Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that she is endorsing Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s high-profile Senate contest, after having previously voiced reservations over his views on Israel and antisemitism.

Nessel, a Jewish Democrat whose eight years in office will conclude at the end of December, made the announcement while appearing with El-Sayed in an episode of the “For the Sake of the Argument with Lori Goldman” podcast released on Tuesday.

“For me, I don’t want to say the choice is easy, but I am going to say that there is no choice, and that’s why I’m supporting Abdul for the United States Senate,” Nessel said. 

Asked if she would personally be voting for El-Sayed, Nessel replied: “I can’t be true to my values if I even consider voting for [GOP nominee] Mike Rogers. Yes, I’ll be voting for Abdul.”

Michigan AG Dana Nessel said she will vote for Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, after she previously withheld her support amid concerns over his positions on Israel and his response to the attack on Temple Israel. pic.twitter.com/GQ6m4LXuqh

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Nessel predicted that she would “get attacked” by “right-wing media” for failing to “hold whatever is, I guess, the party line of the day when it comes to the Jewish community,” though she defended her decision to support El-Sayed by arguing that, “it is a tremendous disservice not to look at all of the issues” that he and Rogers are respectively campaigning on. 

“I care deeply about [the Jewish] community. I’ve been a member of it, obviously, my entire life, and we’re talking about my family. … I know that just by sitting together today, people are going to call me a traitor to my people. People are going to call me a kapo. People are going to call me much worse things than that,” Nessel said. “But at the end of the day, when we talk about protecting our children, protecting generations to come, when we talk about protecting the people that we serve, I think it is a tremendous disservice not to look at all of the issues.”

Asked about their differences on the issue of support for Israel and whether pro-Israel Jews were welcome the Democratic “big tent,” Nessel said that while she did not “want to minimize my interest in the state of Israel” or her belief that “we need to have those conversations” about achieving peace for Israelis and Palestinians, she suggested there are more pressing policy questions to address first. 

“How can we expect that Israel or its people will have any future at all whatsoever if we are not tackling AI? If we’re not looking at real solutions to climate change? If we’re not forward-facing in terms of fighting against whatever the next global pandemic is going to be?” Nessel asked. “These issues absolutely need to be addressed. Mike Rogers doesn’t care about any of them.”

Nessel then pressed El-Sayed on if Jewish Democrats were welcome in the party, to which he responded affirmatively and said that he believed in the idea of the party having a “big tent … where we march in lockstep on the 95% of things we agree on and where we continue to have the conversation in that tent about the spaces where we disagree, so yes.”

El-Sayed said that if elected, he would support the Jewish American Security Act, a bipartisan and bicameral proposal to address antisemitism across multiple sectors of American society being championed by the mainstream Jewish community. He noted, however, that he would work to expand the legislation to provide similar protections for people of other faiths.

“I look forward to working alongside [Sen.] Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who is the principal sponsor and drafter of this legislation, to support it and expand it so it includes the critical infrastructure to protect Jewish spaces, to also include spaces for other religious minorities and, frankly, for Christian folk and for places of reflection for folks who might not ascribe to an organized religion,” El-Sayed said.

“I know this piece of legislation would support things like security cameras and security for these institutions, and it also would protect against online harassment,” he continued. “I think it’s important for us as we think about that, that folks are not being harassed simply because of how they pray. And I want to make sure that I’m working with Sen. Rosen to expand that so that all communities can feel safe.”

El-Sayed noted that, “We’ve had an uptick in antisemitism and it is critical to protect Jewish Americans. We’ve also seen harassment of Sikh communities and other communities as well. And so being able to protect the rights of people to pray as they choose to pray without having to fear that they are going to be targets for violence and hate speech is absolutely critical.”