El-Sayed’s reputation is that of a know-it-all who is happy to scorch anyone who opposes him. “Abdul isn’t short on confidence, and I know that can make people nervous if it comes across as arrogance,” the Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow, who suspended a campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Senate, told me. “But if Abdul can convince people he’s listening to them and fighting for them, and not just asking them to fight for him, he can win this thing.” Jukaku, his wife, described him as a counterpuncher. “If you are respectful, he will be so respectful. If you are kind and warm, he will be so kind and warm. He will mirror it with more,” she told me. And, “if you’re going to be arrogant to him, he’s gonna be more.” El-Sayed gave me a similar account of his persona: “Bad-faith questions get bad-faith answers,” he said, after a dustup in Bay City with Fox News.
After his swing through the Upper Peninsula, El-Sayed had headed south, to the thumb of Michigan’s mitten. In Caro, after four long days on the bus, and with multiple stops per day, he bounded onstage, delivering his stump speech like a standup routine. “Donald Trump and J. D. Vance can’t seem to keep my name out of their mouth,” he’d said. “However they want to say it, we’re going to make sure they say it with the word ‘Senator’ in front in November.” El-Sayed invoked Bill Clinton, who’d urged him to run for public office after hearing him speak at his college graduation, at the University of Michigan, in 2007. He mentioned Barack Obama, too. The two had a lot in common, El-Sayed said. Not height. “He’s tall and skinny, and I’m”—he paused—“five-eight.” The crowd broke into warm, if expectant, laughter.
When the Q. & A. began, a twentysomething white man wearing a gray T-shirt with a rainbow sticker on it raised his hand. When called on, the man, who said his name was Tommy, asked El-Sayed, “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?” Claims that El-Sayed supports the Muslim Brotherhood have dogged his campaign, based on social-media posts that his half sister made in 2012, and a letter that he’d signed that year in support of Mohamed Morsi, then the President of Egypt and a former leader of the group. El-Sayed seemed prepared to escalate—“What are you implying?” he asked—but, as Tommy kept drilling the “simple” question, El-Sayed switched tacks. “Sure, yeah, but why are you asking the question?” he said to Tommy.
“I haven’t heard you disavow them yet,” Tommy said. “I haven’t heard you disavow them yet,” El-Sayed shot back, and the room burst into laughter. A five-minute civics lesson followed, in which El-Sayed schooled Tommy on the U.S. Constitution and the allegations of dual loyalty levelled against J.F.K., as the first Catholic President. “You assume, Tommy, because I’m Muslim that I would have some allegiance to something that’s not the U.S. Constitution,” El-Sayed said. He asked if Tommy, who’d called himself a Christian, honored the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. Tommy demurred. (The clip soon went viral, and has been viewed fifty million times.)
When their exchange ended, I spotted Tommy making a beeline for the exit and followed him. In the parking lot, I asked if he was satisfied with El-Sayed’s answer. “Abdul said he did disavow the Muslim Brotherhood,” Tommy said. “I’ve seen him skirt around the question a lot, so to get a straight answer was satisfactory.” Did it change his opinion about El-Sayed? “Not so much,” he replied. A few minutes after Tommy left, two black sedans pulled out of the lot, with homemade signs on top that read, in red and blue marker, “MICHIGAN IS TOO AMERICAN FOR ABDUL.” When I texted Tommy later to ask if he was inside one of the sedans, he didn’t reply.
Tommy, it turned out, is Tommy Teepell, a political operative, and a former aide to Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator and avowed Christian nationalist. He is also the son of Timmy Teepell, a G.O.P. strategist, whose firm, Breakthrough L.L.C., received two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from America Next, a nonprofit waging a “war of ideas” on behalf of conservative America. According to F.E.C. filings, the payment was intended to fund opposition to El-Sayed through “influencer marketing.” America Next also appears to be backing stunts like Tommy’s: at the University of Michigan, a leaked chat among college Republicans revealed that a senior who claimed to be working for America Next offered students two hundred dollars to heckle El-Sayed at events.“We are going to coordinate questions to ask him and spread out to increase the chances we’re called on. We’re gonna boo him. We’re gonna show everyone that ABDUL IS NOT WELCOME IN THE SENATE,” the senior’s message read. (America Next did not respond to a request for comment.)
