The fiance of Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich. has come out and said he cannot vote for Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, believing he is an antisemite.
Stevens, though, remains undaunted, backing the candidate for Senate. Jason Turkish, a Jewish registered Democrat, told The Detroit News he will be voting for Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, appearing at a Rogers event sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition on Wednesday night at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan.
“I waited, and I watched and I listened for Abdul to moderate – but he didn’t moderate, he escalated,” Turkish, a Michigan lawyer himself, told reporters on the sidelines of that event in a video published by The Detroit News.
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“He’s gotten worse, and worse and worse as this general election campaign has gone on. Rather than bringing people together, he’s just driven them further and further apart.”
Despite Turkish’s concerns, Stevens has not backed down from her support for the Democrat who defeated her in a closely fought primary this summer.
“Like a lot of households across America, we’re a house divided,” Stevens told CNN.
“I still very much want our Democratic nominee, his name is Abdul, to win this race,” she said. “There’s so much on the line.”
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Turkish says El-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric makes his community “less safe,” fearing his party will bend to radicals claiming that there is a “genocide” in Gaza.
“When he says genocide over and over again, when he refuses to condemn an ad that says Jews are to blame for the price of bananas, he makes my community less safe,” Turkish said. “He makes a lot of communities less safe.”
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El-Sayed is a longtime critic of Israel, calling the war in Gaza a “genocide.” Israel argues that it is fighting terrorists that are using Gaza civilians as human shields, taking efforts to avoid civilian casualties, such as notifying people and telling them to evacuate buildings before conducting strikes.
“Every time he talks about genocide, Jews get death threats,” Turkish added. “We have never seen a candidate for U.S. Senate act so recklessly toward the safety of Jews in the community as we have seen from Abdul.”
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Turkish rebuked the candidate’s ties to California streamer Hasan Piker, and El-Sayed’s refusal to distance himself from someone he had said America deserved 9/11.
“I watch him in recent weeks as he has become verbally combative with any reporter who has the gall, as he sees it, the gall to ask him about Hasan,” Turkish said.
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“Everything we hear from Abdul El-Sayed includes equivocation, and it includes equivocations to try to explain away hate, and there is no explaining away hate. And I predict to you that Michigan will reject this.”
Turkish, a Democratic donor who has also given to some Republicans, described his decision as “putting country before party.”
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“This is not someone we can let into the United States Senate,” Rogers said of El-Sayed at his Wednesday night campaign event, making no mention of Turkish’s vote in his stump remarks. “If you don’t know Iran is our enemy and you can’t condemn a Hezbollah-inspired attack, you have no business being in the United States Senate.”
Turkish is the second major figure from Stevens’ orbit to back Rogers in recent days. Her former campaign chair, attorney David Kramer, said Tuesday he also plans to vote for Rogers. Stevens endorsed El-Sayed after the primary but has not campaigned or appeared with him publicly since a unity breakfast shortly afterward.