Michigan Senate Race Turns to El-Sayed's Faith and Family as Poll Shows Him Up 7
Republicans are scrutinizing the Democrat's mother, father-in-law and college activism. His campaign calls it a bad-faith attack as a CBS Detroit poll has him ahead of Mike Rogers.
Five days before the midterms, the Michigan Senate race has become a fight over the religion and family of Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim U.S. senator if he wins.
El-Sayed, a doctor and political newcomer, faces Republican Mike Rogers, a 63-year-old former FBI agent and former congressman with strong backing from President Donald Trump. A CBS Detroit poll released Wednesday showed El-Sayed ahead by 7 points. Trump has called him "a jihadist," a description critics call Islamophobic. On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz called El-Sayed a "jihadist leprechaun" at a rally outside Detroit and tried to link him to the Muslim Brotherhood.
A CBS News review of his background shows what opponents are pointing to. His mother, Fatten Elkomy, was a nurse for the Islamic American Relief Agency in Missouri. The FBI raided that group's offices in 2004, and it was shut down that year for violating sanctions and aiding al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Elkomy was not accused of wrongdoing. El-Sayed's campaign says he is estranged from her.
His half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, posted in 2012 that their family was "MB," shorthand for Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed told NBC News the claim was hearsay and said, "I have no ties. We have no ties."
His father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, a kidney doctor, is a past president and current board member of CAIR Michigan and served on the founders' committee of the Islamic Society of North America. Jukaku has donated more than $300,000 to El-Sayed's Senate bid. CAIR and ISNA were named unindicted coconspirators in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial but were never charged with a crime.
At the University of Michigan from 2003 to 2007, El-Sayed was a board member and later "Brothers' Outreach Chair" of the Muslim Students' Association. An expert told CBS the group had Brotherhood links but was not a "pure" Brotherhood organization. In 2012, after the Arab Spring, he was one of 46 Egyptian-Americans who signed a letter urging Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to purge allies of the former regime. Rogers, as a congressman, voted to keep $250 million in annual aid to Egypt after Morsi took power.
CBS also reviewed 233 posts from a Substack column El-Sayed wrote from February 2021 to at least December 2022, which had about 55,000 subscribers. In them he criticized U.S. support for Israel and Hamas and described Israel's treatment of Palestinians in strong terms.
El-Sayed has support from the UAW, the Teamsters and the Sierra Club. A super PAC tied to CAIR Action gave $115,000 to a committee supporting him, and Americans for Justice in Palestine has also endorsed him. The Boim family is suing the related group American Muslims for Palestine, which denies the claims.
His campaign calls the scrutiny a "bad faith attack" meant to distract voters from the issues and did not respond to detailed questions from CBS. With a seven-point lead in one poll and early voting underway, the question is whether the attacks move undecided voters in the final days.
