Senior Senator Breaks With Schumer, Endorses Progressive El-Sayed in Michigan Primary

Maryland’s senior senator endorsed progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Aug. 4 Democratic Senate primary, breaking with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is backing Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.). 

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who shared the endorsement first with The Associated Press as early voting opened in Michigan on June 25, is the first senator to back El-Sayed since Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) did so shortly after his campaign launched last year. 

The endorsement landed days after progressive challengers ousted two House Democratic incumbents in New York and following a primary in Maine earlier this month where Schumer had backed Gov. Janet Mills before she suspended her campaign and progressive Graham Platner won the nomination.

El-Sayed tied his campaign to those results and pointed at Senate leadership directly. “It’s not surprising to me that candidates who buck that system win,” he told the AP. “I really hope that folks in D.C., like Chuck Schumer, decide to pay attention, finally.”

Van Hollen told the AP the endorsement was “not about left versus right,” and that it was “clear” El-Sayed is the candidate “who can build a grassroots movement and others are not.” 

“We need fighters in the Senate who want to dismantle a broken status quo that isn’t working for the American people and to take on the big money special interests working to rig our economy and our politics in favor of the billionaires—at the expense of everyone else,” Van Hollen said in his endorsement, adding, “Abdul’s fearless voice is needed in the United States Senate.” 

The endorsement carries added weight for the Democratic primary because of Van Hollen’s standing in the party. He chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2017 to 2019 and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2007 to 2011. He became Maryland’s senior senator when Ben Cardin retired in 2025.

El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health director, praised Van Hollen in a statement thanking him for the endorsement, saying he had “shown what it means to lead with your values, rather than be beholden to corporate interests and foreign lobbies.”

Senators across the board have endorsed varying candidates in the race. Schumer endorsed Stevens, a fourth-term congresswoman from suburban Detroit, last week. Stevens is the more moderate of the leading candidates. 

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, running as an anti-establishment reform candidate, has drawn endorsements from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.)  

El-Sayed has run furthest to the left in the field on positions including Medicare for all and halting all U.S. weapons transfers to Israel. The United Auto Workers endorsed him earlier this month.

A Broad Recalibration

Democratic strategist Alyssa Batchelor-Causey told The Epoch Times on Thursday that the endorsement reflected a broader recalibration among Democratic officeholders.

“I think that a lot of members of Congress are kind of seeing the writing on the wall,” she said. “They want people who are a little bit more bolder, who are a little bit less safer, who are willing to challenge kind of the old playbook.”

Batchelor-Causey said she did not view the trend as the end of the party’s moderate wing, arguing that candidates have to “play to the area in which you live.” She said Democrats’ 2024 losses among Muslim American voters in Michigan, which she attributed to the war in Gaza, makes the state especially receptive to El-Sayed’s foreign policy positions.

The Michigan seat opened with the retirement of Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, which he announced in early 2025. Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) has an uncontested path to the Republican nomination.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.