Michigan's Democratic Senate Primary Is All Millennials, All Over The Map
Also, now we have learned who Hasan Piker is!
The Democratic primary for the US Senate seat in Michigan won’t be held until August 4, but the race to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters has been in the news a lot lately because of a dustup over someone who isn’t even on the ballot, Twitch media streamer Hasan Piker. Yes, that’s kind of weird! Let’s try sorting that out, while keeping in mind that whatever seems super important in April may have very little to do with where the primary will be come August, let alone the outcome of the general election in November.
First off, we should note that the Republicans have pretty much closed ranks already around former congressman Mike Rogers, who in 2024 came within a fraction of a percent of winning against Democrat Elissa Slotkin in that year’s race to fill the seat of Debbie Stabenow. As with that 2024 race to replace a long-serving Dem, the Cook Political Report rates this year’s Michigan Senate contest a toss up, one of just four in 2026 where there’s no discernible partisan lean (yet).
Republicans are hoping that a bruising primary fight among the top three Democratic candidates will help Rogers’s chances this fall, although in Yr Wonkette’s opinion that’s still not likely to override Donald Trump’s long slide into negative approval ratings. Trump is underwater in Michigan by 22 points in recent polling — 36 percent “approve” and 58 percent “disapprove” — after winning the state narrowly in 2024, by just 80,000 votes.
Trump’s stupid war in Iran certainly isn’t helping him win hearts and minds among Michigan’s large Muslim minority, either. And that brings us back around to the current kerfuffle over Hasan Piker and his campaign appearances with Abdul El-Sayed, one of the three Democrats in the race. El-Sayed is a former county health department official who previously ran for governor in 2018; the other two D candidates are Rep. Haley Stevens, who’s positioning herself as a liberal centrist, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, for whom Yr Editrix hosted a fundraiser in her Detroit home last fall. El-Sayed and McMorrow are both progressives, and part of the campaign has involved their staking out slightly different flavors of progressivism. Not surprisingly, the primary is being framed as a fight over what kind of party Democrats are in 2026, because that’s just catnip for political reporters.
So why is Piker suddenly controversial, and this week’s preferred flavor for the old Dems in Disarray narrative? The guy is hugely popular with younger voters, with an audience of 3.1 million followers on Twitch, and 1.8 million on YouTube, and has hosted guests like Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on his livestreams. The controversy has largely come from things he said about Israel’s war in Gaza, which have been framed by some centrist Democrats — particularly those grunty fussbudgets at Third Way — as antisemitic. He counters that he was only criticizing the Israeli government, not all Jews, and for our part, we think that’s a valid defense.
For instance, Piker has taken lots of flak for saying that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than the Israeli government, which is so far out of mainstream US rhetoric that it stops you short, at least at first. In context, he was comparing the horrifying death toll in Gaza to the number of Israelis killed by Hamas, and while his framing was deliberately shocking, the numbers are on his side, really.
There’s a lot more to be said about the reaction — or overreaction — to Piker’s appearances with El-Sayed, and we’d direct you to these pieces at Detroit Public Radio, The Guardian, and The Intercept if you want to read more. Our takeaway is that the Third Way depiction of Piker as an extremist is overblown, and frankly, while we still support McMorrow, we wish she hadn’t joined in by suggesting that Piker is anything like Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi so beloved of the Right.
McMorrow made the comparison to Fuentes in an interview with Jewish Insider (email signup required) about the March 12 attack on Temple Israel in Michigan’s West Bloomfield Township, in which a Lebanese-American man rammed his pickup into the synagogue — where a kids school was in session — and opened fire with an AR-15, injuring 64 people, before killing himself. She said that Piker was “not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state.” El Sayed and Piker, like many in Michigan’s Muslim community, strongly condemned the attack; Piker called it a “heinous act of violence.”
It’s all Very Fucking Complicated, especially given the fact that many Michigan voters have family ties to southern Lebanon, where Israel keeps attacking the civilian population while saying it’s wiping out Hezbollah. There are understandable worries that turnout for this fall’s Senate election may suffer like it did in 2024, and El Sayed has pointed out that a lot of words and effort are going into attacking his connections to Piker, when Michigan Democrats should be joining together in demanding that Trump end his stupid war. We think he’s right!
McMorrow was quick to condemn Trump’s recent threat to kill “a whole civilization” in Iran, and called for Democrats in Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment, even if the numbers to eject him from office aren’t there yet.
Like El-Sayed, McMorrow has called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, and both candidates have made clear they don’t want corporate PAC funding, including any funding from AIPAC. McMorrow is backed by the progressive Zionist group J Street; meanwhile, AIPAC has targeted her in its fundraising, and supports Stevens, who has spoken at AIPAC events.
On aid to Israel, El-Sayed has called for a complete end to military support, while McMorrow says she would stop sending Israel offensive arms while still maintaining its Iron Dome missile defense system. Stevens votes regularly for arms sales to Israel.
On other progressive issues, the three have similarly disparate views; El-Sayed is for Medicare for All, McMorrow wants a public option as a step toward universal care, and Stevens, Crom bless her, has introduced articles of impeachment to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr out of HHS, and that’s the one good thing we’ll say about Stevens.
ICE and Trump’s ethnic cleansing agenda? El-Sayed says abolish ICE, McMorrow wants drastic reforms of the agency, and Stevens has called for measures to make ICE more accountable.
As we say, Yr Wonkette backs McMorrow, but you are free to disagree, and any of the Democrats running would be infinitely better than letting Republicans continue to control the Senate, the end.
[Guardian / Intercept / Detroit Public Media / AP / Bridge Michigan / AP / Mallory Morrow campaign / Abdul El-Sayed campaign]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or make a one-time (or recurring) donation with this here button.
Michigan has towns named both "Hell" and "Paradise." I just thought I'd point that out...
It is, indeed, complicated, but any sympathy I had for Israel after the Hamas attacks has pretty much evaporated, given its subsequent actions. I can still have sympathy for the victims and their families, but the government now basically wants to erase Palestinians.