LANSING, MI – Michigan Democrats gather Saturday in the battleground state’s capital city to hold their 2026 state nominating convention amid controversy over recent antisemitic harassment and open hostility within the party over U.S. support for Israel.
Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, recently announced she wouldn’t attend the confab due to security concerns, after anti-Israel party activists shouted down pro-Israel speakers, including Rep. Haley Stevens, at a prior convention in April.
This weekend’s convention comes as a growing number of Democrats push for cutting military aid to Israel, amidst the Israeli government’s ongoing war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
The convention is also being held just a few weeks after Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel who describes their military actions as “genocide,” narrowly edged Stevens to win the Democratic Senate nomination for a crucial seat the Democrats must hold in the midterm elections.
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“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during a roundtable discussion last month. “I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
Responding, the Michigan Democratic Party said it is “committed to ensuring party-hosted events are safe and secure environments for all attendees.”
“We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of hateful conduct. We are working diligently with stakeholders, elected officials, and party membership to prepare for our August convention and look forward to welcoming Michigan Democrats to the Lansing Center on August 29,” state party spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.
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Joan Lowenstein, endorsement chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, told Fox News Digital she hasn’t “talked to anybody who thinks they will be unsafe at this convention.”
But Lowenstein, who also sits on the Michigan Democratic Party Central Committee, added, “Some people think it will be unpleasant and why should they bother.”
But other Jewish Democrats in Michigan are very concerned.
“People are traumatized from the previous convention. Many people I talked to, many super progressive people, are really traumatized by the way they were treated, and the way Haley Stevens was booed, and the way other candidates were treated,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin told Fox News Digital last week.
Lopatin, who was interviewed after joining Republican Senate nominee former Rep. Mike Rogers at a campaign event to unveil Democrats supporting Rogers, referred to Nessel’s decision not to attend the convention and said “it just shows how terrible these extremists are that they’re intimidating even the attorney general of our state.”
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But Lopatin emphasized, “We got to be strong. We got to be proud. We got to be courageous. The Jewish community cannot cower.”
Stacy Gittleman, a lifelong Democrat who is supportive of Israel, attended the April convention.
“I saw more Palestinian flags than American flags on the floor,” Gittleman, a writer who published her observations at the convention on substack, told Fox News Digital this week.
Gittleman said the jeers and what she highlighted as a “lack of decorum and disrespect” were signs to her of “how far left our party is drifting.”
The convention is being held as some Jewish leaders in Michigan are circulating an open letter urging Jewish Democrats and independents in the state to sign their names in support of Rogers. The news was first reported last week by the Jewish Insider and confirmed by Fox News Digital.
“This is sort of a do-or-die moment,” a person involved with the letter who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely told Fox News Digital. “There are many lifelong Democrats who are feeling homeless. … It’s not just a leftward drift but has turned into an anti-Jewish drift as well.”
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Lowenstein, who doesn’t support the petition, said those behind the letter “feel it’s an existential issue, and I think that represents a lot of people. And, so, they have to do what they have to do.”
“It’s sort of 50/50,” she added. “Half the people I talk to say, ‘I could never vote for Abdul El-Sayed because of things he’s said about Israel and, consequentially, the Jewish community. And the other 50% say ‘it is so important for Jews as Americans to have an Democratic Senate that I could never vote for Mike Rogers.'”
Rogers and El-Sayed are running to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. The race is among a dozen that will determine if the Democrats win back the Senate majority from the GOP.
Rogers, in an interview last week with Fox News Digital, reiterated that he’s not asking Democratic voters to become Republicans. And he highlighted concerns he’s heard from Democratic Jewish voters in Michigan.
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“I’ve talked to two young women who were at University of Michigan who were afraid to walk to class. They couldn’t display their Star of David. To say that they’re afraid is probably an understatement,” he said.
Rogers said “the violent rhetoric … is going to make a difference” in the general election.
El-Sayed is a former Wayne County Health Department director who, if elected in November, would make history as the nation’s first Muslim senator. The epidemiologist who unsuccessfully ran for governor as an insurgent candidate in 2018 has made support for Medicare for all a major component of his campaign and has also called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
But it’s El-Sayed’s stance and comments on Israel that have angered some Jewish people in Michigan, a state that also has a large Arab and Muslim population.
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El-Sayed used the word “bloodthirsty” to characterize Israel’s military moves in Gaza in an MS NOW interview this month. He has argued against unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, as have other progressive politicians. And El-Sayed has repeatedly declined to directly answer whether Israel has the right to exist.
But El-Sayed, after winning the Senate nomination, emphasized, “I stand in solidarity with my Jewish sisters and brothers, and we can condemn antisemitism. And, at the same time, we can be talking about how we bring people together, and we can be talking about everybody’s pain.
“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.”