Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan Democrat, has dropped out of a contentious US Senate primary campaign, setting up a straight fight between the party’s progressive and establishment wings – represented by Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, and Haley Stevens, a congresswoman.
McMorrow’s retreat marks the end of a center-left bid to hold the seat being vacated this year by the Democrat Gary Peters. The three-way primary contest was a close one earlier in the campaign, but polls indicated that McMorrow’s support had plunged in recent weeks, as El-Sayed raced past her and Stevens to emerge as the frontrunner for the party’s nomination.
“I may be suspending this campaign, but I am not leaving the fight,” McMorrow said in a video statement announcing her decision to drop out. “When regular people get in the fight, things can change,” she added.
With McMorrow’s exit, the August Democratic primary now evolves into what is becoming a familiar pattern of an establishment candidate facing an opponent from the left.
El-Sayed, a supporter of Medicare for all who would be the first Muslim US senator, has drawn high-profile backing from leaders of the American left, including Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed him last week.
Stevens, a moderate Democrat, has the support of Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Super Pacs have spent more than $16m on her campaign, including pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) outraged by El-Sayed’s refusal to say that nation has a right to exist as a Jewish state. “Israel exists,” he told CNN last week. “The question is whether or not we want a politics where our money is sent over to Israel to do genocide and apartheid, instead of investing in our own kids.”
Schumer and other leaders of the Democratic establishment are betting that Stevens would have a better chance of staving off Republican Mike Rogers’ attempt in the November general election, despite the fact that Democratic voters have chosen leftwing challengers over incumbent lawmakers in a string of recent primaries, from New York to Colorado.
McMorrow first attracted national attention in 2022, with a viral speech denouncing Republican attempts to characterize her as a “groomer” for publicly defending LGBTQ+ rights. Her US Senate seat campaign had attracted support from prominent Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
But McMorrow’s political star fell in tandem with her public criticism of El-Sayed for campaigning in April with Hasan Piker, an influential leftwing streamer who has been accused of antisemitism for comments about Jews and once said that America “deserved” the September 11 attacks, a comment he later apologized for and cast as a bad joke.
McMorrow told Jewish Insider in March, when Piker campaigned with El-Sayed, that the popular streamer was “somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views”, likening him to Nick Fuentes, the prominent white nationalist.
That criticism appeared to fall flat, with McMorrow dropping in public polls from roughly even with El-Sayed and Stevens in early April to a distant third in May and registering in single digits in four polls in June.
El-Sayed posted a message on social media after McMorrow suspended her campaign thanking her and her supporters “for the work you did for democracy”.
“The same party insiders she had the courage to challenge have been bullying anyone who opposes their chosen candidate,” El-Sayed said. “I welcome her supporters to our movement to stand up against money in politics, to put money back in pockets, and pass Medicare for All. We cannot allow the establishment to decide our nominee for us.”
There is no question, he added in a video statement, that McMorrow would “show up to fight for my daughters and hers. But the question to all of us now is this: are we will ing to allow Aipac, big corporations, Chuck Schumer to show up and rig our democracy to choose who our Democratic nominee is going to be?”
Democrats must hold the Michigan seat in the midterm election in November to have any realistic chance at flipping control of the US Senate.
