Democrats are focused on Israel. There are plenty of other big, thorny issues at play this primary season — health care, taxes, immigration. But for many voters, the candidates seem to come in two flavors: Israel supporters and Israel detractors.

So far, the supporters are getting crushed. Voters in Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and New York have rejected them in favor of progressive candidates who have called the Gaza war a genocide and campaigned on stanching U.S. military aid to Israel. Each rebuke seems to deepen the sense that the party is drifting leftward.

But these tests have taken place mostly in deep-blue districts. So tomorrow, when Democratic voters in Michigan — a swing state that went for Donald Trump in 2024 — pick their candidate in a do-or-die Senate race, the entire party will be watching.

The matchup

On the left side of the ring is Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate in a district north of Detroit. On the further-left side of the ring is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official and professor.

They’re competing for the seat held by Senator Gary Peters, a moderate Democrat. (He’s retiring.) The winner will face the Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman. Two years ago, Rogers ran for Michigan’s other Senate seat and lost by 0.3 percent, some 19,000 votes, to Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat.

Haley Stevens

Stevens does not believe there has been a genocide in Gaza — and has received a record $30 million in advertising help from AIPAC, the nation’s leading pro-Israel lobbying group. (She once said at a Hanukkah celebration that “Israel comes to me in my dreams.”)

Yet she has sought to shift the debate away from Israel. In an interview with The Times, she made it clear that she’d prefer to talk about rising costs and the struggles of manufacturing industries under Trump.

Stevens, 43, has worked in and around politics since she graduated college, and she holds relatively few public campaign events. When she does, she speaks with a thick Midwestern accent that has been shared and memed ad nauseam.

She has won over many Black voters with help from an old boss, Barack Obama. AIPAC shelled out more than $6 million on an ad showing Obama praising Stevens, who once served on a task force in his administration. (Obama has not endorsed her.)

Stevens says she has the broad appeal needed to beat Rogers in the general election, and she’s backed by a parade of establishment Democrats in Michigan — Peters, Slotkin, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — and beyond, including Senator Chuck Schumer.

Read more about Stevens.

Abdul El-Sayed

El-Sayed is campaigning on a sharply anti-Israel platform that also calls for abolishing ICE, raising taxes on the rich and making Medicare available to all Americans.

He’s a charismatic speaker who can draw a crowd. And he’s keenly aware that Democratic voters are in an anti-establishment, Israel-skeptical mood. He has called Israel’s government “evil” and hammered Stevens for her ties to AIPAC, a newly polarizing force in the party. He has refused money from corporate PACs and pulled in nearly $15 million from individual donors.

A Michigan-born son of Egyptian immigrants, El-Sayed, 41, would be the country’s first Muslim senator. He trained as an epidemiologist, became a professor and then led the Detroit Health Department. He ran for governor in 2018 but lost by more than 20 points.

Now buoyed by young, white and college-educated voters, El-Sayed rallies with progressive luminaries like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Bernie Sanders and the leftist streamer Hasan Piker. While many of his boosters label themselves as democratic socialists, El-Sayed does not identify as one, and he hasn’t been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Read more about El-Sayed.

The stakes

Democrats need to keep the Michigan seat blue and flip at least four Republican-held seats in other states to win control of the Senate.

For progressives pushing the party to rethink its relationship with Israel, this race matters far beyond Michigan. Same goes for establishment Democrats feeling queasy about El-Sayed’s electability — and for some Jews fearing where he could take the party.

But El-Sayed may be cruising. Polls released this past week showed him with a 10- to 19-point lead over Stevens. The online prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket are bullish; as of last night, they put his odds of winning at around 97 percent.

Related: In the video below, Shane Goldmacher, our national political correspondent, explains why Democrats must defend the Michigan seat and why Republicans see an opportunity. Click to watch.

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