DETROIT — After two years in the political wilderness, Democrats are feeling cautiously optimistic about turning the tide in the midterms. That has only intensified debate about the direction of the party.
Nowhere is that debate more fraught now than Michigan, where Democrats are weighing two millennial candidates for an open Senate seat.
One is Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist firing up progressives by embracing "Medicare for All" and ripping the influence of corporate money in politics.
The other is Haley Stevens, a four-term congresswoman who flipped a suburban House district and pledges to fight President Trump while still practicing a more moderate brand of politics.
"You have candidates who are very different," says Joel Rutherford, a Democrat from Warren, Mich. "This passion has just become so big. I try to tell people this is political, not personal."
It does not help that the race has become a proxy for so many debates Democrats are wrestling with: Establishment versus insurgent. Progressive versus more moderate. New media versus old.
And the stakes are high for Democrats. To win back the Senate, the party needs to net a total of four seats. But their path to the majority also depends on holding onto the seat in Michigan — infusing the choice voters make in Tuesday's primary with national implications.
Two very different candidates
Under a big pavilion in Warren, just outside of Detroit, where designers dream up new Chevys and Buicks for General Motors and the sprawling Warren Truck Plant churns out Jeeps, El-Sayed worked the crowd at an annual picnic in July with a live band, barbecue and games for retired members of the United Auto Workers.
Gwen Martin and her two friends were thrilled to see El-Sayed, who has the UAW endorsement. Martin, who says she has been intrigued by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, says so many voters are just struggling to get by and are hungry for sweeping change.
"It's a choice now between medicine or do you buy groceries or gas," Martin says.
El-Sayed is pitching the kind of transformation Martin envisions. A former health department director for Detroit and later Wayne County who also ran for governor in 2018, El-Sayed says special interest money in politics is a driving force making problems like access to health care so intractable.
"The problem too often with the Democratic party, we have an instinct to say the right thing, but we're bought off by the people who are on the side of doing the wrong thing," El-Sayed said in an interview. "So we're constantly hedging and pulling punches so we say not much of anything at all."
In Michigan, as in other Democratic primaries this year, the debate over special interest money has been felt most sharply in conversations around AIPAC. The pro-Israel lobbying group is spending millions to boost Stevens, a staunch supporter of Israel, and oppose El-Sayed, who supports ending U.S. military aid to the country.
That outside spending has helped flood mailboxes and the airwaves with advertisements. Multiple voters at the picnic questioned El-Sayed on a mailer they received, paid for by an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC, that accused him of making disparaging remarks about former First Lady Michelle Obama.
But Kelley McKenzie, retiring soon after a 33-year career in the auto industry, says that is not why she is leaning toward Stevens. McKenzie was at Chrysler when the auto industry neared collapse during the Great Recession. Stevens was chief of staff for the team President Obama tasked with rescuing Detroit's big three automakers.
As for what McKenzie wants from her party now, fighting President Trump is at the top of the list.
"I want Democrats to get aggressive and fight fire with fire, not fire with water," she says.
In conversations with voters, Stevens pledges to fight, but she also describes herself as a workhorse.
"I'm just beating MAGA four times in my Congressional races, and I'm passing laws and I'm doing damn good work," she told reporters. "We don't need wishlists. We need action now. That's the Michigan way."
A proxy for debates over the party's path
Rutherford, an Air Force veteran and retired air traffic controller who has long been involved with the Macomb County Democrats, worries the primary is tearing Democrats apart.
Another Macomb County Democrat, Susan Hier, a grandmother of five, worries Democrats will struggle to marry competing demands as her party clashes over what kind of candidate or platform can best meet this political moment.
"I don't know that we can marry it, and then we're going to be in big trouble," she says.
Hier is still undecided after hoping for a candidate who could bridge those divides. Her preferred choice, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, dropped out after struggling to carve a middle lane.
"We're not going to get everything we want," says Rutherford, who is supporting El-Sayed. "But we have to at least try. And what frustrates me is I see too many electeds afraid to try because they're more worried about getting reelected."
Alysa Diebolt, the Macomb County Democrats chair, says she hears a prevailing sentiment from her members and voters right now: "People are pissed off. This is not working for the majority of people."
And she says it is not always leftist politics driving voters demanding something new.
"How the hell did we end up like this?"
As she knocks doors in affluent neighboring Oakland County, Debbie Rosenman is also hearing this frustration — that elected Democrats' approach to fighting Trump is not working.
"They're saying how in the hell did we end up like this? We've got to fix this," Rosenman says.
Like Diebolt, Rosenman sees a dynamic more complicated than where a Democrat falls on the ideological spectrum. She says Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat who squeaked out a win in 2024 even as Trump carried the state and has not endorsed in this race, frames it as fight versus flight.
"It's not moderate versus progressive," says Rosenman. "She believes it's going to be people who are going to buck the system and fight or stay and do the same old, same old."
Rosenman, who chairs the Birmingham-Bloomfield Democrats, says the club has been fairly split in the primary. Some are still torn.
At a July social the club held at a taproom with a chalkboard menu of Michigan beers, Allen Wolf says Democrats are blessed with two strong candidates, though he believes Stevens is the one who can beat Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers.
"You cannot win in Michigan without being able to sway independents," he says. "Haley is a fairly middle of the road candidate who can actually do that."
In the final days of the race, Michigan Democratic heavyweights, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Sen. Gary Peters, lined up behind Stevens. El-Sayed has the backing of progressive superstars like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y.
Wolf's friend Craig Spangler says El-Sayed's push for Medicare for All might be nice, but taking back the Senate is paramount. "For me, it is all about preserving democracy," Spangler says.
"The Supreme Court has given the president almost unlimited power and it requires a Democratic majority to hold the president in check," Wolf says.
A fault line over Israel
Rosenman says one reason the race has become so tense is the sense among some voters that Democrats in D.C. have put their thumbs on the scale. She says that's not the only rift.
"We have not said the I-word, but Israel is a very big factor," she says. "It's just very hard, and I do not like that it has become the central issue. Because by golly, we're on fire in this country," she says.
The debate has become so fierce in part because of sizable Jewish and Arab communities here.
During a campaign stop at the Roost, a Detroit coffee shop, Stevens was pressed by Woodbridge neighborhood president Jai Singletary on her support for Israel and AIPAC's spending to boost her.
He told Stevens he voted early for El-Sayed and said as a youth soccer coach, he has not been able to stop thinking about children in Gaza injured or killed in the conflict.
Stevens stayed and mostly listened, saying she supports a two-state solution and humanitarian aid. The conversation was awkward, but polite.
"The 6-year-olds that I coach here, they're just as precious as the 6-year-olds in Palestine," he said.
Singletary says he would likely still vote for Stevens if she wins the primary. But it is possible some like-minded voters might not. In 2024, about 13% of primary voters in Michigan marked uncommitted on their ballots instead of President Joe Biden, amid a movement to protest his policies toward Israel.
Some voters say it is El-Sayed's position on Israel that is the non-starter. Outside a suburban library with his two little grandkids in tow, Irvin Kappy says he would not back El-Sayed if he is the nominee.
"Absolutely not," he says. "I'd vote for the Republican, which I've never done before."
Who can win in purple Michigan?
At Hoffmaster State Park on Lake Michigan, where forested dunes taper into a pristine beach and clear fresh water as far as the eye can see, educator Elizabeth Schafer says she has wrestled with how her choice could affect Democrats.
"Who has the best chance of beating the Republican, that's going to be my biggest priority," she says.
Down the beach, law student Madison Miles says she initially felt that way, too.
"I just kind of decided, I don't want to think that way anymore and I wanted to vote for who would be the best representative for me and my beliefs," she says. "Then the decision became pretty easy."
While Stevens supporters believe she can build the broadest coalition in purple Michigan, El-Sayed says that thinking assumes a narrow definition of what it means to be electable. His campaign thinks his platform will boost turnout among young people and win back voters fed up with both parties.
From a lawn chair in the shade during a free outdoor concert in the exurbs, Joan Italia says she voted for Obama twice, before backing Trump all three times.
Italia wants corporate money out of politics, but is also deeply skeptical of far-left policies on policing and immigration. El-Sayed describes himself as a capitalist and is not endorsed by the Democratic Socialists, but shares a similar policy platform to many of their candidates, such as abolishing ICE. Many pundits see Michigan as a test case for how candidates on the left can fare in battleground states.
Italia says she is still open to either Democratic candidate winning her vote. "I left both parties a long time ago," she says. "I've always gone with the vote of how I believe. And I'm doing that again this year."
"People better see some real change"
On a recent Tuesday at dusk, Detroiters spread out blankets along the Detroit Riverfront to watch the Motown-inspired film, "Dreamgirls." Among them is preschool teacher Christain Horne, who says she is not afraid to say that elected Democrats have disappointed her "in a lot of ways."
Horne knows politicians and pundits are looking at Michigan to signal where the party goes next. But as Horne weighs her vote, that is just not what she is focused on. At 30, she is living with her mom after serving more than six years in the military. She just could not afford to live on her own.
"The economy is not in a good place contrary to what anyone says and people are suffering," she says.
Wolf, with the Birmingham-Bloomfield Democrats, says he is not convinced the nation can draw inferences from what happens in Michigan. But many will — especially now that Michigan is set to host one of the early Democratic presidential primaries in 2028.
Rutherford, from the Macomb County Democrats, says he does know one thing for sure.
"If Democrats hopefully take the Senate and House, they better do something," he says. "People better see some real change. If they don't (in 2028) it's almost not going to matter who the candidates are."
And, he says, "If we don't come together, we're not going to win."
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