Black voters in Detroit are telling anyone who will listen that the Democratic Party takes their support for granted, and the Michigan Senate primary results suggest the party's progressive wing isn't even trying to change that.
Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive activist who narrowly won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary earlier this month, built his victory on strong turnout in Arab-American enclaves like Dearborn and Hamtramck. In counties where Black residents make up 15 percent or more of the population, his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, beat him by an average of eight points, according to a county-level analysis by The Hill.
That gap matters. El-Sayed's margin of victory was razor-thin, fewer than 15,000 votes out of more than 1.5 million cast, according to the New York Post. He won the nomination without winning Black Detroit, and the voters there know it.
Fox News Digital spoke with roughly a dozen Black voters in Detroit, and the frustration was consistent. These are not Republican converts. They are lifelong Democratic voters who feel their party shows up every two years with promises, then disappears.
Dalia, a Black voter in Detroit, put it bluntly:
"I feel like some of the stuff that they do is just to hush us up and, like... there you go."
Vincent, another Black voter from the Detroit area, pointed to a specific failure, the party's refusal to center the issues that working-class Black communities actually face.
"It's just the way that they don't address our issues, issues that concern actually Black people, especially working-class Black people."
A third voter, who was not named, described a cycle that repeats every election:
"It's always a ploy to get the Black vote, make all these promises, but once that vote is in and stuff like that, then it's operation as normal."
These are not people quoting talking points. They are describing what they have watched happen, election after election, in their own neighborhoods.
Parisia, a Black resident of Detroit, framed the dynamic in terms the party would rather not hear. She said El-Sayed's base is Arab-American, and that gives him permission to skip Black outreach altogether.
"I guess the Arabs resonate with who's running for Senate. So, he don't really have to prioritize us because he has enough people on his side already."
The numbers back her up. El-Sayed dominated in Dearborn and Hamtramck, cities with large Arab-American populations. He struggled in the jurisdictions with the highest percentage of Black voters. Stevens, the establishment-backed candidate, carried those communities, and still lost the statewide count by less than one percentage point.
El-Sayed's campaign overcame more than $60 million in outside spending and opposition from Michigan's top Democrats, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, according to the AP. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who rallied with El-Sayed at Detroit's Mumford High School in May, called the win "the most extraordinary victory that I can think of in modern American politics." The primary was the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in history, with more than $80 million spent.
But the extraordinary victory has an ordinary problem. El-Sayed now faces Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a general election rated a toss-up by Fox News Power Rankings, and he heads into that race with a coalition that underperformed badly among the voters Democrats cannot afford to lose.
El-Sayed's vulnerability with Black voters gets worse when his allies open their mouths. Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer whom S1 describes as a "socialist streamer," made comments during a 2024 livestream about Democratic border policy that landed like a grenade in Black political circles. Reacting to a claim that Black voters care about the border, Piker said:
"I don't give a f*** what Black people care about or what you think Black people care about."
He followed up: "Like, shut the f*** up."
One unnamed Black Detroit-area resident connected Piker directly to El-Sayed's campaign, saying the candidate's willingness to associate with someone who spoke that way told the whole story:
"I guess clearly you don't care about Black voters then because you would never bring... somebody to run with you who is against or not even against but who don't care about Black voters."
That voter is not parsing ideological differences. The voter is making a simple judgment about respect, and finding it absent.
El-Sayed is not the only Michigan Democrat facing this kind of scrutiny. William Lawrence, a candidate aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America who is running against Rep. Tom Barrett, drew fire for comments he made on his "Hegemonicon" podcast in 2024. The Huffington Post first reported those remarks, in which Lawrence described older Black Democratic leaders as an obstacle to progressive politics:
"The extent to which the older generation of Black political leadership are such a pillar, frankly, for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power through their role as this kind of traditionalist, establishmentist (sic) pillar of the Democratic Party, it's a big problem."
Lawrence went further, framing Black political power as a constraint on white progressives: "It really defangs the White left and puts us in impossible positions, really."
The Congressional Black Caucus PAC responded by calling on Lawrence's supporters to "denounce his hateful remarks and withdraw their support." Fox News Digital reached out to Lawrence for comment; no response was reported.
RNC spokesman Hunter Lovell seized on both candidates in a statement:
"It's a fool's errand to assume terrorist-sympathizing and socialist-aligned candidates like Abdul El-Sayed and William Lawrence can unite Democrats in a general election when they've spent their careers disparaging Black Americans."
Lovell's characterizations are his own. But the underlying political problem he identifies, that the progressive wing's coalition leaves Black voters feeling sidelined, is the same complaint the voters themselves are making.
Detroit is not an outlier. The percentage of Black voters who identify with the Democratic Party fell by 10 percentage points between 2020 and 2025, according to the Pew Research Center. National surveys suggest the share of Black Americans who believe Democrats represent their interests is slipping, though specific figures beyond the Pew data were not provided.
El-Sayed's primary performance fits that trend. He ran on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and cutting U.S. aid to Israel, a platform National Review described as squarely progressive. He campaigned alongside prominent socialist figures. He won. And he did it while losing Black-majority counties by wide margins.
Keith, an African American pastor serving in the Detroit area, offered a more charitable view of El-Sayed personally. "He does understand us," Keith said. But even Keith acknowledged that the broader party has a turnout problem it created itself. Democrats, he said, have "discovered that if you're not courted and not talked to or whatever, we don't necessarily turn out for you."
That is a warning, not a compliment. Michigan flipped to Republicans in 2016 and 2024, went Democratic in 2020, and now hosts a toss-up Senate race that could determine control of the chamber. El-Sayed needs Black Detroit to show up in November the way Dearborn showed up in August. The voters Fox News Digital interviewed gave little indication they feel any urgency to do so.
When a party's most loyal voters start describing its outreach as a hustle, the problem is not messaging. The problem is the message.
