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Nearly $30 million was spent by AIPAC and its affiliates to stop Abdul El-Sayed. It was enough to flood Michigan’s airwaves, but not enough to persuade Democratic voters that he was beyond the political pale.
That matters because El-Sayed was fighting more than an extraordinarily well-funded opponent. As a Muslim who has openly condemned Israel’s war in Gaza and challenged AIPAC’s influence, he confronted a political reflex deeply embedded in post-9/11 America: the tendency to treat Muslim candidates not simply as candidates, but as questions of loyalty, security and belonging.
