The Michigan Democratic Primary Has Grown Absolutely Toxic

Plus: One other establishment-vs.-progressives race to keep an eye on.

(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)

WHEN GRAHAM PLATNER FORMALLY WITHDREW from the Maine Senate race a little over a week ago, Democratic officials hoped that it would bring an end to the bitter intraparty fight over electability and ideology that had engulfed the party for months.

But such tensions run deep, and it didn’t take long for another race to pit progressives and establishment Democrats against each other.

In the days since Platner’s campaign ended, the Democratic primary for Michigan Senate between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed has descended into ugly rancor. Stevens—a four-term moderate House Democrat with close ties to party leadership—has been relentlessly ridiculed on social media for her voice and physical appearance, prompting her allies to accuse El-Sayed of sexism. El-Sayed, a progressive former health official, has seen his campaign drowned in outside advertising accusing him of being the Republicans’ preferred nominee and propping up Stevens.

Primary elections often crescendo in a fit of nastiness as the vote nears. But rarely has the online torching gotten so personal that the candidates themselves have felt compelled to urge supporters to tap the brakes, which is precisely what El-Sayed did last week.

“It’s become impossible to ignore the way that people online make fun of my opponent for things that have nothing to do with her policies or politics. It’s unkind and unhelpful. If you support me, please stop,” he said in a statement.

But what really stands out about the close of the Michigan primary is that it’s not just political influencers and internet shitposters who have been engaged in a factional hot war. Top Democratic operatives have been embroiled in days-long fights over which candidate would be more competitive in the general election against presumed GOP nominee Mike Rogers. The infighting has largely taken place publicly on social media and has at times turned personal, as operatives have taken direct shots at those backing the opposing candidate. Democratic strategists I spoke with said it’s been even nastier in private, with some declaring that they’d never again work with operatives supporting the opposing camp.

All of this has raised the stakes of the Michigan primary even higher for Democratic insiders than they already were, ascribing not just national implications to its outcome but reputational ones as well. The contest has morphed into a proxy fight over whose theory of politics is correct and, by extension, the future direction of the party. And there are still two weeks to go.

In my conversations last week with operatives, everyone had a theory as to why the opposing camp was staking so much on Michigan. As progressives see it, the moderate flank of the party is panicked after democratic socialists won House primaries last month in Colorado and New York and is looking at Michigan as one of its last opportunities to blunt left-wing momentum before the 2028 presidential primary kicks off in earnest. Centrist groups like Third Way, for example, have made the Michigan primary a top priority.

“They’re spooked because they’re seeing all of these young rising talents, and most of them are progressives,” said Mark Longabaugh, a top strategist for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign. “There isn’t a lot of star power coming out of the sort of centrist, establishment wing of the party.”

Establishment Democrats, however, point to the strength of moderate candidates elsewhere, and stress that it’s the left raising the stakes in Michigan—in part as an effort to rescue their own credibility following the Platner faceplant in Maine. They believe progressives, eager to prove that Platner was a sui generis flawed candidate, are too dug in to have an honest conversation about the type of politics best suited to win a swing state that has twice voted for Donald Trump.

“Unlike in New York or Denver or Philly, you have a swing seat that really matters, where we could lose in the general,” said Matt Bennett, a cofounder of the centrist Dem group Third Way, which has been fiercely critical of El-Sayed.

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THE CAUSTIC FACTIONALISM has, ironically, produced one area of agreement: Neither side is all that confident that the party is capable of uniting around the eventual nominee following the August 4 primary. Establishment party operatives whom I spoke with allege the progressive left is fine risking the balance of the Senate to prove an intraparty ideological point. Progressives felt similarly about their moderate counterparts, arguing that the establishment views candidates like El-Sayed as just as detrimental to the political system as MAGAism.

The fact that Michigan’s primary is so late in the summer allows very little time for the two camps to make nice ahead of November. Stevens’s backers are quick to note that already some El-Sayed supporters have threatened to not vote for her in the general election if she is the party nominee. And while centrist and establishment Democrats aren’t yet making similar threats publicly, there’s some fear that it would be inevitable should El-Sayed win the nomination—a fear fed by the longstanding gripe that the left is always asked to get in line while the center never faces such demands.

“Why is it the left’s obligation to always step into line when we don’t win in a primary? But centrists, moderates don’t have to do that?” asked Longabaugh.

Longabaugh added that he worried the dynamic in Michigan indicated that the party might not only be unable to come together in support of the Senate nominee but, looking ahead, that the national party would have trouble uniting around the eventual 2028 presidential nominee. And he’s not alone. The acrimony in Michigan strongly echoes the 2016 Democratic presidential primary—when backers of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton continued their feuding well after the contest ended.

As one progressive strategist put it to me: “Michigan is a battle for 2026 that will tell you everything you need to know about 2028.”

Some, however, see it all as the vanity of small differences.

“There will be people in the mainstream world as well that will be rooting for [El-Sayed] to lose because they can be like, ‘Hey, see, we fucking told you,’” said Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who is supporting Stevens. He described it all as remarkably self-defeating.

“Where I get frustrated is that, in the end, El-Sayed’s and Stevens’s voting record—either one of them in the U.S. Senate would probably have 94 percent of the exact same vote.”

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🫏 Donkey Business:

— Michigan’s is not the only Midwestern primary on the horizon that’s increasingly become a source of anxiety among Democratic officials. The August 11 race for Wisconsin governor is causing agita as well.

Although Trump carried the state in 2024, this gubernatorial contest should be winnable for Democrats given the favorable political environment. But some moderate party officials have grown worried that Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, could win the primary and tank Democrats’ chances in November. Republicans clearly see Hong as the weakest candidate in the primary; a super PAC with GOP ties is spending $2.2 million boosting her candidacy.

For a while, moderates viewed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez as best positioned to blunt Hong’s rise and unite the party. But on Friday, Rodriguez abruptly dropped out of the race after she discovered that her campaign manager had double-counted campaign donations, leaving Rodriguez with far less money in the bank than she thought. That’s left some Democratic officials scrambling to figure out how to stop Hong.

Some Dems believe the best option is to rally around former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes, whose pollster has argued that the primary is now a two-person race between Barnes and Hong. But there are plenty in the party who are deeply skeptical of Barnes’s ability to compete in the general election after he was attacked in his 2022 Senate campaign for his past progressive positions and lost by one percentage point to Ron Johnson. Instead, they’ve turned to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley—who jumped back in the race over the weekend after he’d suspended his campaign just a few days prior. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who is not running for re-election, endorsed Crowley on Saturday. Keep an eye on this contest, as it’s, well, getting crazy.

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