Al Franken and dozens of Jewish Americans back El-Sayed in pivotal Michigan Senate race

Former Sen. Al Franken and more than two dozen other prominent Jewish Americans published an open letter Friday backing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan's open U.S. Senate race, an unusual public intervention aimed at defusing months of Republican attacks on El-Sayed's sharp criticism of Israel in one of the small handful of contests likely to decide which party controls the Senate next year.

The letter, organized by former Obama-era State Department official Eric Schwartz and signed by figures including former Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan and ex-national security officials Morton Halperin, Michael Posner, Josh Gotbaum and Barnett Rubin, does not dispute that El-Sayed's rhetoric on Israel and Gaza has alarmed some Jewish voters. Instead, it argues that Democrats should look past that discomfort to the broader stakes of a race that pits El-Sayed against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, whose voting record the signers say "reduced Affordable Care Act coverage for millions of Americans, weakened Medicaid and cut food assistance."

By the numbers

The contest sits at the center of the fight for Senate control. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority, and Michigan is one of just two Senate seats held by Democrats that nonpartisan handicappers rate a pure toss-up, alongside Georgia. Democrats need to net four seats in November to retake the chamber.

El-Sayed emerged from an Aug. 4 primary that outside groups turned into the most expensive Democratic Senate nominating contest in American history, with roughly $70 million in spending against him led by the AIPAC-aligned United Democracy Project. He beat Rep. Haley Stevens with 48.5% of the vote. Public polling since has shown a genuinely close general election: an Aug. 11-17 survey by Susquehanna Polling and Research put El-Sayed ahead of Rogers 46%-39%, while an AARP Michigan poll released Aug. 20 found the two essentially tied, 48%-47%.

How the race got here

The seat opened up when Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat first elected in 2014, announced in January 2025 that he would not seek a third term. Rogers, who narrowly lost Michigan's 2024 Senate race to Elissa Slotkin by less than half a percentage point even as Donald Trump carried the state, jumped in almost immediately as the leading Republican. On the Democratic side, El-Sayed — a physician and former Wayne County health director who ran for governor in 2018 — built a grassroots campaign around Medicare for All and campaign-finance reform. If elected, he would become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.

El-Sayed's foreign-policy statements became a flashpoint almost as soon as he won the nomination. He has described Israel's military campaign in Gaza as "genocide" and argued that support for continued U.S. backing of Israel "ends up in some articulation of illiberal values." He also drew criticism in March after responding to an attack on a suburban Detroit synagogue by saying "hurt people, hurt people" — remarks Michigan Secretary of State Dana Nessel and others called badly out of place. El-Sayed later apologized, saying "to anybody who feels like my comments may have been hurtful, I'm really sorry. That was not my intention," but stopped short of cutting ties with Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer and campaign surrogate whose past comments about American Jews have drawn their own scrutiny.

A community split down the middle

The Franken letter is the clearest sign yet that some Democratic-aligned Jewish leaders want to pull the party back together before November, but it also underscores how divided Jewish voters in the state have become. A separate open letter circulated by Detroit-area organizers over the summer drew signatures from hundreds of self-described Jewish Democrats and independents pledging support for Rogers instead, citing what they called El-Sayed's "demonization of Jews" and "equivocation on terrorism." Rogers has leaned into that split, telling reporters that "Abdul El-Sayed fans the flames of antisemitism. We're fighting to extinguish it," and his campaign has publicized its own outreach to Jewish community leaders throughout the race.

El-Sayed's campaign has argued that focusing on his foreign-policy views distracts from pocketbook issues that will decide the election, and it has continued to court the coalition that carried him through the primary via his official campaign site and grassroots fundraising appeals, which the campaign says draws almost entirely on small donations rather than corporate money — a claim that can be checked against his campaign committee's disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

What the letter's backers are saying

Franken and his co-signers frame their support as an attempt to correct what they see as a distorted picture of El-Sayed's actual positions, rather than an endorsement of everything he has said.

"His positions are much less outside the mainstream of the contemporary foreign-policy debate than some of the charged rhetoric surrounding his candidacy might suggest," the letter states, while noting El-Sayed has "acknowledged the horror" of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and condemned "all forms of antisemitism."

The letter, first reported Friday, lands as both campaigns intensify their appeals to Jewish voters in a state where they make up a small but closely watched slice of the electorate in Detroit's northern suburbs. Rogers, whose Senate campaign committee has reported raising nearly $11 million through mid-July, has cast the letter and El-Sayed's broader coalition — including Piker — as evidence that he is unfit to represent the state in the Senate.

What happens next

With Election Day seven weeks away, on Nov. 3, both sides expect the fight over Israel, antisemitism and who truly speaks for Michigan's Jewish community to keep escalating rather than fade. Reporting on the race has repeatedly noted that whether Michigan Democrats fully unify behind El-Sayed, or continue to splinter as some Jewish voters look to Rogers, could determine not just who wins the seat but which party controls the Senate floor in January. National party committees are expected to pour tens of millions more into the race in its final weeks, and polling averages suggest neither side currently has more than a narrow edge, meaning the argument over Friday's letter is unlikely to be the last word before voters decide.