A digital ad tells Michigan voters that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, “doesn’t care about the Black community.” The group behind it calls itself the National Empowering Black America PAC, and its leadership includes a current member of AIPAC’s national council and a former top AIPAC official, according to reporting by Jewish Currents.
The campaign comes one week before the Nov. 3 election, with El-Sayed facing Republican Mike Rogers in a race that is expected to be close. Detroit’s Black voters are central to any Democratic path to victory in Michigan, which is why a message aimed at them, from a group using the word “Black” in its name, carries weight.
The PAC is not new to the state. As Word In Black reported, it spent at least $30,000 on digital ads against Rep. Rashida Tlaib during the Democratic primaries, claiming she had withheld an endorsement of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. Tlaib, who is Palestinian American, faced two primary challengers. The Michigan Chronicle has also covered the group’s ads as an effort that plays on tensions between Black and Arab communities in Detroit.
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is a separate organization. Its affiliated super PAC spent about $30 million in the Senate primary on behalf of Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost to El-Sayed. Nothing in the reporting establishes that AIPAC itself directed the Empowering Black America ads; what has been reported is who sits in the group’s leadership.
Branden Snyder, the Michigan Working Families Party’s director, described the effort as an attempt to “divide and conquer our communities.”
The ad’s message is a claim about El-Sayed’s regard for Black residents, and it comes from a group whose name suggests it speaks for them. Voters have no way to tell from the name alone who is paying for it or who runs it. Federal filings are the place that answers it, and the PAC’s spending reports are due before and after the election.
Polls in Michigan open Nov. 3.
Have your say