There’s zero chance Abdul El-Sayed expects me to cast my ballot for him in this fall’s U.S. Senate election. But at least he could pretend he wants my vote, and those of voters like me.
Instead, his campaign has placed me and my ilk in its version of Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables — voters unworthy of courtship.
Why? Because I’m a White suburbanite who has a fondness for old Ford pickup trucks (and new ones, too).
Last weekend, an El-Sayed staffer spotted the Democrat’s opponent, former Congressman Mike Rogers, tooling down Woodward Avenue during the Dream Cruise in a cherry red, 1940s-vintage Ford F-150.
But instead of the stuff of a classic car lover’s dream, regional political manager Mason Pressler saw a burning cross.
Pressler posted on X: “Mike Rogers’ campaign has the aesthetics of a 1960s white flight suburb and a KKK cross burning.”
It’s the sort of smarmy, elitist quip that has defined El-Sayed’s campaign and helped create the impression that he’s not really a man of the people he hopes to represent in the Senate. Put the post on the same foot-in-the-mouth list along with El-Sayed’s declaration that he hates Mackinac Island, Michigan’s tourism jewel, and his past comments linking football to toxic masculinity and slavery.
El-Sayed and his team spend a lot of time on Michigan’s highways as they campaign across the state. Surely they’ve noticed the prevalence of pickup trucks on the road. More than 18% of the vehicles registered in Michigan are pickups. Equating nearly one-in-five voters with Klansmen is a poor way to start a general election campaign.
Mike Rogers couldn’t have picked a better chariot for cruising Woodward. The F-150 is the nation’s best-selling truck line and the symbol of working America, the choice of plumbers, carpenters, electricians and farmers, as well as of those who haul boats and campers on the weekend.
These aren’t the Ku Klux Klan. They represent a wide swath of Michiganians who take pride in driving a vehicle that was made in Michigan by their friends and neighbors.
And a lot of them live in the suburbs, which is why Pressler’s post was so disdainful. A CNN exit poll estimates 52% to 58% of Michigan voters are suburbanites. El-Sayed can’t win without capturing a majority of that vote.
Rogers gets it. That’s why his messaging focuses on his personal connection to the auto industry. He worked his way through college in an auto plant. So did I, along with many of the kids I went to high school with. It’s a Michigan thing.
In a close race, demonizing broad demographic groups is an unforced error. It reflects one of the major weaknesses of the El-Sayed campaign: immaturity.
El-Sayed’s campaign distanced itself from Pressler’s post after it gained national attention. Just as it disavowed support for the rantings of antisemitic podcaster and El-Sayed campaign trail pal Hasan Piker. The candidate has also had to dodge the racist and anti-America postings of his sister, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, and new revelations that his mother once worked for a global terror group.
That’s getting to be a lot of sidestepping around a lot of unsavory characters in El-Sayed’s orbit. Yet his campaign team thinks it’s the rest of us who are deplorable.
Nolan Finley’s columns appear regularly in The Detroit News.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Finley: El-Sayed campaign creates its own basket of deplorables
Reporting by Nolan Finley, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Nolan Finley, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
