As Maine Democrats pick up the pieces of Graham Platner’s failed Senate campaign and quickly try to find a replacement for the scandal-tarred candidate on the ballot, moderate Democrats in Michigan, where a primary is fast approaching, are in a race against time to prevent another far-left Senate candidate from capturing a valuable nomination.  

The final three weeks of the Michigan primary will be 2026’s most consequential test yet for the power the party establishment still holds, particularly in a pivotal swing state. After socialist candidates scored a number of surprise victories in heavily blue districts in New York City, Philadelphia and Denver, party leaders are fighting with renewed vigor to rally behind Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the primary against her left-wing challenger, Abdul El-Sayed.

Retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) endorsed Stevens on Monday, a pivot from his announcement in May that he planned to stay out of the race, joining Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who had already backed the congresswoman. The party’s left flank — including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) — is backing El-Sayed.

“The change of heart is we just know that we have to hold Michigan,” Peters said on “Morning Joe” on Tuesday of his decision to endorse, with Stevens sitting beside him. “She’s an outstanding candidate and I certainly hope that folks get behind her around the country and understand that she’s the right person to be the next senator from the state of Michigan.” 

There are fresh signs that the late push for Stevens from Democratic leaders — along with millions in ad spending from pro-Stevens outside groups — has given the congresswoman momentum in the closing stretch of the race. A new poll commissioned by the Detroit News found Stevens pulling ahead of El-Sayed by seven points, 48-41%, after she trailed in most public polls this year. 

The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, is spending big to attack him, dropping nearly $15 million in the race so far. A new 30-second ad attacks El-Sayed as sexist, referencing criticisms he’s made against former First Lady Michelle Obama and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.  A mailer sent to Michigan voters criticized El-Sayed’s response to the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield in March. El-Sayed condemned the attack but said that “hurt people hurt people,” referring to the assailant having lost his brother — a Hezbollah commander — in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. 

“We are going to continue educating Michigan voters on El-Sayed’s track record of making disparaging and sexist comments about women,” Patrick Dorton, a UDP spokesperson, told JI on Tuesday. 

Platner’s collapse in Maine has, for some Democrats, raised questions about the electability of far-left candidates in must-win Senate battlegrounds for the Democratic Party. 

The centrist Democratic think tank Third Way published a memo on Tuesday underscoring that Democrats could lose other winnable races if they continue taking the advice of ideologically driven left-wing consultants who advised Platner. (Fight Agency, the political ad firm that was used by Platner and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is also consulting for El-Sayed’s campaign.)

El-Sayed has continued to play to his base, doubling down on radical rhetoric in interviews at a time when Democrats are concerned about holding onto the swing seat in November. He called Israel a “rogue state” in a recent CNN interview and said that Democrats who support Israel only do so because of money. As his rhetoric has become more extreme, and the race tightens between the two candidates, Jewish Democratic groups are planning to amp up their campaigning for Stevens ahead of the Aug. 4 primary. 

“It is now a direct, high-stakes two-way race between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed,” the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus wrote in a recent email to members. The Jewish Caucus is hosting a canvassing event on behalf of Stevens in Farmington, a heavily Jewish suburb of Detroit, this weekend. 

“With early and absentee voting already underway, to ensure Haley wins on Aug. 4, we need to leverage our deep community roots, personal relationships, and trusted voices,” Jewish Caucus Chair Decky Alexander told Jewish Insider on Tuesday.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, a national organization, is hosting a virtual phone bank for Stevens this week. The group had previously issued a joint endorsement of Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who withdrew from the race earlier this month, but is now planning a five-figure digital ad buy in support of Stevens’ campaign. 

“JDCA is focused on mobilizing Jewish voters across Michigan in support of Haley Stevens,” JDCA CEO Halie Soifer told JI on Tuesday. “Haley has always stood with the Jewish community, and we’re proud to support her in this critically important election. We also believe she has the best chance of beating Mike Rogers in November, and we’re committed to keeping Michigan blue.”

The Stevens campaign expects a close race but views McMorrow’s decision to drop out as a boon for Stevens. McMorrow did not endorse either candidate. A source working with the Stevens campaign, who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the congresswoman, said the campaign is particularly focused on winning over Black voters, as well as older and non-college-educated voters, many of whom remain undecided. (The Detroit News poll showed Stevens with a substantial advantage with Black voters, leading El-Sayed 67-21%.)

The Michigan Jewish community, which is centered in Stevens’ congressional district, is also a part of the campaign’s get out the vote plan.

“I think that Haley wants all Michiganders to vote, but obviously has a very special connection with the Jewish community, especially in her district in Oakland County,” said the campaign source. 

El-Sayed routinely tars Stevens for receiving the backing of AIPAC. She has not said much during the primary about her ties to the group, instead highlighting her support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which she described as “the difference between my opponent and myself on this issue” in a debate last week. El-Sayed has said he struggles with the question of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state. 

This week, El-Sayed announced a major fundraising haul from the second quarter of the year: $4.5 million, up from $2.3 million he raised in the first quarter. A spokesperson for Stevens declined to share her latest fundraising totals, which legally must be reported by Wednesday. She took in $1.9 million in the first three months of the year. 

Maine Gov. Janet Mills said on Thursday that she was suspending her primary campaign to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), clearing the path for her Democratic primary rival, Graham Platner, to secure the party’s nomination.

“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” she said in a statement.

Her sudden exit, with just over a month until the June primary, marks a stunning development in the closely watched race that Democratic leadership has regarded as one of its best pick-up opportunities this cycle as the party seeks to reclaim the majority in the upper chamber. 

Mills, a moderate two-term governor who had been favored by the Democratic establishment, struggled to gain traction in the race against Platner, a far-left political newcomer who had continued to maintain a commanding polling and fundraising lead, even as he has faced ongoing scrutiny for his extensive record of incendiary statements and personal controversies.

Since he entered the primary last year, Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and former Marine, has weathered criticism over a now-covered Nazi tattoo whose imagery he claims not to have recognized until recently as well as a series of past online comments in which he praised Hamas’ tactics during a violent raid into Israel in 2014, among other posts that have been surfaced amid his campaign. 

He has otherwise drawn blowback for boosting extremists — telling a podcast host who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, for instance, that he was a “longtime fan” of his show.  

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair, called Mills “a formidable governor who has broken barriers and never hesitates to stand up to bullies to fight for Maine,” adding that they “will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat” Collins, viewed as among the most vulnerable Senate Republicans up for reelection.

The statement, hardly a ringing endorsement of the now-presumptive nominee in a crucial battleground state, underscored the uncomfortable nature of their relationship with Platner, who has been a vocal critic of the Democratic establishment and its support for Israel.

Platner, casting himself as a populist, had won an early endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that helped him rise to prominence at the beginning of his campaign, and has continued to claim backing from a handful of other national progressive leaders such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA).

Nirav Shah, a Democrat running for governor of Maine, also announced he was endorsing Platner on Thursday after Mills had bowed out of the primary.  

Mills, whose comments did not mention Platner, has not indicated if she will back her now-former rival.

In a statement, Platner voiced gratitude for Mills’ “service to Maine” and said he looked “forward to working with her between now and November” to defeat Collins.  

Republicans, for their part, have seemed particularly eager to go up against Platner, whose vulnerabilities the Senate GOP campaign arm had been aggressively highlighting even before Mills ended her campaign.

“Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats just coronated a phony who is too extreme for Maine,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, said in a statement on Thursday. “Susan Collins has always put in the work for her constituents and delivered. Washington Democrats always fall short in Maine and will again, because they just nominated a dishonest radical.”

Collins, in comments to a CNN reporter on Thursday, praised Mills but would not weigh in on Platner as she prepares for what is now expected to be a bitterly contested general election.    

The Senate campaign of Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) is calling on Minnesota’s Democratic Party to launch a formal investigation into a series of alleged instances of antisemitic activity among delegates in the lead-up to its state convention being held at the end of next month.

In a letter sent last week to Richard Carlbom, chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Craig’s campaign wrote that one of its staffers had received a threatening anonymous phone call last month from a person “believed to be a delegate” who used an ethnic slur for Jews and said that the congresswoman “takes dirty Jewish money.”

The letter, shared exclusively with Jewish Insider, also cited a local DFL organizing convention in late March at which an unnamed delegate allegedly said that “we should nuke” Israel, among other examples of extremist violent rhetoric. 

Mara Kunin, Craig’s campaign manager, said in the letter to state party leadership that such “incidents should be investigated promptly and that the DFL should take appropriate action and make clear that antisemitism in addition to other forms of hate will not be tolerated in our party.”

“Hate in all forms must be called out, whether it comes from the right or the left,” Kunin wrote. “We hope this serves as a necessary wake-up call for the DFL. We urge prompt and decisive action — action that allows the DFL to live up to our shared goal of building a big-tent party rooted in the principles of respect, dignity and integrity.”

In a statement shared with JI, Carlbom said that the DFL “condemns antisemitism and harassment in all forms without reservation,” and called the incidents raised by Craig’s team “disgusting and wrong, full stop.”

“We have responded directly to the Craig campaign, connected them to our Code of Conduct Committee, and encouraged those affected to file a police report,” he continued. “We will enforce our Code of Conduct and hold every leader and member to the standard our party demands. That work is happening and it won’t stop.”

The letter comes as Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats have voiced concerns about growing hostility toward Israel that has overlapped with a creeping extremism among some high-profile party influencers who have gained prominence espousing antisemitic rhetoric.

In Michigan’s Senate race, for example, Hasan Piker, an antisemitic streamer who has praised Hamas, has recently emerged as a flash point in a broader debate about whether Democratic candidates should appear with him publicly or join his show.

The issues raised by Craig’s campaign also dovetail with an uptick in anti-Israel sentiment during state and national party conventions around the country. Last week, at the Democratic National Committee’s meeting in New Orleans, party activists voted down one controversial resolution that criticized AIPAC’s “undue influence” in primary elections, while kicking two other measures to a Middle East working group.

Similar efforts are now poised for consideration at several state conventions in the coming months, including a series of new resolutions introduced by Democratic activists in Texas seeking to formally condemn Israel for alleged genocide while labeling pro-Israel political activity as “foreign interference in U.S. elections.”

In Minnesota, where Craig is facing off against Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for the DFL endorsement, the party’s convention in late May is expected to feature some divisive resolutions related to Israel as in past years, according to local Jewish community activists familiar with the ongoing preparations.

During a recent local convention among several that take place before the statewide meeting, for instance, one new resolution advocated for removing language from the DFL’s official platform recognizing “Israel’s right to exist within secure borders, Palestinian rights to self-determination, and continued peace efforts in the Middle East.”

“Israel with the full support & shielding of the U.S. Government has conducted an intensification of genocide & ethnic cleansing in the past 2+ years, murdering more than 75,000 Palestinians since October 2023,” the resolution states. “The DFL party cannot claim any sort of morality while providing support to a state that’s founded on and committed to ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide. The two-state solution has long been an illusion, and so-called ‘peace’ without justice is not worth supporting.”

The DFL did not return a request for confirmation about the status of the resolution and if it would be taken up at the state convention in its current form.

Manny Houle, a Democratic pro-Israel strategist based in Minnesota, said it was “highly unlikely this divisive verbiage makes it as is to the state ballot at the end of May,” noting “there is an entire other round of editing when it comes to resolutions and most of the greatly divisive platforms are not getting the statewide support needed to make the ballot.”

“However, some sort of floor petition resolution is likely,” he told JI. “In addition there likely will be a resolution, if not multiple, about Middle East peace.”

One local Jewish activist now involved in efforts to oppose such resolutions, speaking on condition of anonymity to address a sensitive matter, predicted “other problematic” measures will also arise at the state convention. “We have been strategizing about how to handle any anticipated nastiness at the state convention this year, likely to arise through ‘debate’ over these resolutions,” the activist told JI, pointing to a DFL Jewish community outreach organization that is seeking to become an official party caucus. 

In the August Senate primary to be held three months after the convention, Craig, a moderate favored by the pro-Israel community, has claimed backing from the party’s establishment wing, while Flanagan is largely coralling progressive support in what is regarded as a proxy fight between opposing Democratic factions.

While AIPAC has not made an endorsement in the race, Craig’s past support from the advocacy group have drawn criticism from activists working to force the party leftward on Israel.

Antoine Givens, a Craig spokesperson, said her team “will continue to make clear that antisemitism and all forms of hate cannot be tolerated in our party,” while referring to the recent alleged incidents of antisemitic behavior among party members.

“Violence and the threat of violence have no place in our politics and no place in the DFL,” he told JI in a statement. “These actions are unacceptable, and it’s on all of us to demand better.”