TIME TO PLAY NICE

After a bruising primary campaign where his opponent Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D-Oakland County) was verbally harassed and humiliated at the party convention and received nasty and shameful comments on social media, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has said “enough.” On September 19 – over six weeks after the August 4 primary – after an anti-Israel protester followed Stevens to her car in Washington D.C., verbally haranguing her by calling her a “war criminal” and yelling, “We will see you in the gallows,” El-Sayed released a statement: “Harassment like the kind she’s experienced is unkind and unproductive, and it puts her personal safety at risk. This behavior is not representative of our movement and should cease immediately.” He further stated that while he and Stevens disagree on “some important things...we agree on so much more.” A Michigan activist defended his actions as “appropriate,” calling Stevens a “neo-Nazi.” Stevens’ fellow Democratic legislators condemned the attack. “Debate in our politics is good. Threats of violence and invoking ‘the gallows’ for elected leaders you disagree with is unacceptable,” Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) wrote on X. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor) pointed out that threats of violence and language invoking “the gallows” have “no place in political discourse.”