Abdul El-Sayed didn’t want to talk about his opponents. Running for Senate in the swing state of Michigan, he’s been pitching his progressive agenda against the familiar antagonist Democrats have in Donald Trump — not against the other two viable candidates competing to become his party’s nominee.

“It’s not about them,” El-Sayed told The Intercept. “It’s just about the opportunity that Michiganders need and deserve — to elect a Democrat who is pretty clear on what our ideals ought to be.”

Echoing the same promises he made when he ran unsuccessfully for governor seven years ago — providing universal health care, getting money out of politics, and supporting the working class — El-Sayed entered the race as the progressive darling and quickly snatched up the endorsement of his longtime ally Sen. Bernie Sanders. He’s been hailed as Michigan’s analog to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. And he has an inarguably stronger edge now than when he lost his last statewide race to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2018.

Despite the positivity, El-Sayed has entered a tough contest for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination. He’s up against Rep. Haley Stevens, a fourth-term congresswoman who has been endorsed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Mallory McMorrow, the state Senate majority whip. While Stevens has the establishment backing — and the attendant American Israel Public Affairs Committee cash — McMorrow is competing with El-Sayed to claim the progressive mantle.

All three major Democratic candidates so far have largely shied away from openly attacking each other. All three have vowed to build a better economy and stand up against the Trump administration. But on some key issues like health care and foreign policy, the candidates split. El-Sayed wrote the book on Medicare for All. McMorrow supports creating a public option. Stevens, who last week opposed the government funding bill that put ACA benefits in limbo, supports expanding the Affordable Care Act.

But perhaps their largest divide relies on a hinge point in the looming 2026 midterms: the state of Israel and its genocide in Gaza.

El-Sayed was the first of the Michigan Senate candidates to call Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide. McMorrow at first avoided the term, then started using it last month, as the Trump administration closed in on a ceasefire deal. And while some pundits are eager to argue that foreign killings are not kitchen-table issues, the genocide was a defining force for voters in parts of southeast Michigan last year, where some lifelong Democrats opted not to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris over their ire at their party’s complicity in Israel’s violence.

“I think Gaza was a Rorschach test on your values,” El-Sayed said in an interview at a local cafe in the bustling college town of Ann Arbor. “Do you actually believe the things that you say you believe?”

“The Democratic Party is somewhat in flux on some of the issues that will be key in Michigan,” said Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, a political science professor at Wayne State University, putting it lightly.

“Given the size of the Arab American population in the state, the situation in Gaza will be an issue in the Democratic primary, and Democratic voters, the polls show, have moved very dramatically in the last year or so away from support for Netanyahu,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said.

As the world watched two years of genocide unfold in Gaza, the party convulsed, sending politicians scrambling to adapt to their constituents’ plummeting opinions of the state of Israel.

“The Democratic Party is somewhat in flux on some of the issues that will be key in Michigan.”

McMorrow appears to be among them. In late August, she updated her campaign site to include a statement on Israel’s assault on Palestine, according to archived versions of the webpage, which made no mention of Gaza as late as August 19. Her site currently calls for Hamas to return the remains of hostages and disarm, and for Israel to allow the flow of humanitarian aid and stop its ceasefire violations. Her campaign did not answer questions about what prompted the change.

“My view on this is we have completely lost the humanity of this issue,” McMorrow said at a campaign event on October 5, when she first began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. “It is talked about as like a third-rail litmus test without........

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