ANN ARBOR, Michigan (JTA) — As Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made campaign stops with a prominent Jewish congressional leader on Wednesday, there was one subject that neither he nor his Democratic allies onstage were interested in discussing.
“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” Michigan US Rep. Debbie Dingell told the crowd at an Ann Arbor, Michigan, town hall, to cheers. “It’s not what November is about.”
Dingell’s crack was the only reference to the popular left-wing streamer — whose incendiary rhetoric has spurred accusations of antisemitism — during the pair of El-Sayed rallies that day. Piker recently commented, “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action… against American Jews.”
His remarks prompted uproar from several corners of Democratic leadership and pushback from El-Sayed, who distanced himself from Piker’s remarks in a statement prior to his latest rallies. Despite this, El-Sayed’s new Jewish campaign surrogate, US Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, avoided the topic altogether.
That reluctance to talk about Piker on the campaign trail Wednesday extended to the candidate himself. El-Sayed didn’t mention Piker, nor Israel, once in either of his campaign stops with Raskin, except when asked directly by reporters.
