Michigan Senate Race Heats Up as College Students Rally With Streamer Hasan Piker in Controversy That Reaches West Michigan

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is courting young voters in Michigan with appearances alongside Hasan Piker, a controversial Twitch streamer whose comments on Israel-Hamas war have drawn sharp criticism from El-Sayed's political opponents and Jewish advocacy groups.

The strategy to appeal to college students played out Tuesday at Michigan State University in East Lansing and was scheduled to continue at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor later that day. El-Sayed's decision to campaign with Piker has sparked an internal Democratic Party fight over how to address Israel-Hamas conflict while reaching disaffected voters.

El-Sayed told reporters after the MSU event that he does not take his cues from Washington about what matters most in Michigan.

The fact that this is the controversy to me says everything we need to know about what D.C. focuses on. I don't pay much attention to D.C. I pay attention to Michigan. Here in Michigan, people can't afford to fill up a tank because of the war that's being fought out of D.C. and have to suffer.

The events drew a combined 1,200 people according to organizers. Some attendees told reporters they came specifically to see Piker but were glad El-Sayed was campaigning with him.

Joey Conroy, a sophomore at Michigan State University, said he would not support candidates who accept money from AIPAC.

I think a lot of people have not been comfortable speaking out against things that are happening abroad like in Iran and Palestine, actions I don't support as a voter. So seeing people who will speak out against that like El-Sayed speaking out directly about what's happening in Palestine is really encouraging and I want to support more of that.

Anna Gonzales of Grand Rapids told CBS News she viewed El-Sayed's decision to campaign with Piker as a smart move because it engages more left-wing voters.

I think one of the mistakes that the Democratic Party makes is estranging the left. They really cater toward more moderate voters and a lot of pro-Israel supporters. I think that they lose a lot of us on the left when they do that.

Gonzales added that it seems as if Democratic leaders are hesitant to engage with left-wing streamers like Piker while simultaneously pushing Democrats to engage more with conservatives.

When we have people more willing to go on Theo Von's podcast and Joe Rogan's and capitulate to the right, and then we see people like Corey Booker say I draw the line at Hasan Piker, it really shows the priority of the Democratic Party and the establishment on the left not wanting to be progressive.

Piker has over three million followers on Twitch and has amassed a significant following of young, progressive men. In 2024, he was invited to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago but was kicked out over his criticism of Democrats and Kamala Harris for their failure to stop or criticize Israel's actions in Gaza.

El-Sayed is facing two other Democrats in the August primary: U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

Stevens has been supported by AIPAC and has advocated for ongoing relations between the U.S. and Israel in videos she's appeared in for the pro-Israel group. McMorrow has also referred to the war in Gaza as a genocide and has said she will not accept campaign donations from AIPAC.

Both Stevens and McMorrow have criticized El-Sayed's association with Piker. Stevens called El-Sayed's decision to campaign with Piker unacceptable. McMorrow told Jewish Insider that Piker is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state.

McMorrow compared Piker to Nick Fuentes, a far-right white supremacist podcaster. She said Piker is not entirely different from somebody like Nick Fuentes because he is somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers.

Piker has pushed back on Democrats who have criticized him amid the Iran war.

A lot of prominent Democrats spent the last two weeks instead of developing the appropriate response to Donald Trump's mania, chose to repeat what corporate donors and foreign lobbyists and big donors had told themselves, including but not limited to Abdul El-Sayed's opponents Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens. And that's exactly what's wrong with politics in this day and age.

Haley Stevens, a Birmingham Democrat and one of El-Sayed's primary challengers, has called Piker the exact opposite of someone I'd be campaigning with. McMorrow followed in the coming days by comparing Piker to Nick Fuentes.

Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab, Muslim and Palestinian Americans in the United States. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won 69 percent of Dearborn, a city with an Arab-majority population. In 2024, Kamala Harris carried just 36 percent of the Dearborn vote.

Progressive Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, whose district includes Dearborn, and moderate Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, whose district includes Ann Arbor, also attended the University of Michigan event.

The Michigan Democratic Senate Primary is heating up with polls showing the trio of El-Sayed, Stevens, and McMorrow all within the margin of error of each other.

Mike Rogers, a Republican who is expected to face whoever wins the Democratic primary, said El-Sayed's decision to campaign with Piker proves there's no limit to how far left Democrats will go.

Piker said in a brief interview before the MSU event that he didn't realize how much backlash his involvement would generate but he would do it again just the same regardless.

He's a real fighter. He's honest, he doesn't treat people like they're stupid. He understands that voters have demands and he will respond to those demands.

El-Sayed is a progressive who's been endorsed by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California. He has long criticized U.S. funding for Israel and Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who continue to support it.

The controversy has drawn attention from Arab American leaders who say El-Sayed and Piker show establishment Democrats are making the same moral and strategic blunders that led to electoral losses in Michigan and nationally.

For my story I spoke with seven local and national Arab American and Lebanese American leaders. They all said some variation of the same thing which is that these attacks on El-Sayed and Piker show that the establishment Democrats are making the same moral and strategic blunders that they made in 2024 that led to Dems electoral demise in Michigan and nationally.

They say this is an attempt to censor criticism of Israel and they say that it shows the anti-Arab bias that imbues the political establishment.

One of the folks I spoke with for the story was Abed Ayoub who's the spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee ADC. He said to me Look, Republicans are making inroads here. If there's somebody like McMorrow if there's a Democratic candidate who's not considering us who's not thinking about our suffering who's telling us to be quiet about Israel, then the same things that happened in 2024 are going to happen again. People are going to vote for a Republican. They're going to stay home, they're going to vote third party. So yes if you want to win in Michigan you might want to acknowledge this suffering. You might want to acknowledge that this is happening.

The suffering of both people can be acknowledged at the same time. We don't have to exclude one or the other.