NEW: At Final Debate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Proves He’s Ready for November

MICHIGAN –  Tonight, at the final Michigan Democratic Senate Primary debate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed triumphed over Congresswoman Haley Stevens, demonstrating once again that he is the best choice to represent Michigan in the US Senate. 

The debate was marked by El-Sayed’s repeatedly returning to his core campaign theme of delivering real change for hardworking Michiganders by getting money out of politics, so lawmakers can do what’s right without corporate influence — often pointing to the $60 million in outside spending from AIPAC and other corporate Super PACs backing his opponent. 

By contrast, Stevens, down in the polls, picked up right where her dark money Super PACs left off. When challenged, Stevens repeatedly resorted to personal attacks and lies, rather than speak openly about her plans to deliver for Michigan or her vision for our country. Throughout the night, so many of Stevens claims were found to be false that we felt compelled to fact check just a few of her statements from the debate: 

FACT CHECK: Haley Stevens DID take DTE Money — including THIS CYCLE 

When asked by the moderator if she took money from DTE — the utility company responsible for devastating blackouts across Detroit — she said she had not. FEC records show that Haley Stevens has taken over $45,000 from DTE’s corporate PAC over the course of her career, including $12,500 just this cycle. She denied taking money from Consumers Energy as well, despite having taken $30,500 from the company during her time in Congress.

FACT CHECK: $60M in AIPAC and Super PAC spending for Haley Stevens is bad, actually 

Haley Stevens is backed by at least $60 million in outside spending, more than half of which comes from AIPAC — the pro-Israel lobbying group which spends heavily to defeat Democratic candidates that oppose a blank check for Israel. She claimed that there is no difference between Super PACs supporting her and Super PACs supporting Abdul. You be the judge. 

FACT CHECK: Haley Stevens says she’s tough on ICE, but she’s one of their biggest fans

Haley Stevens has voted to fund ICE multiple times, and voted in 2025 to thank them. Just over the past week, three of her top consultants were revealed to also work for Palantir, the Peter Thiel-founded firm powering ICE’s deportation machine.

FACT CHECK: More Michigan officials endorse Abdul than Haley 

After Abdul held three rallies that drew 6,000 Michiganders last weekend with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stevens claimed that Abdul’s support is from leaders on “the coast.” The truth? Abdul is supported by Michiganders across the state. That’s why he’s pulling more donors from Michigan and has more local endorsements than Haley.

FACT CHECK: Haley isn’t sending money to Michigan – she’s sending it to Israel

Haley claimed to be focused on sending tax dollars to Michigan. The truth is Haley Stevens voted with Republicans earlier this month to send $3.3 billion dollars to Israel in unchecked military aid – breaking with the majority of Democrats in the House. 

Notable moments from Abdul are linked and transcribed below:

Abdul on money in politics:

“When you’re bought off by DTE and Blue Cross and Big Pharma and Big Tech and AIPAC, don’t be surprised that there’s a pro quo that comes with that quid. That money doesn’t just fall off trees. $60 million from outside organizations in this race didn’t just come from nowhere. It’s because those exact same organizations expect something on the other side, and that’s why they get to expect to own your next U.S. Senator. So it starts with being able to say I’m the only candidate in this race who doesn’t take any money from corporations, never have, never will, and then from there I actually can stand up to them…”

Abdul on civility in politics:

“When we talk about unkindness, I also would just want to speak to the fact that, on behalf of my opponent, UDP, another name for AIPAC, has been running attack ad after attack ad after attack ad on my character. I’m a father of two daughters. I’m raising them to be stronger than any man. My wife is a doctor. My mother was the first 10-year professor of engineering at her university. I was raised by strong women. To say that somehow, because I wrote an op-ed 15 years ago about what First Lady Michelle Obama said, or I ran against Governor Whitmer, that somehow I’m disrespecting anybody its just inconsistent with the truth. So, I really think it’s important for my opponent to speak to why she thinks it’s okay to spend $10 million of AIPAC money coming after my character.”

“…I just want you to ask yourself, what is it that you deserve from your politics? Do you deserve a politician more focused on their opponent, ’cause they want to be in a seat, or do you deserve a politics where we’re all asking, how do we actually serve you best? Because that’s what I’m focused on here in this debate and been focused on for this entire 15 month campaign that we’ve been running on.”

Abdul on tackling utility companies:

“You’ve got DTE, which is the biggest spender in our entire politics. They spend on 93% of the entire elected state legislature, as well as most of our Congress people–including my colleague here–and that allows them to get away with things like building one of the largest hyperscale data centers in our state in ex parte approval. Now, it’s fancy terms for saying approval without actually going through the normal process, and this is going to increase the load on our grid by more than twice. Now, we just lost our power for five days in a row because of a mid-level storm. We need to do a lot better.”

“To me, it’s about transparency in policymaking. People should not be able to take that money and then turn the other cheek and then allow for these approval processes that aren’t approval processes at all. I still have yet to see a plan from DTE about how they’re going to improve our reliability while doubling, more so, the amount of electricity they’re expected to provide for a data center that nobody asked for.”

Abdul on leading in the Senate:

“I oppose the filibuster. I think the filibuster has been anti-democratic for a lot of reasons, and once you get past that, we have the opportunity to get money out of politics to take on Citizens United. We have the opportunity to put money back in pockets by doing things like passing the PRO Act to stand with unions like the UAW who’ve endorsed us. We have the opportunity to start changing and enforcing our antitrust policy so a few corporations can’t pick your pocket at every turn. We have the opportunity to tax billionaires their wealth, and we have the opportunity to finally guarantee every single person in this country health care through Medicare For All. But we’ve got to get the democracy part of it right. And right now, the biggest risks to our democracy are the filibuster – It’s anti-democratic in the Senate – and money in politics.”

Abdul on ICE:

“ICE is about normalizing a paramilitary force on our streets. And I just want to push back on the idea that it’s calmed down. I mean, I was just in Genesee County this weekend, and you had raids in Saginaw. People are scared to death, and we’ve got a Congresswoman who tells me she’s against ICE. [She] has voted to raise ICE funding, voted to thank ICE, called the people who work in ICE very fine public servants and other things when she went and visited herself. So I’m just saying that I do the thing that I say I’m going to do. I don’t think ICE needs to exist and for the better part of our country’s history, we did not have an ICE. And I think we can do a much better job when it comes to immigration without one.”

“When it comes to the question of immigration, we need Democrats who are going to stand up and actually talk about the great good that immigration has done for our country in the first place. The idea that somehow we can’t say abolish ICE because we’re so afraid of what they’re going to say when we’ve seen ICE terrorize people in our streets, to me, is exactly the kind of cowardice that we don’t need from Democrats. So yeah, I’m going to take the bullhorn, and I’m going to say that I think we need to abolish ICE because I am not afraid of what they’re going to say about me.”

Abdul on electability: 

“When you ask 60 million dollars to come into a race for you, and then say that somehow you’re electable, I think you don’t quite understand what electability means. If you need a $60 million crutch, you probably can’t be elected on your own terms. So I would just say that you should probably, if you really want to beat Mike Rogers, find the candidate who is electable without having to ask for a $60 million crutch to do it.”

Watch the full debate recording here.

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