Michigan and Missouri Put the Progressive Surge to the Test
On August 4, both parties will hold primaries in five states: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington. While there are many contests of great local interest, the national political focus will be on the Democratic primaries in Michigan and Missouri. These are the latest tests for the national progressive surge that emerged in earlier 2026 primaries (especially in New York and Colorado). In Michigan, we will get the first of several opportunities to see if a shift to the left can succeed in competitive as well as deep-blue territory. And in Missouri, a comeback attempt by a previously defeated Squad member will be a barometer for intraparty change. Without question, the marquee August 4 primary is the Democratic U.S. Senate contest in Michigan to fill the seat current occupied by Democrat Gary Peters, who is retiring. Holding this seat is considered essential to Democratic prospects of flipping Senate control (or at least as essential as the endlessly scrutinized Senate battle in Maine). Republicans are set with former congressman Mike Rogers, who lost a close Senate race to Elissa Slotkin, even as Trump carried the state in 2024. But Democrats have one of those intensely polarized one-on-one contests loved by fans of “struggles for the soul of the party,” with former state health director Abdul El-Sayed facing (and favored over) Congresswoman Haley Stevens. El-Sayed is not a member of Democratic Socialists of America, but he is being strongly backed by that controversial organization, which will add this contest to its list of claimed triumphs if he wins. He also has maximum support from progressive luminaries Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren. (The latter originally backed a third candidate, Mallory McMorrow, but her once-promising bid to offer a compromise choice for progressives and centrists didn’t gain much traction, and she suspended her campaign in July.) While El-Sayed has embraced the usual array of standard-brand progressive policy positions (especially the highly symbolic Medicare For All), he’s unusual in that he’s placed extraordinary emphasis on his opposition to any U.S. aid to Israel and on Stevens’s unprecedented financial backing from AIPAC. He recently referred to Stevens as “the least capable candidate in America,” who had to be propped up by AIPAC money. He is also a Muslim running in a state with a sizable Muslim population and has embraced support from socialist influencer Hasan Piker, who has built a large Gen-Z following in part via uncompromising anti-Zionist positioning. The polarized nature of this primary has been intensified by the consolidation of “Democratic establishment” support behind Stevens, particularly after McMorrow dropped out. Peters has now endorsed her, as has lame-duck governor Gretchen Whitmer (who trounced El-Sayed in his only previous run for office, the 2018 gubernatorial primary), and longtime former U.S. senator Debbie Stabenow. She has also placed a premium on attracting both national and local Black elected official support, perhaps exploiting old tensions between Michigan’s Black and Arab communities. But it may have all been for naught. While it was widely anticipated that Stevens would benefit most from McMorrow’s departure from the race, El-Sayed is clearly ahead, as the two most recent statewide public polls show: Emerson indicates a 15-point El-Sayed lead, at 54 percent to 39 percent; Mitchell Research gives him a 14-point lead (52 percent to 38 percent). Just as important, Stevens’s crucial electability argument isn’t really supported by the polls with El-Sayed actually running more strongly against Rogers in most surveys. Assuming El-Sayed wins, healing wounds from the primary will not be easy; his personally dismissive comments about Stevens have been met with equally personal nastiness from her. She wrote on X: Abdul, we were both on the ballot in 2018. I was capable of winning my competitive primary and general election. You lost. You lost by over twenty points to Gretchen Whitmer and you will lose to Mike Rogers by talking like this. Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans. It also may not help Democratic unity if progressives go overboard in claiming world-historical significance for an El-Sayed win. But it will be tempting, given Stevens’s vast financial advantage and establishment backing. There’s another potentially key Democratic factional test in a highly competitive U.S. House district in the Lansing area (both Trump and Slotkin won it by a single point in 2024) currently represented by freshman GOP congressman Tom Barrett. In this case, the progressive candidate, Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence, is benefiting from a moderate/establishment camp divided between former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink, as Decision Desk HQ explains: Lawrence has Sen. Bernie Sanders’s endorsement and recently held a campaign event with El-Sayed. Maasdam has the endorsement of moderate Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who held this seat before narrowly defeating Rogers in the state’s 2024 Senate contest. Brink, meanwhile, has support from two former Democratic governors and the state’s largest teachers union. A recent poll for Maasdam’s campaign from Global Strategy Group found Lawrence leading with 38%, followed by Maasdam (27%) and Brink (19%). There’s one more Democratic primary in Michigan national observers may highlight: In a deep-blue Detroit district, Black progressive Donavan McKinney has a good chance to topple incumbent Indian American Shri Thanedar. The contest probably has less to do with ideology than with race (this is a majority-Black district) and Thanedar’s eccentricity, which has made him many Democratic enemies in Washington. Still, if McKinney wins — and particularly if El-Sayed, Lawrence, and McKinney all win — it’s going to be touted as proof the progressive surge is setting the heartland, not just New York, afire. Meanwhile, the Missouri contest drawing national attention is very straightforward. Two years ago, Wesley Bell narrowly unseated Squad (and DSA) member Cori Bush in the heavily Democratic St. Louis–based First Congressional District, in no small part thanks to heavy financial backing from AIPAC’s top campaign committee. Now Bush is back for a rematch, and although AIPAC is again ponying up for Bell, its role in Democratic politics is much more controversial now. So a Bush comeback win would not be terribly surprising. But if it’s part of what would feel like a heartland progressive sweep, it will have at least as much resonance as Bush’s 2024 loss. More on Politics - Anthony Fauci Can Take the Fifth - Trump Is a War Hero (But Only in His Memes) - Did Todd Blanche Actually Kill Trump’s Slush Fund?