In Michigan's final Senate week, Rogers presses unproven Muslim Brotherhood claims against El-Sayed on national TV

Seven days before Michigan voters decide one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, the contest's defining storyline on Sunday was not health care or the economy but a decade-old smear line revived in its final week: whether Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed has personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Republican nominee Mike Rogers, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, was pressed by moderator Kristen Welker on President Trump's description of El-Sayed as a "jihadist" and a "violent terrorist." Rogers said, "I've never called him a terrorist," while continuing to argue that El-Sayed has aligned himself with the organization. El-Sayed, who appeared separately on the broadcast, again denied any connection.

The exchange is the latest round in a fight that has consumed the race for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, and it is unfolding as Michiganders are actively voting. In-person early voting opened statewide on Oct. 24, after state election officials reported that more than 440,000 voters — about 6 percent of the active electorate — had already returned absentee ballots three weeks before Election Day, with mail-ballot requests running roughly 20 to 30 percent ahead of the comparable point in 2022. Public polling in the race has been tight all month: a Marist College survey taken Oct. 15-18 put El-Sayed at 50 percent to Rogers' 48 percent among likely voters, within the poll's margin of error, and several other surveys in October have shown single-digit margins in either direction. The Cook Political Report and other nonpartisan handicappers rate the contest a toss-up, one of a handful of races that will determine whether Republicans keep their current 53-47 Senate majority.

A decade-old claim, revived

The Muslim Brotherhood line of attack is not new to this campaign. Rogers first accused El-Sayed in early August of having "pledged his support to the Muslim Brotherhood" and called him "an extremist." He repeated and sharpened the claim at the candidates' first debate, alleging El-Sayed had taken donations from people who "openly support Hamas, Hezbollah [and] al-Qaida," and cited his mother's past employment with the Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity in 2004 over alleged transfers to al-Qaida in 1999, years before El-Sayed was an adult. Trump has gone further on the stump, calling El-Sayed "100 percent" affiliated with the Brotherhood and, at rallies, a "jihadist" — rhetoric that follows an executive order the president signed last November directing the State and Treasury departments to consider designating specific Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon as foreign terrorist organizations.

Bridge Michigan, a nonpartisan newsroom, examined the underlying claims in a fact-check published in September and found no evidence that El-Sayed has ties to the Brotherhood or pledged it support, though it noted he had written and spoken favorably about Egypt's 2011 pro-democracy uprising, which the Brotherhood also backed. The dispute gained new fuel this month when the conservative Washington Free Beacon resurfaced 2012 and 2013 social-media posts by El-Sayed's maternal half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago sociologist, who wrote that her family had "long been" in the Brotherhood and that relatives had been jailed over their membership. El-Sayed has said he does not know what his mother's activities were decades ago, since his parents divorced when he was three, and has called the posts "hearsay" that do not reflect his own views or affiliations. At a Caro town hall this month he said he "absolutely" disavows the Brotherhood.

Who is caught in the middle

The controversy has reached beyond the two campaigns. The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in August that its Canton Township office received death threats on three consecutive days after El-Sayed's primary win, which it linked to the surrounding rhetoric. CAIR-MI's Amy Doukoure has argued the attacks cast Muslim candidates as outsiders rather than engaging their records, telling reporters the insinuations are "harmful and stigmatizing." A Rogers spokesperson has said the candidate "condemns hatred in all forms — including Islamophobia" and maintains the objection is to ideology rather than religion.

• Rogers, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman, faces no primary opponent and carries Trump's endorsement.
• El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, won a crowded Democratic primary over Rep. Haley Stevens by less than a percentage point in August.
• Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who had backed Stevens in that primary, said on "Meet the Press" that she is fully behind the Democratic ticket now and argued Republicans are "trying to change the conversation" because the broader midterm environment favors Democrats.

"You're asking the question, because implicitly you assume that I have dual loyalties," El-Sayed said when pressed at a Michigan town hall about the Brotherhood claims, comparing the line of attack to historical suspicions leveled at Catholic and Jewish candidates.

What comes next

Both camps are treating the final week as a turnout fight layered on top of the messaging battle. Rogers' campaign has built a digital ad from clips of his Sunday interview and the earlier debate exchange, continuing to press the Brotherhood allegation even as it insists it is not calling El-Sayed a terrorist. El-Sayed's campaign has framed the entire line of attack as an attempt to avoid discussing Rogers' own record, a message Whitmer and other Democratic surrogates have echoed heading into the race's closing days. In-person early voting continues through Nov. 1, with Election Day on Nov. 3; given how close public polling has the race, Michigan's roughly 2 million requested absentee ballots and the turnout each side can generate in the campaign's last week are likely to matter as much as any additional exchange over the Brotherhood claims between now and then.