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Michigan’s insurgent progressive Senate nominee ran as far as he could from Washington, D.C., but on Wednesday he traveled to the nation’s Capitol for a closed-door meeting with top Democratic brass as the race for power intensifies.
Abdul El-Sayed met with top Senate Democrats just hundreds of yards away from Congress, where lawmakers and the wunderkind candidate huddled to discuss his campaign and how to keep Michigan blue.
Many left boasting that the Wolverine State would not turn a shade of purple. But, few, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would say whether the fences broken during El-Sayed’s primary fight had been mended.
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“Look, we have to win Michigan and we had a great and friendly meeting,” Schumer said when asked by Fox News Digital if he and El-Sayed had moved on from their differences.
Still, El-Sayed held court with Democratic brass for hours at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) headquarters in Washington, where a steady flow of lawmakers — both allies and skeptics of his Senate bid — milled in and out of the building throughout the day.
Schumer and Democrats are confident and determined that they can flip the Senate, which Republicans hold at a 53 to 47 margin. Losing Michigan to the GOP and former Rep. Mike Rogers would serve a mortal blow to that push.
“He’s gonna win,” Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who is also the DSCC chair, said.
The key mission for Democrats is getting independents and Republicans on the fence. But few, including Schumer, said that they would actually hit the campaign trail with El-Sayed.
It all comes after El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., locked horns in one of the most bitter Democratic primary fights of this cycle that pitted the Democratic old-guard versus a progressive movement gaining steam across the country.
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Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who initially endorsed Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow before she dropped out, told Fox News Digital that, “obviously, primaries can get really hot, and the Michigan primary got hot.”
“This is what you do after a primary is you try to unite the party and then you do the work to reach out and cross over to independent voters and Republican voters,” Murphy said. “So I don’t think anybody should be surprised that he’s trying to build bridges after a heated primary. That’s what good candidates, that’s what winning candidates do.”
Another McMorrow backer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., painted a rosy picture of the closed-door session, and noted that it was “hard to hear in there because so many people were talking and laughing and wanted to hear about the campaign.”
“He makes good connections because it’s a lot of people in there who are talking about what can we do next? What can we do to lower costs for families? What can we do to make this government work better for working people? So it was a very enthusiastic, very cheerful group of people,” she said.
Retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., whose seat El-Sayed is gunning for, initially endorsed Stevens. Now, he’s shifting gears.
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“I’m endorsing him, and he’s been getting support across the board in Michigan. The Democrats are coming together,” Peters said in response to a question about whether the Democratic establishment was uniting behind El-Sayed. “We understand how important this election is.”
Others were more keen to lend an assist to El-Sayed, including Murphy and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who said, “I’m gonna be in Michigan here in a couple of weeks.”
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who is running for re-election in deep blue Massachusetts, said that Democrats’ strategy heading into the final stretch was pitching an affordability agenda, and that El-Sayed “is the answer.”
“I’m helping him. I think we’re all gonna help,” Markey said when asked if he would fundraise with El-Sayed.
The specter of El-Sayed’s relationship with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who helped to amplify his campaign in the primary battle, wasn’t something that Democrats focused on during their huddle.
“Hasan what?,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital when asked if he came up during the meeting. “I don’t even know who that is.”
When asked if Piker came up, or if Democrats encouraged El-Sayed to further distance himself from him, Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said, “Not in terms of the conversation. Like I said, I was just trying to get to know him.”
After initially dodging Fox News Digital’s question on whether he would campaign with Piker, El-Sayed later told reporters that, “This conversation is so far removed from what people are talking about.”
“Everyday, in Michigan, people sit at their kitchen tables and ask ‘how am I going to make this work next month?’ That’s not a middle, right, left issue, that’s a basic affordability issue,” El-Sayed said.
But when further pressed, he countered that Michigan voters “really don’t care about that.”
“They really don’t,” El-Sayed said.
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