Politics
The brief but busy reign of Sen. George Helmy is coming to an end
President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate lost a top battleground Republican primary in Michigan — to a candidate who suspended his campaign last month.
Amir Hassan, a Navy veteran and former law enforcement officer from Flint backed by Trump, finished significantly behind Tom Smith on Wednesday. Hassan rallied with Trump in Milford, Michigan, just last week.
Smith, a retired engineer, had dropped out in mid-July and endorsed another candidate who ended up in third in the primary. Smith told Blue Light News that he would now return to challenge first-term Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet for the purple 8th District.
“I look forward to working with Speaker [Mike] Johnson and the entire Republican team to expand our House majority and advance President Trump’s America First agenda to lower costs for working families and make America affordable again,” Smith said in a statement.
McDonald Rivet is among the more than a dozen Democratic incumbents seeking reelection in a district Trump won in 2024. But a GOP strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, characterized her as a “powerhouse.” The strategist added that Hassan had “clear flaws as a candidate” and the “GOP base was reluctant to support a dude named Amir Hassan.”
A handful of Trump-endorsed candidates have lost state-level races this year — including the governor’s races in Iowa and Georgia — but Hassan is the first congressional candidate to lose despite the president’s support this cycle.
Abdul El-Sayed is Democrats’ Senate nominee in Michigan, a seismic victory for progressives that carries massive implications for both the Senate battlemap and the Democratic Party’s future.
The progressive former public health official on Wednesday narrowly defeated establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, who was boosted by a record-breaking $32 million in spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
His margin was far slimmer than progressives had anticipated based on polling that had shown him with a double-digit lead ahead of the election, blunting what they hoped would be an emphatic capstone to a series of high-profile wins that had tilted the party’s ideological civil war in their favor.
El-Sayed will have to work overtime to convince skeptical centrists that a progressive can win in purple territory against former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers in a critical battleground that will decide Senate control.
His victory comes after a contentious primary that was defined by clashes over everything from Israel to immigration to health care. Stevens and her allies lobbied accusations ofsexism and antisemitism against El-Sayed, whose supporters in turn accused the moderate Democrat of Islamophobia.
Wednesday’s result is a setback for the pro-Israel lobby as well as for leaders within the Democratic establishment — most notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — who had thrown their weight behind Stevens.
El-Sayed’s win has the potential to scramble Schumer’s gameplan for November; Democrats need to keep retiring Sen. Gary Peters’ seat if they have any hope of retaking the chamber.
And it’s emboldening Republicans who hold a cash advantage heading into November and are growing bullish about their chances for a flip against a progressive who was their preferred nominee. State Republican Party Chair Jim Runestad said the GOP plans to paint him as a “far-left democratic socialist.”
Jason Roe, a longtime Republican operative in Michigan, previously told Blue Light News that “El-Sayed is not doing very well outstate and I think that’s what a lot of Republicans are banking on. It will be very difficult for him to beat Rogers with those rural counties.”
Still, El-Sayed’s emergence from the bruising primary that became ground zero for Democrats’ ideological war stands as progressives’ biggest win yet in a year when the left has harnessed a wave of anti-establishment angst to deliver a series of stunning upsets. And it carries significant implications for how Democrats will approach a state that will have an outsized role in picking the party’s next presidential nominee in 2028.
El-Sayed has sought to position his win as a springboard for growing progressives’ influence ahead of 2028.
Michigan Rep. Shri Thanedar lost his primary to democratic socialist Donavan McKinney on Wednesday — the latest victory for progressives who’ve been on a hot streak of ousting incumbents in safe-blue districts.
Thanedar’s 13th District was a top priority for groups like Justice Democrats that are committed to primarying incumbent members that they believe aren’t in line with the areas they represent. Justice Democrats helped recruit McKinney into the race and spent nearly $1 million on his behalf, making his campaign one of its biggest targets this cycle.
McKinney, a state representative, had secured the backing of a number of progressive House Democrats, including some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who bucked party leadership, which was standing behind Thanedar in the heavily Black Detroit-based district.
Some of Thanedar’s colleagues were also frustrated by his efforts to force a vote on impeaching President Donald Trump last year, an effort he ultimately backed away from.
The district is a safe seat for Democrats, and McKinney is expected to win easily in November.
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