Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., went head-to-head in the second and final Michigan Democratic Senate primary debate on Monday night. While Michigan voters may have hoped to learn the policy differences between the two Democrats, what they got instead was finger pointing about campaign funding and hateful speech.
“Well, I don’t think there’s much difference between super PACs going in for Abdul or super PACs going in for me,” Stevens said. “We have a problem with campaign finance reform in this country.”
Stevens repeatedly accused El-Sayed of not releasing his tax returns, asking what he was hiding from the Michigan people. She also said that El-Sayed has been on many podcasts and has even run his own.
“Have you made a ton of money because of podcasts?” the moderator, Fox 2 news host Roop Raj, asked El-Sayed.
“Yeah, I don’t know, I told all my viewers at the outset that while my opponent was going to make this about me and her, I want to make this about you,” El-Sayed said to the camera.
The moderator also directly asked Stevens if she has received campaign funding from “big utility,” such as DTE Energy or Consumer’s Energy.
“No, but let me say this Roop—I have been transparent,” Stevens said. “I have been transparent throughout this campaign, and the only thing that ever motivates my work is the people from Michigan, the people that I hear from.”
Raj followed her response by restating that the question was whether utility companies had funded her campaign.
“And I said no,” Stevens said.
While El-Sayed denied receiving any funding himself, he claimed Stevens did not disclose money her campaign received from DTE.
“But then $40,000 in direct receipts to her campaign from DTE’s corporate PAC. And then there’s, I don’t know, Center for Democratic Priorities, which released its funders, but then they’re behind these shell organizations, these 501(c)(4)s,” El-Sayed said. “So I’d really like to revisit that question, because I don’t know how to explain $40,000 directly to her campaign from DTE.”
The candidates’ manner of speaking about each other was also a topic of discussion, prompted by a question from Raj about El-Sayed referring to an opponent as an “ogre on a pike.”
“Look, I took to Twitter last week and said that the tone in which people talk about my opponent is unkind, and I asked anybody who supported me to not talk about her that way,” El-Sayed said. “In fact, when she got booed on the stage at the Michigan Democratic party convention, I called her personally and said that was unkind.”
El-Sayed later clarified that the “ogre” he was referring to was Sen. John Fetterman, whom he said has “done terrible things” and is “throwing those values in the mud” that got him elected.
El-Sayed also challenged questions of “unkindness” by pointing out that AIPAC has run many ads attacking his character.
Stevens did not respond to Raj’s question about whether AIPAC’s ads have done “an injustice to voters” by promoting hatred, and instead shifted the conversation to point out that El-Sayed said he would not be able to get much done as a senator.
Although Stevens later conceded that El-Sayed is a good person, she pushed him to explain statements he previously made about Democrat women.
“And look, Abdul is a great guy. He’s a great father,” Stevens said. “You know, only he can account for saying that Whitmer is bought and paid for, or that, you know, no one cares about Debbie Stabenow, or that Mallory McMorrow isn’t smart enough.”
One week remains until Michigan voters decide which candidate will face Mike Rogers in the November general election.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
