Harris campaigns with El-Sayed in Michigan Senate race

Kamala Harris returned to Michigan on Tuesday to campaign with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, aiming to help unite Democrats in a key swing state after a divisive primary and her 2024 loss there to President Donald Trump.

Appearing together at a Detroit birth center, Harris and El-Sayed focused on Black maternal health and framed the November race against Republican Mike Rogers as a contest over access to care, economic priorities and control of the U.S. Senate. The open seat, held by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, is central to Democrats’ hopes of winning a Senate majority. Even if Democrats hold Michigan, they would need to flip at least four Republican-held seats to control the chamber during Trump’s final two years in office.

“Medicaid is the largest funder for maternity care in America. Donald Trump cut Medicaid funding by a trillion dollars,” Harris said, criticizing Rogers for supporting the president’s agenda.

Harris also faulted the Trump administration for halting federal research funding it classified as diversity-related, including studies of fibroids. She said the Senate should serve as a check on the White House.

“The United States Senate should be a stopgap on the abuses of this administration and I would suggest to you that the fellow sitting to my right would be one of them when elected,” Harris said, nodding toward El-Sayed.

El-Sayed, a physician and progressive who supports universal healthcare, thanked Harris for “uplifting the issues that we are here to talk about today” and for her work on them.

The campaign stop came as Democrats work to repair divisions from last month’s primary, in which El-Sayed narrowly defeated four-term Rep. Haley Stevens. Stevens had strong support from Democratic establishment figures and pro-Israel political action committees, while El-Sayed ran to the left of party leadership. Black voters in Detroit, a core Democratic constituency in Michigan, largely favored Stevens, and Rogers has also sought support from voters in the city.

“We’re building an electoral coalition here,” El-Sayed said Tuesday before the event, adding that Harris’s presence in Michigan, “speaking to communities that were really empowered by her voice throughout her political career,” would help strengthen and unify the party.

The joint appearance also highlighted an effort to move past differences between Harris and El-Sayed over Israel and Gaza. El-Sayed has called Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide, a position that sharply diverges from the Biden-Harris administration’s military support for Israel. In 2024, he backed Michigan’s “uncommitted” movement, which urged Democrats to withhold primary votes from Joe Biden to protest U.S. military aid to Israel. He later endorsed Harris after she replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, though many “uncommitted” supporters did not follow him, and Trump narrowly carried the state.

Al Jazeera reported that many Arab Americans in Michigan, a state with a large Arab American community, refused to support Harris in 2024 over her pro-Israel policies. A Quinnipiac University poll released this month found 38% of voters more sympathetic to Palestinians and 35% more sympathetic to Israelis, the highest share siding with Palestinians since the university began asking the question in December 2001.

El-Sayed said the 2024 election “ended where it did because we could not find the places of agreement to be able to bring people together or move in the direction that we need to move.” He urged Democrats to focus on shared priorities.

“We don’t have to agree on everything to understand what is at stake,” he said. “The only way forward is by doing the hard work of bringing people into the same room and moving together.”

Rogers, a former representative and Trump-backed Republican nominee, ran unopposed in the Republican primary. His campaign described Harris’s visit as a sign of weakness for both Democrats.

Harris, who is weighing whether to run again for president, has additional campaign stops planned in Nevada and Georgia. Michigan is scheduled to hold the fifth contest on the Democrats’ revised 2028 primary calendar. Closing her remarks in Detroit, Harris urged supporters to remind voters “that they have power and voice in the outcome of this election, which will directly impact their lives in many ways.”