A lawmaker who took a #MeToo stand, an Indian immigrant and an heir to Bernie Sanders’ political revolution vie for nomination

Gretchen Whitmer is a former state senate leader who had a powerful #MeToo moment years before the movement took hold. In 2013, in an effort to stop Republicans from passing legislation that would restrict insurance companies from covering abortions, Whitmer revealed that she had been sexually assaulted as a college student. They passed it anyway.

Now Whitmer is the frontrunner to be the Democratic party’s gubernatorial nominee with strong support from women’s groups, environmental groups and organized labor.

But on Sunday, Bernie Sanders will come to Michigan to campaign for her opponent. The Vermont senator will rally alongside Abdul El-Sayed, a 33-year-old doctor and advocate of a single-payer health care system.

On 7 August, Michigan Democrats will vote in a fiercely fought primary race that has become a test of the strength and impact of the progressive left’s political insurgency. But Sanders’ intervention also reflects the new battle lines within Democratic politics, where positions that were once considered progressive are now cast as barely left-of-center.

'The new Obama': will Abdul El-Sayed be America's first Muslim governor? Read more

In the three-way contest for the Democratic nomination, El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants who would be the nation’s first Muslim governor, has positioned himself as a successor to Sanders’ political revolution and a chance for progressives to defy the party’s establishment.



He pointed to the 2016 presidential primary in the state, when Sanders pulled off a stunning victory over Hillary Clinton after polls showed her ahead by 20 percentage points. Sanders’ win, El-Sayed said, proved that winning on a progressive message was “not only possible here – that it happens”.



“We are in a moment right now of a referendum on the future of the Democratic party,” El-Sayed told reporters after an event in Ypsilanti.

Democrats are desperately working to regain their foothold in the rust belt states that helped elect Trump in 2016. With competitive primaries in both parties, Democrats here are divided over which candidate has the best chance of succeeding the Republican governor Rick Snyder, who is term-limited.

Whitmer says her campaign is uniquely positioned to attract voters from the progressive left and the “reasonable right”. El-Sayed has little interest in appealing to Republicans. He says Democrats will win only with a more daring platform that engages young, working class and disaffected voters.

The third candidate is Shri Thanedar, an Indian immigrant and chemical testing entrepreneur who has poured more than $10m of his own fortune into his campaign, blanketing the state with TV ads, billboards and mailers that promote him as the “most progressive” Democrat in the race. This has been challenged by a report that Thanedar contemplated running as a Republican.



And though his campaign has been badly hobbled by revelations about his business dealings and allegations that he left beagles and monkeys stranded in a shuttered testing facility, polling has consistently put him in second place.

An internal survey released by El-Sayed’s campaign this week showed him in second place, trailing Whitmer by fewer than six points. This jump, the campaign says, is a sign that the race is shifting fast – and in his favor.

El-Sayed, who formerly served as health commissioner or Detroit, and Thanedar have tried to paint Whitmer as an “establishment” figure whose reluctance to embrace a single-healthcare system for the state disqualifies her as a progressive.

Whitmer says her record states otherwise.



“I have been on the frontline for Michiganders for a long time and I’ve got, as one of my supporters says, the receipts,” she said in an interview.

She cited her work negotiating Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which currently covers more than 630,000 people in the state, helping to raise the minimum wage and defending women’s reproductive rights. Whitmer says she wants to improve the healthcare law and continue to expand coverage under Medicaid.

“There’s a real impulse to cast this as the 2016 Democratic primary all over again,” said Susan Demas, a democratic strategist in Michigan. “But this race is far more interesting than a 2016 redux.”

‘It is all possible’

Last weekend, El-Sayed campaigned with progressive rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who earlier this summer toppled the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House in a primary race in the Bronx.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigns for the Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed at Wayne State University on 28 July. Photograph: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

They drew a crowd of 1,200 in the traditionally conservative city of Grand Rapids. At Brown Chapel AME church in Ypsilanti which is just outside the college town of Ann Arbor, attendees filled every pew, the overflow room and spilled into the street.

There Ocasio-Cortez told an audience of raucous supporters that their movement was about redrawing the political map to reflect working people and engage voters who typically sit out elections.



“Don’t let them carve us up in blue districts and red districts and where it’s impossible and where it isn’t possible,” she said. “It is all possible.”



After the rally, Nicole Bell, a 31-year-old university student who voted for the first time in 2016 because she was inspired by Sanders’ message, said she felt that once again she had found a candidate she could believe in.



“Nancy Pelosi was wrong. This isn’t happening in just one district,” she said, referring to the House minority leader’s comments after Ocasio-Cortez’s victory. “This is happening all over the country. And it will happen here. We’re not for the establishment in Michigan. We like change.”

Democratic left senses national star in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Read more

Between school and her part-time job, Bell won’t have time to canvass for El-Sayed, but she said she has successfully persuaded a few customers where she works to register to vote.

El-Sayed will need all the help he can get over the next few days as he tries to pull off a Sanders-style upset. His campaign has lagged in polls and fundraising but staffers are hopeful that an 11th-hour push with the Vermont senator will mobilize progressives.

“Abdul needed the senator to get involved about a month beforehand,” said Adrian Hemond, a Democratic political consultant in Michigan. But he said a visible show of support from Sanders may help distinguish El-Sayed from Thanedar as the “true progressive” in the race, which could have an impact.

Whatever the result on Tuesday, Democrats plan to waste no time trying to bridge the divide between the party’s establishment and the insurgent progressives . The day after the primary, state Democratic party will have lunch together in Detroit in a show of unity ahead of November’s general election.

“I don’t think voters have litmus tests,” said Mark Brewer, the former chair of the Michigan Democratic party who supports Whitmer. “Democrats will come together after the primary. We have to. The stakes this year are too high.”