Former VP Kamala Harris stumps with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, highlighting Black maternal health

Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed appeared with former Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday, with the latter flying in for a roundtable event in Detroit focused on Black maternal health.

Harris’ willingness to hit the trail with El-Sayed was yet another show of national Democratic Party unity as he faces a general election battle with Republican nominee Mike Rogers in November. 

Speaking to Black mothers in Detroit about maternal healthcare outcomes and the struggles of healthcare workers writ large, Harris outlined the stakes of the 2026 election — and what it means for healthcare, a key plank of El-Sayed’s campaign.

The former vice president and 2024 presidential candidate said that one in 12 women in the U.S. are living in what she called maternal healthcare deserts. Harris also noted that President Donald Trump had cut funding for Medicaid and that his administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs was, in its own way, a direct attack on maternal healthcare.

“These are the facts when we talk about what is at stake in this moment as it relates to these midterms and who occupies seats in one of the most important bodies in our nation, if not the world,” Harris said. “The United States Senate should be a stopgap on the abuses of this administration and I would suggest to you that this fellow sitting to my right would be one of them when elected.”

In turn, El-Sayed said the race between him and Rogers was an opportunity “to decide that we are going to invest in more health, we are going to invest in more care.”

Shanay Watson‑Whittaker, the director of Michigan campaigns at Reproductive Freedom for All, was also in attendance, and said Rogers was against Michigan’s 2022 ballot proposal that enshrined reproductive rights into the Michigan Constitution.

“What we have with Mike Rogers is we have someone who is a blank check for Trump,” Watson-Whittaker said.

The campaign visit was significant because Harris appears poised to reenter public life in some fashion, which could mean another run at the White House after losing to Trump in 2024. Some Democrats have been wary of tying their respective ships to Harris after that defeat, which Rogers alluded to in a social media post just prior to Tuesday’s event.

“Just like he begged Chuck Schumer for money, Conman Abdul El-Sayed has begged Kamala Harris to come to Michigan today. Can we expect your endorsement of her 2028 campaign, Abdul?,” the Facebook post asked.

Regardless, El-Sayed has embraced Harris’ support — the former vice president was one of the first few national establishment Democrats to endorse him after his primary win over U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham).

Harris going all in on El-Sayed was also a sign that there was no bad blood between them after El-Sayed was a member of the “uncommitted” movement, which involved Arab and Muslim voters, particularly in southeast Michigan, withdrawing their support for Biden over his embrace of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza following the Oct. 17, 2023 terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians.

El-Sayed and other former members of the have since said that the pushback was squarely against Biden and his reelection bid in 2024, and not aimed at Harris or any other member of the Biden administration. When Harris became the Democratic nominee that year, and only after Biden dropped out of the race, El-Sayed was one of the first Michigan Democrats to endorse her.

Some Michigan members of the pro-Palestinian movement continued to hammer Harris over the Israel-Hamas war during the tail end of the 2024 cycle, but El-Sayed was not one of them.

Still, Republicans and some centrist-Democrats in the 2026 cycle tried to paint El-Sayed’s opposition to Biden as opposition to Harris, all in an attempt to drive a wedge between supporters of Harris and galvanize momentum around Stevens’ primary campaign.

That effort was put to rest when Harris eventually endorsed El-Sayed.

Following the roundtable discussion, Harris was asked why she was supporting the Michigan nominee, and more importantly, why she was appearing with him on the campaign trail. The event was not open to local press, but the vice president told pool reporters that she was in El-Sayed’s corner because of his stances on affordable healthcare, childcare and housing.

Although the event was not open to all Michigan press, Harris took a swipe at Trump’s recent banning of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, calling it “abhorrent.”

“That man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing,” Harris said. 

Michigan progressive rabbis use Harris visit to press El-Sayed on ‘nonnegotiable’ Jewish concerns

Meanwhile, a group of Michigan rabbis who say they are both longtime Democrats and supporters of Harris’ 2024 campaign, have been pressing El-Sayed to publicly address concerns they have for Jewish safety and identity, Jewish statehood in Israel and self-determination in the Holy Land. 

Those concerns are predicated on El-Sayed’s firm stance that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and that the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame, but also his primary campaign stops with influencer Hasan Piker and their respective rhetoric against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

El-Sayed says Hasan Piker does not speak for his campaign amid comments about Jewish candidate

The rabbis raised concerns about El-Sayed and asked him to come to the table to address those concerns in early September. The group, known as Nonnegotiable Michigan, has said since that El-Sayed has yet to do so.

On Tuesday, in anticipation of Harris’ visit, the group issued an open letter to the former vice president and asked her to push El-Sayed to address their grievances.

“Throughout your admirable public service career, you have never asked us to choose between our commitment to social justice and our Jewish safety or identity,” the letter said. “You made Jewish life proud and visible inside the Vice President’s residence for the first time in American history, inviting many of us to celebrate Hanukkah at the Naval Observatory. As Vice President, you told us plainly that antisemitism ‘must be condemned unequivocally’ — no caveats, no context, no hesitation. … Dr. El-Sayed has had every opportunity to meet our request to support our basic needs. So far, he has declined even to respond.”

The rabbis also noted that Harris’ visit comes the day after the Yom Kippur holiday, “a season we spend personally confronting questions of accountability, repentance, and the possibility of change and growth.”

“That is the same spirit with which we have approached Dr. El-Sayed’s candidacy. We have appealed to him directly, and been met with silence,” the letter said. “We believe he needs to be urged by Democratic Party leaders who understand that Jews have been one of the strongest, most committed voting blocs in the Democratic coalition, and by someone who understands that a Democratic Party that is not safe for Jews will not be able to protect our democracy.”