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Abdul El-Sayed emerged from Michigan’s Democratic primary facing questions not just about how he can solidify support outside the party’s base but how he will energize Black voters, one of its most critical voting blocs.
During the primary, Black voters largely favored El-Sayed’s rival Rep. Haley Stevens (D), the establishment-backed candidate in the race. And Democrats stress that El-Sayed needs to win over a majority of those voters if he wants to beat Republican Mike Rogers in November.
“It’s a risky bet to assume Black voters will come home out of natural physics,” said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, who hails from Michigan. “He needs to reach out to them directly and prioritize their issues over the political agenda he may prefer to discuss.”
“It’s incumbent upon El-Sayed to do research and find out what the voters who supported Haley Stevens want and how he can help them get those things,” Simmons added.
That’s easier said than done, Simmons and other political observers say, pointing to the anti-establishment tone of El-Sayed’s campaign.
“Attacks on the Democratic establishment in places like Detroit are attacks on Black leaders,” Simmons said.
This appears to have rung true for Black primary voters, who largely backed Stevens in Tuesday’s primary. She led El-Sayed by 8 percentage points in districts where over 15 percent of the population is Black. Polling in July showed that just 21 percent of Black voters backed El-Sayed while 67 percent supported the House Democrat.
A Michigan Education Survey also showed El-Sayed struggling with Black voters. Stevens notched 69 percent from the bloc; El-Sayed garnered 37 percent support.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to The Hill when asked for comment.
Former Michigan state House Speaker Joe Tate (D), who endorsed Stevens in the primary, noted the congresswoman had the upper hand with the demographic given the opportunities to make inroads with Black communities while in office.
In a piece penned following El-Sayed’s victory, Democratic strategist Basil Smikle argued that progressive candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ran for president twice, and El-Sayed must earn “the confidence of many Black voters, who will continue to evaluate candidates through a political tradition shaped by generations of balancing protest with governance, disruption with institutional durability, and movements with the difficult work of governing.”
“He ran against the Democratic Party and while flawed, it was a vehicle through which African American voters and their representatives found political and economic paths to power,” Smikle told The Hill, stating that, “Progressives often privilege class over race, which flattens Black voters as perpetually working class.”
Both Smikle and Tate underscored the economy and economic mobility as important to Black voters. Smikle noted that voters don’t just want to hear about civil and voting right issues.
“I think they’re going to want to hear, ‘OK, what are you gonna do to improve our lives if you get there?’” Tate said.
Some Democrats, however, have also acknowledged lingering tensions between some Black voters and Democrats who were involved in the 2024 “uncommitted” movement.
A large portion of Democratic primary voters — 13 percent — cast “uncommitted” ballots against former President Biden in 2024, which some political observers believe hurt Vice President Harris’s chances to become the first Black female president when she moved to the top of the ticket that summer.
El-Sayed voted “uncommitted” against Biden but later backed Harris in the general election. He’s made sure to remind voters in recent ads, too.
Tate noted that Harris’s Friday endorsement of El-Sayed “certainly goes a long way.” A day after winning the primary, El-Sayed also reached out via text to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), the only Black governor, to help with voter outreach, a source confirmed to The Hill, following a report in Politico.
Rogers and Republicans want to capitalize on what they see as a weakness for El-Sayed. They say they plan to reach out to Black leaders and churches in the state who supported Stevens, the outlet reported. The Hill has reached out to Rogers’s campaign for comment.
But Democratic strategist Joel Payne said that in the Trump era, Black voters are “behaving with a great deal of pragmatism across the board.”
El Sayed, he said, “has got to demonstrate through his campaign that this binary choice is an existential choice. And he has got to take his message, which sometimes feels disconnected and connect to the everyday experience of Black voters.”
“Just because it didn’t land in the primary doesn’t mean it won’t land in the general,” he said.
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