Senator JD Vance has sharply criticized Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, citing El-Sayed's past remarks that linked criticism of Sharia law to white supremacy as evidence that the Democratic Party has strayed from its traditional working-class base.
Vance made these remarks Friday while speaking at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant in Ohio. El-Sayed, the son of Muslim Egyptian immigrants, is running against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a closely contested Michigan Senate race that could influence control of the Senate.
Referencing his late grandfather, a welder who Vance said voted Democrat because he believed it was "the party of union men," Vance contended that the contemporary Democratic Party now represents "graduate students, rather than the union and nonunion workers who make this facility run."
"It's sometimes actually hard to understand what these modern Democrats actually stand for," Vance stated. "But look what they say. Pay close attention, and they'll leave these little hints of what they actually care about."
Vance specifically pointed to a speech El-Sayed delivered at the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) 2022 annual banquet in Oklahoma. In that speech, El-Sayed criticized a 2010 Oklahoma ballot measure, known as State Question 755, which aimed to prevent courts from considering Sharia law in their decisions. The measure, approved by 70% of voters, was ultimately blocked by federal courts.
El-Sayed stated at the banquet, "The same exact forces that drove native peoples from their land two centuries ago, destroyed Black Wall Street a century ago, bombed a building decades ago and tried to ban Sharia law not a decade ago, those forces are alive and well today." He further elaborated, "You can't understand a Shariah ban without understanding the Trail of Tears. You can't understand the efforts to uproot Muslim Americans without understanding the Tulsa massacre. You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding White supremacy."
Vance responded to these remarks by saying, "I'd love to go back in time and tell my papa that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it you're a White supremacist. That's not my grandpa's Democratic Party, my friend."
El-Sayed's comments, including past statements where he accused Israel of committing "genocide" and described the nation as an "apartheid" state, have drawn criticism from some conservatives and Republicans, who accuse him of viewing political issues through the lens of race and religion. He has also faced concerns from members of the Jewish community. However, following his primary victory, El-Sayed affirmed, "My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids. We have a responsibility to take on antisemitism in all of its forms, wherever we see it."