Barack Obama stood in a Detroit high school gym on Saturday and vouched for a Senate candidate who has had trouble winning over Black Democrats. Abdul El-Sayed beat Rep. Haley Stevens in the August primary by about 1 point, and Stevens had strong backing from Black voters in Detroit and its suburbs.
Now El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in a race Democrats say is closer than a Democratic-held seat should be. Black leaders in Michigan have warned that it would take only a small slice of Detroit or Flint voters staying home or switching to decide it.
The rally at Cass Technical High School fell on the first day of in-person early voting in Michigan. A few thousand people filled the gym where the main stage stood, and about 1,000 more watched a video feed in a nearby theater, the Detroit News reported. Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic nominee for governor, spoke too.
Obama addressed the friction head-on. Republicans have been circulating things El-Sayed said years ago criticizing the Obama presidency. “We are not going to agree on every detail of every issue,” Obama told the crowd, according to coverage of the event. He said El-Sayed shares his values, and that people who benefit from a broken system will say and do almost anything to stop someone who wants to change it.
He opened with the line “change is in the air.”
Obama had already filmed an ad for El-Sayed. Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with the candidate in Detroit earlier this month, and three Black congressional Democrats have appeared with him, the Boston Globe reported. El-Sayed, a former Detroit health official, has told reporters affordability is the message that crosses communities.
Rogers is not leaving the ground open. He has opened a campaign office in Detroit and is pitching construction jobs, apprenticeships and action on food deserts in majority-Black cities. His campaign has claimed gains with Black voters, though a Michigan Advance report found no figures behind the claim.
Detroit Democrats answered at a news conference this month by pointing to Rogers’s record. In 1999 he co-sponsored Michigan’s Public Act 10, which let the state take control of Detroit Public Schools and dissolved the elected school board. Leaders of AFT Michigan, the Detroit Federation of Teachers and Detroit Action said Detroit families were shut out of decisions about their children’s schools.
Michigan’s general election is Nov. 3. Rogers and El-Sayed are on the ballot for the open Senate seat.
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