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Jeremy Moss and Abdul El-Sayed are young, diverse progressive millennials in Michigan who are on the ballot for federal office in November. But Moss says he’s not yet ready to endorse his party’s nominee for Senate.
Moss is the Democratic nominee for Congress in a safe suburban Detroit seat. He is eager to come to Washington with Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress. “We need to ensure that Trump’s cruelty and chaos is stopped, and specifically also to ensure that Trump isn’t capable of selecting younger and more conservative and extreme judges who will serve a lifetime,” the 40-year-old Moss told Slate.
That desire for a majority—and for a check on Donald Trump—is not all that Moss shares with El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. “Abdul and I have agreed on some really big issues. There’s no daylight between us on abolishing ICE, attacking billionaires, and having a bolder, tougher, stronger Democratic Party with new leadership,” said Moss.
Like El-Sayed, Moss is a progressive millennial who has long been a rising star in Michigan Democratic politics. He was the first openly gay state senator in Michigan history and has risen into legislative leadership during his decade of service in Lansing. In many ways, he even sounds like El-Sayed in his view of politics. In Moss’ opinion, “The Democratic Party has to be bolder, tougher, and stronger. The line I use on the campaign trail all the time that always gets a rise out of people is ‘We can no longer be a party that shows up to the knife fight carrying a pie chart.’ ”
However, Moss tells Slate, he is not yet ready to back El-Sayed himself in the U.S. Senate race. That’s true even as El-Sayed runs against Republican Mike Rogers, whom Moss describes as “an election denier, somebody who’s going to keep Trump’s ICE running and rubber-stamp his extreme judicial nominees.”
But Moss is Jewish, is running to represent a district with a strong Jewish community, and is a supporter of Israel. His backing of a two-state solution and disdain for Benjamin Netanyahu had traditionally been Democratic orthodoxy. However, that’s no longer the case.
In contrast, El-Sayed is a virulent critic of Israel. Earlier this summer, he told CNN: “Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one.” And he said that if you’re “a Democrat and you believe in human rights,” the only reason one could support Israel is campaign contributions.
The candidate, who is Muslim, also said, “My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as the commitment I’ve got to my own kids,” but to many, his criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitic tropes. That’s particularly true after he campaigned with Hasan Piker, who has made antisemitic remarks and praised Hamas. The result has left many in Michigan’s Jewish community wary of El-Sayed and looking for outreach from him and his campaign to assuage their concerns.
“I think we both recognize it’s going to take Jeremy Moss voters and Abdul El-Sayed voters to vote for the same ticket to beat Mike Rogers and Donald Trump and MAGA extremism, and as we saw on Tuesday night’s results, there is a lot of overlap there,” Moss tells Slate. “But we’re going to sit down, and Abdul’s going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland County’s Jewish community.”
As the political season turns from primaries to the general election, much has been made of the tension between centrist and progressive candidates. But some of those divides are more easily healed than others. Democratic differences over healthcare can be brushed aside by all parties involved, agreeing that their positions are superior to the GOP approach. Same with questions about policing or immigration or a host of other issues. But it remains to be seen if the divide in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can be bridged when a growing number of Democrats no longer support Israel’s existence as a Jewish state—and when, at times, anti-Zionist rhetoric has spilled over into antisemitic rhetoric.
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Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Finn Gomez/Getty Images, USA Today Network via Reuters Connect, Sarah Rice/Getty Images, and Getty Images Plus.
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