{"id":28533,"date":"2026-08-05T12:24:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28533"},"modified":"2026-08-05T12:24:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:24:47","slug":"abdul-el-sayed-fends-off-30-million-aipac-ad-buy-to-win-michigan-primary-nbc-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28533","title":{"rendered":"Abdul El-Sayed Fends Off $30 Million AIPAC Ad Buy to Win Michigan Primary, NBC Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5674968\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5674968\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5674968\" src=\"https:\/\/am12.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AP18210091868561-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1676\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-5674968\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">AP Photo\/Paul Sancya<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>NBC News has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2026-election\/abdul-el-sayed-wins-michigans-democratic-senate-primary-notching-midwe-rcna589750\">projected<\/a> that Dr. <strong>Abdul El-Sayed<\/strong> will win the U.S. Senate primary in Michigan after enduring a mind-bogglingly expensive ad campaign against him by one of the most powerful lobbies in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>As of this writing, El-Sayed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/08\/04\/us\/elections\/results-michigan-us-senate-primary.html\">leads<\/a> Stevens 48.8% to 47.2%, with 93% of the expected votes in.<\/p>\n<p>The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/08\/04\/us\/politics\/aipac-israel-funds-spending.html\">more than $30 million<\/a> in ads to boost Rep. <strong>Haley Stevens<\/strong> (D-MI), who has been an ardent supporter of Israel, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/nwarikoo\/status\/2049622238312226966\">stating<\/a> in 2023, &#8220;Israel comes to me in my dreams!&#8221; El-Sayed, meanwhile, has said he wants to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganpublic.org\/politics-government\/2026-07-28\/el-sayed-and-stevens-debate-immigration-campaign-donations-in-final-debate\">end U.S. aid to Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>About a half-dozen outside political action committees spent $62 million on ads supporting Stevens, giving her a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/04\/us\/politics\/michigan-democratic-senate-primary-aipac.html\">nine-to-one spending advantage<\/a> over El-Sayed.<\/p>\n<p>AIPAC did not officially spend money on campaigns prior to the 2022 election cycle, when it spent $29 million. In the 2024 cycle, it spent $46 million. This cycle, which still has several months to go, has spent $67 million so far, and nearly half on the Michigan primary, which is now the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2026\/07\/how-michigan-became-most-expensive-democratic-primary-ever-haley-stevens-abdul-el-sayed-aipac\/\">most expensive<\/a> Democratic Senate primary in history.<\/p>\n<p>As polls consistently showed El-Sayed, a former Michigan public health official, with a lead in the waning days of the campaign, Stevens <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/politics\/stevens-takes-the-gloves-off-accuses-el-sayed-of-wanting-to-blame-jews-for-all-of-your-problems\/\">told her opponent<\/a> that &#8220;you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stevens, who is not Jewish, offered no evidence for her claim, but did <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/HaleyforMI\/status\/2083016340219048447\">quote-tweet<\/a> a video of El-Sayed daring AIPAC, &#8220;Come for me.&#8221; In the video, El-Sayed also called Stevens &#8220;the least capable candidate in America.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stevens has been critical of Israeli Prime Minister <strong>Benjamin Netanyahu<\/strong> over his role in lobbying President <strong>Donald Trump<\/strong> to start the Iran war in February. In an interview with CNN in early July, Netanyahu criticized Stevens on CNN, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/tv\/netanyahu-accuses-pro-israel-democrat-of-trying-to-excuse-anti-semitism\/\">baselessly claiming<\/a>, \u201cShe\u2019s trying to probably excuse anti-Semitism.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As Politico noted at the time, Netanyahu may actually have been trying to help Stevens with his comment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNetanyahu\u2019s remarks gave Stevens a crucial opening to distance herself from the pro-Israel stances that have fallen sharply out of favor with Democratic voters,\u201d the publication <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/07\/haley-stevens-gets-a-lifeline-on-israel-00989605\">stated<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/politics\/abdul-el-sayed-fends-off-30-million-aipac-ad-buy-to-win-michigan-primary-nbc-projects\/\">Abdul El-Sayed Fends Off $30 Million AIPAC Ad Buy to Win Michigan Primary, NBC Projects<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\">Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AP Photo\/Paul Sancya NBC News has projected that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed will win the U.S. Senate primary in Michigan after enduring a mind-bogglingly expensive ad campaign against him by one of the most powerful lobbies in the U.S. As of this writing, El-Sayed leads Stevens 48.8% to 47.2%, with 93% of the expected votes in&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/am12.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AP18210091868561-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}