This Comes After Invoking Usha Vance in Feud With Vice President
Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee faces accusations of racism and sexism after a cryptic social-media response to JD Vance.
By Staff Writer | August 23, 2026
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed came under sharp criticism Sunday. This came after invoking second lady Usha Vance in an escalating political feud with Vice President JD Vance.
The controversy began after Vance attacked El-Sayed during an appearance at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant in Ohio. The vice president cited remarks El-Sayed delivered at a 2022 Council on American-Islamic Relations event, where the Democrat criticized opposition to Islamic law. He also criticized an Oklahoma ballot measure that sought to prohibit courts from considering Sharia law.
Are They Disconnected?
Vance argued that El-Sayed’s position represented a Democratic Party increasingly disconnected from traditional working-class voters.
“I’d love to go back in time and tell my papaw that there is a man who claims to stand for working people. Who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a white supremacist,” Vance said. “That’s not my grandpa’s Democratic Party, my friend.”
El-Sayed responded Saturday on X with a post that quickly generated controversy.
“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” El-Sayed wrote.
The post did not explain what El-Sayed meant. Critics interpreted it as suggesting that Vance’s Appalachian grandfather would not have accepted Usha Vance. She is the daughter of Indian immigrants. That interpretation prompted Republican politicians, conservative commentators and others online to accuse El-Sayed of stereotyping white Midwestern and Appalachian families as racist.
“Why does Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed just assume that all White midwestern grandparents are racist?” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, wrote in response.
Former Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon broadened the criticism. Accusing El-Sayed of repeatedly dragging women who are not candidates into political disputes. Other critics described the comment as racist, sexist or unnecessarily personal.
El-Sayed’s campaign had not publicly explained the post as of Sunday afternoon and did not respond to a request for comment reported by Fox News. Representatives for the vice president and Usha Vance also had not issued an immediate response.
Post revives earlier controversy
The latest dispute is not the first time El-Sayed has faced criticism for bringing Vance’s family into his attacks on the vice president.
During an April podcast appearance, El-Sayed questioned how Usha Vance viewed her husband’s politics and made personal remarks about their marriage. He also referred to the couple’s children as “Brown kids” while accusing the vice president of promoting a political agenda that treats immigrants and minorities as less American.
El-Sayed subsequently said those comments were intended to defend the Vance children and other children of immigrants. He argued that Vance’s family background was at odds with the vice president’s political rhetoric, although he continued to condemn Vance in intensely personal terms.
In a recent interview, El-Sayed defended his willingness to highlight what he sees as that contradiction.
“It’s hypocritical to believe that America is only big enough for one group of people. If that does not include your own family,” he told New York magazine.
The dispute illustrates the difficulty of separating that political argument from attacks involving a candidate’s spouse and children. El-Sayed’s supporters may view his post as an effort to expose hypocrisy in Vance’s position on race and immigration. Critics contend that its ambiguity invited an unflattering racial assumption about Vance’s late grandfather while placing his wife at the center of a fight in which she had not participated.
Sharia dispute adds another layer
The exchange also reflects a broader Republican effort to portray El-Sayed, a Muslim and the son of Egyptian immigrants, as outside the political mainstream.
Although Vance characterized the Democrat’s comments as support for imposing Sharia law, the original controversy concerned Oklahoma’s 2010 constitutional amendment barring state courts from considering Sharia or international law. El-Sayed argued that the measure reflected a broader history of racial and religious exclusion. His critics maintain that he went too far by associating resistance to Sharia with white supremacy.
That distinction is likely to become an important feature of the Michigan campaign. Republicans are emphasizing El-Sayed’s most provocative statements. While the Democrat argues that his faith, name and family are being used to depict him as foreign or dangerous.
El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic nomination earlier this month and will face Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in November. The race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is expected to play a major role in determining control of the Senate.
If elected, El-Sayed could become the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate. Republicans have labeled him an extremist. However, El-Sayed has sought to frame his campaign around health care, grocery prices, corporate power and economic inequality. Michigan’s recent electoral history—supporting Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 but Joe Biden in 2020—makes the state one of the country’s most closely watched battlegrounds.
The latest uproar threatens to divert attention from those policy issues and reinforce Republican attempts to define El-Sayed through his online rhetoric. It also underscores the increasingly personal nature of the campaign. Arguments about religion, race and American identity are becoming as prominent as disputes over the economy or health care.
For El-Sayed, the political question is no longer simply what he intended. It is whether Michigan voters will view the post as a pointed criticism of Vance’s politics. Or as an unnecessary attack on a candidate’s family.
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