spent about $2 million on the race as of Thursday.
As Stevens noted, El-Sayed’s father-in-law has helped fund the super PAC initially, contributing at least $200,000 in February and March.
The group’s latest disclosure, filed last week, showed it received $30,000 from the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Inc. and $25,000 from the American Committee for Middle East Rights.
Fact check: Electability
In positioning herself as the best candidate to win in November, Stevens brought up a recent recording in which Rogers, the presumed GOP nominee, suggested El-Sayed’s victory would make it easier for him to win.
“He’s the one he wants to run against,” Stevens said.
El-Sayed retorted with another dig at the enormous amounts of outside spending in the primary race: “If you need a $60 million crutch, you probably can’t be elected on your own terms,” he quipped.
Rogers did say he thinks he’d be “in good shape” in the general election if El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, according to an audio call obtained by CNN. “I mean, I think he’s so radical. I think he’s going to lose big parts of the west part of the state.”
Public polls aren’t as conclusive. A late June poll by Quantus Insights gave both El-Sayed and Stevens a one-percentage-point lead over Rogers in a hypothetical general election matchup. Another, from Wedgewood Polls, showed Stevens even with Rogers but El-Sayed up 5 points.
As for El-Sayed’s reference to a $60 million “crutch,” that’s the total amount of air time outside groups have reserved for ads to boost Stevens, according to the latest AdImpact tally.
Republicans have spent money on primary-season ads calling several of El-Sayed’s policy proposals, including Medicare for All, “too radical for Michigan.”
Observers have told Bridge the messaging is an indication Republicans would prefer to take on El-Sayed than Stevens in the general election.
Fact check: DTE funding
Amid a discussion on how the candidates would fight for consumers battling high electricity rates and outages, Fox 2 moderator Roop Raj asked Stevens: “Are you taking money for your campaign from DTE or Consumers?”
She replied: “No.”
El-Sayed, who has vowed not to accept corporate PAC funding, responded: “I don’t know how to explain $40,000 directly to her campaign from DTE.”
As Bridge previously reported, DTE’s corporate PAC gave a combined $45,000 to Stevens’ past campaigns for US House and her congressional leadership PAC.
Early last year, Stevens’ US Senate campaign also disclosed a $2,500 contribution from the DTE PAC. The filing indicated that the donation, first reported by The Detroit News as an apparent transfer from her US House committee, came on March 24, 2025. That was about a month before she officially launched her Senate campaign.
Asked about her answer following the debate, Stevens clarified that she was referencing her current campaign for US Senate, not her entire political career. Pressed further, she said she is “leading the charge to take on DTE right now,” adding: “I’m not the problem here.”
El-Sayed retorted that at the end of the day, “she’s taken oodles and oodles of DTE money.”
Fact check: El-Sayed’s personal wealth
Stevens has hammered El-Sayed on his personal wealth in an apparent attempt to undermine his claim to fight for the working class. She continued Monday, criticizing El-Sayed for delaying his personal financial disclosure report and declaring herself “the only non-millionaire in this race.”
El-Sayed did request and receive an extension to delay his disclosure form, but he filed it Monday afternoon and called Stevens’ critiques “a distraction from the issues in your life,” before he pivoted to another topic.
His new disclosure shows El-Sayed and his wife are likely worth somewhere between $700,000 and $2.1 million. That was up from 2025 and includes his podcast company and a newly disclosed rental property in Dubai and two others in Ann Arbor and Bangalore.
The foreign rental properties were part of his wife’s family inheritance, he told reporters following the debate.
The uncertainty over his E-Sayed’s exact wealth is due to the nature of the filings, which require candidates to classify their assets based on a range of values. He could be worth north of a million dollars, and he has not denied it.
He told reporters Monday that his filings, which include joint holdings with his wife, and Stevens’ solo disclosures are “not comparing apples to apples.”
Stevens is not a millionaire, according to a financial disclosure report she filed in May showing she is worth no more than $376,998 after taking a mortgage loan from her mother.
Mike Rogers, the only Republican on the ballot in the August primary, is a millionaire. He and his spouse are worth at least $7 million, and perhaps more than $14 million, according to his most recent federal disclosure.
Fact check: Most effective?
Stevens once again claimed that she’s “Michigan’s most effective Democratic lawmaker in Congress.”
By one group’s measure, that’s true. The Center for Effective Lawmaking in 2025 ranked Stevens most effective Michigan Democrat in the US House and 12th among Democrats overall, citing her sponsorship of 26 pieces of “significant or substantial” legislation, with one bill becoming law.
The center, run by the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, bases its rankings on several metrics, including the number of bills a lawmaker introduces, whether they’re substantive pieces of legislation and how many bills become law.
The analysis doesn’t factor in other areas of lawmaking, such as leadership duties or working behind the scenes on passing other lawmakers’ bills.
Now serving her fourth term in Congress, Stevens has introduced legislation aimed at combating President Donald Trump and his cabinet, as well as proposals to ban candidates from buying or selling individual stocks and strip federal funding from utilities raising rates year over year.
She also introduced articles of impeachment against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for various policy changes and since-ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over her department’s immigration enforcement tactics. Both proposals were doomed to fail in the Republican-led House.
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