PAC With Reported AIPAC Ties Targets El-Sayed in Michigan

Ed. Note: This article first appeared in the Michigan Chronicle.

A dark money group that ran digital ads against progressive Democrats during the midterm primary cycle has trained its sights on Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrats’ Senate nominee in Michigan, ahead of the general election.

“Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t care about the Black community,” reads the caption of the digital ad from the National Empowering Black America PAC.

LEARN MORE: The Midterm Maps Changed. So Could Black Political Power

Republicans in Michigan are hoping existing tensions between some Black and Arab Americans cause reliable Democratic voters to sit out the Senate race between El-Sayed and his GOP opponent, Rep. Mike Rogers. Both campaigns have spent significant time in Detroit targeting residents, which represents the state’s largest voting bloc.

To defeat Rogers, El-Sayed will need much of the 66% of Detroit voters who voted for Rep. Haley Stevens in the primary election.

AIPAC Connections

While Black voters have long been arguably the Democrats’ most influential base, the party’s progressive wing won key primaries at the Michigan Democratic Party convention in April and defeated Stevens, the more moderate candidate, in the August primary.

The Empowering Black America group’s digital ad seen on Facebook this week is the latest example of how political operatives are exploiting racial tensions to undermine El-Sayed’s campaign.

The National Empowering Black America PAC has clear connections to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to reporting from Jewish Currents, a left-wing American Jewish publication. The publication reports that its leaders include one current AIPAC national council member and a former top AIPAC official.

The group spent at least $30,000 on ads against Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and Palestinian American incumbent who faced two primary challengers in Michigan, public records show. Ads against Tlaib during the primary cycle claim she withheld her endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, costing Harris the 2024 election.

The group’s ads don’t include pro-Israel messaging; rather, they suggest its opponents care more about the Middle East than they do their own constituents.

“It’s deliberate Black-fishing attempt to divide and conquer our communities,” says Branden Snyder, director of Michigan Working Families Party. “I think AIPAC doesn’t really care. They only do this to pretend and disrupt and sow seeds of discontent.” 

‘Their Own Priorities’

AIPAC spent $30 million during the primary cycle to bolster Stevens. Snyder and the Working Families Party endorsed El-Sayed in the primary and have been working to elect him.

Snyder accuses AIPAC of meddling in the election despite having no real stake in the outcome, even though it will directly affect the day-to-day lives of Michiganders. 

“They’ve got their own set of priorities,” Snyder said. “They don’t actually care about our communities at all. They’re using us as pawns. They know Black voters are some of the most reliable Democratic voters: so goes that base, so goes the election.”

RELATED: Socialists Win Big in N.Y.C. What It Means for Black Political Power.

El-Sayed acknowledged the attacks at an event with Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a fellow Democrat. The two campaigned in Detroit at Horace Sheffield’s Bridge Center on Grand River. El Sayed pointed to a pro-Rogers ad in which the Republican claimed El-Sayed “cared more about the West Bank than west Detroit.”

“First of all, it’s not called ‘west Detroit ’; it’s the West Side,” El-Sayed said. “The reason we can’t rebuild our schools on the West Side is because [Rogers] keeps sending bombs to destroy schools in the West Bank.”