Leaders with the Nonnegotiable movement of liberal Michigan Jewish voters disenchanted with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed recommended writing in the name of poet Emma Lazarus for Michigan’s Senate race, rather than leaving the ballot line blank, even as one leader of the group acknowledged that voting for Republican Mike Rogers is the “most efficient and effective way” of defeating El-Sayed.

Rep. Hilary Scholten (D-MI), who has not endorsed El-Sayed, also joined the call, but did not directly mention or address El-Sayed or Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who she campaigned for during the Democratic Senate primary. 

Stevens endorsed Rogers in a surprise move earlier on Sunday. The two lawmakers are the only Democrats in the Michigan congressional delegation not endorsing El-Sayed.

Rabbi Aaron Starr, one of the leaders of the original Nonnegotiable petition, acknowledged during the call that “if your goal is to defeat Dr. El-Sayed, voting for Mike Rogers is a more efficient and effective way of doing that.”

But for those who aren’t willing to vote for a Republican or for Rogers in particular, Starr and others affiliated with the Nonnegotiable campaign urged them to write in a vote — so that it would be registered as an “other” in the vote count — rather than leaving the ballot line blank.

“If you’re not sure which way to go and you feel like you want to leave that line blank, please consider making sure that your discontent does get registered” through a write-in vote, Cantor Regina Hayut added.

Hayut said that she does not feel comfortable supporting either El-Sayed or Rogers and said she wants to “let both parties know that they did not meet my needs or my expectations in their candidacies.”

“We will end up with one of these two. If one feels more scary than the other, and you feel that you need to put in a vote for someone to assure that the other doesn’t get elected, we’re encouraging you to do that,” she continued. “The Emma Lazarus vote is really for people who just don’t want to hold their nose and vote, but want to sit that particular line out. We’re trying to give an option that feels meaningful.”

She also said that “if the Senate makeup is the most important value for you in this moment, you have to go with that as well.”

Starr noted that a non-vote for El-Sayed would still have an impact, even if it’s less significant than a vote for Rogers.

Starr also said that, since the Nonnegotiable campaign launched, El-Sayed had not reached out to him, and that his rhetoric had become “more egregious” over the past eight weeks. He said he has been told that El-Sayed has read and is aware of the campaign’s demands, “but he has seemingly consciously and intentionally refused to acknowledge or affirm them.”

Hayut said that people who reached out directly to El-Sayed regarding the campaign had not heard from him and had received “very weak responses from his team,” who indicated no “willingness to talk, to meet, to discuss the concerns.”

Asked about Stevens’ last-minute endorsement of Rogers, Starr said he had “profound respect” for Stevens while acknowledging the backlash she faced.

“What I heard her say is that over the last two months, three months, she’s heard [El-Sayed’s]  rhetoric change, and so she needed to make a change. We don’t have to agree with her. You don’t have to agree with her,” Starr said. “But I have profound respect for her willingness to really put herself out there. And she is getting a lot of difficult conversations ahead of her, and a lot of people are really using terrible language right now about her. But I have deep respect for her willingness to stand up, to speak out, to take a stand in this difficult moment.”

Scholten on the call emphasized the importance of “people who are willing to take tough stands when the moment calls, to never let any institution or any party do our thinking for us. The way that we make our institutions, our country, our party better is by asking tough questions.”

Scholten said she joined the call to send a message to the Jewish community that “we are standing strong with you” and that it has “never, ever been more important to stand up and push back against antisemitism that has been given far, far too much of a platform in American politics.”

She said she’s “proud to stand as a friend and ally of our Jewish community” and in support of Israel, recounting her first trip to Israel as a freshman member of Congress and the “kinship” she felt with young women in the IDF.

“It was an experience that has seen me through some really tumultuous times between our two governments,” she said. “We have felt the strain of the U.S.-Israel relationship come under intense scrutiny and the leaders of both of our nations, Trump and Netanyahu, come under the absolute scrutiny that they they deserve, and then some to remember that there are people in these countries that are fighting for a better tomorrow, fighting for the better version of these democracies that we want them to see.”

She said she was stunned by the “retribution” she faced for standing with Israel’s right to defend itself after Oct. 7, 2023, including death threats, “wanted” posters in her neighborhood and bloodied, fake body parts being left on her doorstep.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is no way in a democracy to convince people of the rightness of your position, to try to instill terror and fear in them, in their children,’ and it’s telling, if you can’t convince someone about the morality of your position, the rightness of your position through through dialogue, to try and do so through fear is indicative of the weakness of a position,” she said. “[U]sing terror, intimidation, fear tactics have no place in an American democracy.”