Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed cracked a joke about cheating last week — and the gag lands differently when you look at the company he keeps and the record he's trying to bury.
El-Sayed, locked in a razor-thin race against Republican Mike Rogers — trailing by just 3 points in the RealClearPolitics average — has spent the campaign rebranding himself as a "capitalist." But a newly surfaced 2019 photo ties him directly to notorious Israel-hating activist Linda Sarsour, who at the time proudly called him DSA's "newest member," the New York Post reported. That blows up his debate-night claim that he's not part of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America.
At a Friday event with former Senator Debbie Stabenow and Michigan farmers, El-Sayed urged the audience to reach across the aisle — then suggested they break the ice by talking about the weather or, as he put it with a chuckle, "Will (the University of) Michigan ever win a football game without cheating."
The remark drew awkward laughs in the room and fury online. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, a Michigan superfan, posted: "This guy really is a terrorist." Rogers, El-Sayed's GOP rival, quote-posted Portnoy's remark and added: "@StoolPresidente is exactly right."
Fox News noted the backlash focused on the joke being unforgivable from a Michigan alum — but the bigger story is the pattern.
El-Sayed's history with football commentary is its own kind of telling. In a 2021 essay, he wrote: "The toxic masculinity at the heart of America's most popular sport — and men's sports culture more generally — is way deeper than a few emails." In separate remarks, he connected football to Manifest Destiny, the destruction of Native American communities, and the transatlantic slave trade, adding: "And all of this, like a lot of these narratives, you kind of see echoed in the ethos of football."
Then there's Sarsour. Her backing of El-Sayed stretches back to his failed 2018 gubernatorial run, when she drove from New York to Michigan with Muslim activists to campaign for him, writing that God had "sent me the Abdul El-Sayed for Governor campaign." She appeared with him at a December 2017 town hall in Ann Arbor, telling the crowd she wanted to help elect "the first Muslim governor." She boasted of raising $27 million for Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign in a single month.
Eight years later, her support hasn't wavered. "It's very CLEAR to me and has been. @AbdulElSayed is THE CHOICE for U.S. Senate race in Michigan!" she posted on Instagram in May, urging followers to knock doors. She donated $1,000 to his Senate campaign a week before the August 4 primary — the same amount she gave to a socialist New York House candidate.
Jesse Arm, vice president of the Manhattan Institute, told the Post: "Linda Sarsour has spent years building a political network to elect far-left candidates who share her anti-American worldview, and Abdul El-Sayed has hardly concealed his own hardline ideological commitments."
Sarsour — who helped deliver the lefty "Squad" in Congress and New York City's first socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani — has faced repeated accusations of antisemitism. She didn't respond to the Post's request for comment.
El-Sayed wants Michigan voters to see a moderate. The record — from the DSA ties to the football-is-slavery commentary to the cheating punchline — tells a different story. The question is whether voters will buy the rebrand before November.
