El-Sayed, Stevens sharpen contrasts in first one-on-one Senate debate

GRAND RAPIDS — Independence Day may have come and gone, but there were still some fireworks in the latest Democratic U.S. Senate primary debate hosted Tuesday by WOOD-TV8 in Grand Rapids.

The forum featured Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham) — the two remaining primary candidates seeking their party’s nomination in the Aug. 4 contest following the departure of the third contender, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak). The race has become one of the nation’s most closely watched political primaries as the Democratic Party grapples with a progressive revolution within its ranks, one that establishment party forces are trying to stave off ahead of the 2026 general election.

On Tuesday, the new head-to-head rivals took the opportunity to attack each other on policy, their track records of success in public office, personal finance disclosures and corporate campaign contributions.

Affordability issues take center stage

On affordability, El-Sayed said his policies as senator would focus on addressing the nation’s healthcare woes by guaranteeing everybody health insurance without a deductible, a premium, or a co-pay through Medicare for All, which has become a key plank of his campaign.

“Number two, we need to stand up to the monopolies and oligopolies that are picking our pockets. Number three, we need to stand up to increase wages, and that means standing with unions like the UAW and the nurses who have endorsed us,” El-Sayed said. “It means making sure that we are standing with Michiganders in their moments of crisis by making schools somewhere that our kids can go by addressing the potholes that cause punctured tires every time you try to drive anywhere. But all of this has to happen by way of getting the corruption out of our politics.”

Stevens said she would continue to champion policies that she has pushed for during her time in Congress: no tariffs on groceries and legislation to lower utility bills, the latter of which has become a flashpoint in Michigan politics.

Stevens, El-Sayed split on high cost of childcare

With goods and services becoming less affordable under the Trump administration, the issue of childcare costs was raised by one of several WOOD-TV viewers tapped to ask additional questions.

Stevens said she fought during the COVID-19 pandemic to secure federal dollars to ensure that daycare centers and those working in them remained open and employed. She acknowledged that the costs continued to go up through the Biden and Trump presidencies. Her fix was technical in nature.

“The way in which we can lower daycare costs are through the expansion of Community Development Block Grant funding and grants that match what our great governor here in Michigan did,” Stevens said. “We need paid family leave. I’m a champion for paid family leave. We need to secure the ability for new mothers and fathers to have that precious time with their newborns, that’s another critical step.”

El-Sayed spoke from his own experience as the father of two daughters. He said the childcare costs for their youngest daughter is one of the most expensive items they pay for. 

“I think we need to make childcare free, 100% free,” he said. “Now, how do we pay for that? We pay for that by taxing billionaires their wealth. We could render $4.6 trillion if we were willing to put, let’s say, 8% tax on billionaire wealth. This is not that difficult, but it’s a function of our values.”

Dealing with ICE on the national scale, and in Michigan

El-Sayed has called to abolish ICE while Stevens has called for the agency’s reformation, and to hold bad actors in ICE accountable for abuses during President Donald Trump’s administration.

El-Sayed said he saw the height of ICE’s abuse during its Minneapolis-based Project Metro Surge, and he said the results were terrifying.

“ICE is about normalizing paramilitary force on our streets. I’ve been clear that you can’t reform ICE, you can’t retrain ICE, you have to abolish ICE,” El-Sayed said. “Now that’s not to say that we can’t secure our border, that’s not even to say that we can’t actually enforce our immigration policy, that is to say that we shouldn’t do it at the edge of destroying our Constitution itself.”

El-Sayed noted that “ICE is a new agency, it is younger than I am.”

Stevens said she has supported and will continue to support bipartisan efforts to beef up border security, but will be a forceful figure in holding Trump accountable for an agency that she called “completely out of control.”

“I’ve got the legislation to do it,” Stevens said. “I called on Kristie Noem to go. She was removed, but no reforms took place. They took $70 billion of our taxpayer money into an ICE slush fund. This has been a failure. … Donald Trump has abused his power, he has failed the American people, and we need change.”

Stakes rise in two-person Senate race

Much is on the line in Michigan’s race for U.S. Senate, with the Great Lakes state targeted as one that could decide the next majority in both chambers of Congress. 

The race is also coming down to the wire. Absentee ballots have already been delivered to those who have requested one. In-person early voting will commence in less than three weeks. And with just two candidates, Democratic voters will determine which path the party moves toward as it gears up for a hypothetical matchup with the lone Republican in the race, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake.

El-Sayed has emerged as the leading voice in Michigan’s progressive circles, surrounding himself with Democratic Socialist endorsements and surrogates as he paints himself as a principled populist. While early polling placed him third in the race, El-Sayed now finds himself steadily gaining support. 

Stevens, meanwhile, is considered the establishment favorite, backed by centrist Democrats both nationally and in Michigan. Despite criticism during the early stages of the race for not being as progressive as McMorrow or El-Sayed, Stevens’ campaign is hoping to find new momentum following McMorrow’s exit from the race.

Israel-Gaza war remains a top issue in the race

When asked about the United States’ continued involvement in the war it started with Iran in conjunction with Israel, Stevens and El-Sayed were also asked what they would do about it in the upper chamber of Congress.

Stevens said Trump was selling out the nation by continuing the war. She also, for the first highly public time during her campaign, criticized Israel directly for bringing the U.S. into its conflict with Iran.

“Donald Trump has failed us. The prime minister of Israel has failed in that regard, and he was just coming after me on this today,” Stevens said, referencing comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a CNN interview. “I am unafraid.”

El-Sayed said it was “worth asking why we got into this war in the first place.”

“There is one man who has been wanting this war fought, and that is the Prime Minister of Israel, and the reason that we’ve seen this war fought is because of the impact of AIPAC in our politics,” he said. “AIPAC has spent tens of millions of dollars in attack ads against me, or ads lying about the congresswoman’s record. They clearly want one individual, and it’s not me.”

Stevens’ funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has become a flashpoint in the campaign, and El-Sayed’s refusal of the organization’s contributions has become an equally important part of the campaign for the U.S. Senate.

“I don’t take that money,” he reiterated. “They are spending against me because they’ve called me the most dangerous candidate for the US-Israel relationship.”

Stevens accused El-Sayed of being on the receiving end of spending from Republican forces who want him to be the candidate because they would prefer a matchup with a more radical, and in her view, less electable candidate.

“I do not plan to make anything easier for Republicans or Mike Rogers,” Stevens said. “What I do is I take on tough fights for Michigan, tough races, and I win.”

El-Sayed countered by saying that whether Rogers or Stevens win, AIPAC will have gotten one of their two preferred candidates.

“AIPAC is perfectly fine with either of my two opponents, because they know that they will have a comfortable, reliable vote in the U.S. Senate,” he said. “If you want politics to work for you, if you want politics to rebuild your schools, or fix your infrastructure, or to invest in your healthcare, you have an alternative choice.”

Stevens repeatedly hit El-Sayed on his decision to delay the release of his tax returns and his personal financial disclosures. She claimed that it was hard to tell who was funding his campaign and personal wealth — with Stevens noting he had a net worth exceeding $1 million — without the public being able to see those documents.

El-Sayed said that, in terms of the financial disclosures, he had taken the same extension to release them that Stevens had taken many times in the past.

He then turned the attack back on Stevens, calling into question a trip that she took with her mother to Portugal that was allegedly paid for by a group called Center Forward. The group hails itself as a centrist political advocacy group, which also operates a super PAC.

Following the debate, Stevens was asked about the trip and who paid for it. She told Michigan Advance that the trip was standard practice, likening it to congressional delegation trips that members of the House and Senate take to better ties between nations. She said she was doing NATO meetings that were meant to address Russia’s war in Ukraine.

When asked why that was paid for by an outside group, and not her congressional office budget, Stevens said only that it was “a very standard way in which members engage in critical policy.”

El-Sayed was also pressed on his issues with Israel and his painting of Stevens as being beholden to AIPAC. A reporter asked the candidate if he truly believed that every position she held was dictated by AIPAC or other super PACs that have funded her campaign.

“Probably not all of them, but certainly enough of them to which one forces us to vote and send our taxpayer dollars to a foreign government doing a genocide,” he said.