Stressing the national importance of Michigan's role in the 2026 midterms, former Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris stopped in Detroit and threw her support behind Abdul El-Sayed, Democrats' pick for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat.
She endorsed him at Birth Detroit, a community birth center in the city, at the conclusion of a roundtable with the nominee and reproductive health advocates. She said El-Sayed's race against Republican former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake Township will impact affordable health care, childcare and housing.
"That's why I'm here, because these are the big issues that I know impact people across our country, including here in Michigan," she told reporters.
During the event, she
recalled serving alongside now-retiring Michigan U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, saying it gave her a sense of the weight of representing the battleground state.
"His will be a voice — Abdul's — that is a voice representing the people of this state, and it will be a national voice," she said, according to a Fox 2 livestream of the discussion.
During the discussion with Harris on Black maternal health disparities, El-Sayed, who previously served as the health director for Detroit and Wayne County, said his race is about one question — inspired by the venue: "What would we build if we treated all of our kids like all of our kids?" he said.
Ahead of the roundtable, Rogers had characterized Harris' visit as a sign that his Democratic rival's campaign is flailing.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Abdul is so desperate that he’s parachuting Kamala Harris into Michigan to save his flailing campaign," Rogers said in statement.
El-Sayed brushed off the attack when a reporter asked him about it before his meeting with Harris and the others.
"You know what a desperate measure is? Pretending like you didn't back a war that you've been backing for seven months now, calling it a 'win-win-win' then looking at your poll numbers and being like, 'Maybe that was a bad idea,'" he said, referring to Rogers' recent call for the war in Iran to "end quickly."
Besides highlighting the national importance of Michigan's open Senate race, Harris' appearance could help El-Sayed boost support among Black voters — a traditionally reliable Democratic voting bloc — who backed his primary opponent in the primary.
In Detroit, Michigan's largest majority-Black city, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham secured 62% of the vote to El-Sayed's 34% in August.
Rogers' campaign had a truck outside the roundtable event trying to paint El-Sayed as racist, even as he campaigned inside with the first woman of color to become a major political party's presidential nominee, and a group discussing Black women's health issues.
El-Sayed's primary served as a kind of litmus test for the brand of progressive politics he espouses, including his calls for Medicare for All and ending unconditional military aid to Israel.
Now, all eyes are on his race against Rogers, who has the endorsement of President Donald Trump, to see if El-Sayed’s platform carries broad appeal.
Contact Clara Hendrickson at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kamala Harris backs El-Sayed, says Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat is key
