Jewish Democrat donors in Metro Detroit are planning fundraisers for presumptive Republican nominee Mike Rogers as a “hedge” should far-left Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed win Michigan’s August 4 Democrat primary, according to a report published Monday.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that several prominent Metro Detroit Jews who have long raised money for Democrats are preparing fundraisers for the former congressman, while others plan to help him outright if El-Sayed takes the nomination, one person close to Rep. Haley Stevens’ (D-MI) campaign said.
Dennis Bernard, national chair of government relations for the nonpartisan Jewish Federations of North America and a Metro Detroit resident, said those donors have made their position clear should El-Sayed prevail.
“There are leaders in our Jewish community who are longtime, lifelong Democrats and Democratic fundraisers, who are very concerned with where their party’s going,” Bernard said. “And if this is the case, they’ve made it clear, both financially and with their vote, that they would support Mike Rogers in the event El-Sayed wins the primary.”
Detroit-area Jewish Democrats have approached him over golf outings asking for introductions to Rogers, Bernard added.
“This is a truly once-in-a-lifetime moment where you have to become a single-issue voter,” he said. “And that issue is antisemitism, our Judaism, and Israel. This is where you put party third: our people first, our country second.”
Joel Tauber, a founding chair of JFNA who has hosted former President Bill Clinton, said he would leave the Senate line blank rather than vote for El-Sayed. The 92-year-old told JTA he still cannot bring himself to back a Republican “who is so controlled by Trump.”
Neil Gorosh, a retired commercial mortgage banker in West Bloomfield, went further.
“If it came down to Mike Rogers and El-Sayed, I will vote for Mike Rogers,” Gorosh said. “I wouldn’t write a check, but I would vote for him, and I would tell my like-minded friends to do the same.”
El-Sayed has questioned whether Israel should be a Jewish state and argued that Democrats who support Israel do so for financial reasons. After a Hezbollah-inspired attacker rammed a truck into West Bloomfield’s Temple Israel in March, he condemned the attack but also said, “Hurt people hurt people.”
Former Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), El-Sayed’s most prominent Jewish backer, rejected concerns that Jewish Democrats are abandoning him, saying hardline pro-Israel donors were driving the conversation.
“I do not take a backseat to any of these so-called ‘lifelong Democrats,’” Levin said.