Former Biden aide backs Republican over progressive El-Sayed in Michigan’s US Senate race
Michael LaRosa, a longtime Democrat, said he is supporting Republican Mike Rogers because of concerns about Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s associations and his apparent unwillingness to confront extremist rhetoric.
Former Biden administration aide Michael LaRosa is backing Republican Mike Rogers over Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, citing concerns about El-Sayed’s association with progressive streamer Hasan Piker.
LaRosa, a lifelong Democrat who served as press secretary to former first lady Jill Biden and as a special assistant to former President Joe Biden, described the decision as a “personal” one during an Aug. 11 interview.
“If you can’t stand up to extremists, and Abdul seems to have a problem doing that, then I don’t think you can stand up for an entire state in the Senate,” LaRosa said. “His associations bother me. His associations with people who celebrate terrorism, who celebrate rape, who celebrate the murder of American citizens.”
“Leadership really comes through when you can confront your friends, and he can’t seem to do that, and that’s pretty scary to me,” he added.
El-Sayed, viewed as the more progressive candidate in the Democratic primary, defeated establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens on Aug. 4, as Zeale News previously reported. He will face Rogers in the Nov. 3 general election for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
LaRosa’s criticism centers largely on El-Sayed’s relationship with Piker, whom the campaign featured at two rallies at Michigan universities in April. Piker, a left-wing commentator with a large following on the streaming platform Twitch, also appeared with El-Sayed at a Detroit party on the eve of the primary and attended his election-night gathering, Zeale News previously reported.
During a 2019 livestream, Piker said “America deserved 9/11” and “totally brought it on ourselves” while criticizing U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He later walked back those remarks and described them as poorly worded criticism of foreign policy.
LaRosa wrote in an Aug. 8 X post that his best friend’s mother died in the Sept. 11 attacks after jumping from the World Trade Center.
“I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her,” LaRosa wrote. “Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”
“The Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan won’t or can’t stand up to the guy who says she ‘deserved’ what she got that morning she showed up for work,” he added.
During an Aug. 9 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” El-Sayed called Piker’s statement “dumb” and said Piker had “disavowed it.”
El-Sayed has nevertheless resisted calls to distance himself from Piker, arguing that appearing alongside someone does not constitute an endorsement of everything that person has said.
“I think we play this game where we do this platform policing, and we pretend like we’re not allowed to talk to certain groups of people because they said something we disagree with,” El-Sayed said in April.
Although El-Sayed has rejected the socialist label, he has received support from prominent figures on the Democratic left, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. His campaign platform calls for Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a ban on corporate money in politics.
LaRosa is not the only longtime Democrat crossing party lines in the race. Julian Epstein, a former chief counsel to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, announced his support for Rogers after El-Sayed won the nomination, arguing in an Aug. 6 New York Post opinion article that the Democratic Party had moved too far left.
“Weak, timid figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are spouting empty clichés — ‘We are a big-tent party’ — while abdicating their moral and political responsibilities,” he wrote. “Democrats aren’t coddling Scandinavian-style socialists; they’re getting into bed with a nihilistic, deconstructionist brand of third-worldism.”
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