A Democratic state lawmaker in Michigan is publicly urging Black voters to reject U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, arguing that the party’s leftward shift has left Black communities taken for granted.
State Rep. Karen Whitsett told Fox News Digital that Democratic Party leaders who assume Black voters will automatically back left-wing candidates are repeating old patterns of control. “It doesn’t change, it’s just different slave owners,” she said.
Whitsett said she does not believe El-Sayed is acting in the best interest of Black Michiganders. She also criticized prominent Black figures who campaign for Democratic turnout, naming Al Sharpton and Detroit pastor Horace Sheffield III, who is serving as a surrogate for El-Sayed’s campaign. She accused them of working to “keep the knee on” Black voters’ necks.
Whitsett said she sees Black voters “waking up” to “the power of our vote,” and leveled some of her sharpest criticism at the far-left flank of her own party.
“You can see the serious divide of the crazy socialist far-left and especially the white women. They are the worst and the most racist that they’re possibly ever could be. They’re, I think, they’re more racist than the KKK,” Whitsett said.
She questioned the motives behind progressive outreach to Black communities, asking, “Are you trying to help the Black community or are you trying to kill it? Are you trying to keep people stupid and ill informed or what? Because right now I can’t tell, right? Is this voter education or are you just trying to make sure you count your slaves on the plantation.”
Whitsett said her opposition to El-Sayed stems from values she holds above party loyalty. “I’m going to stand on Bible first and I’m going to stand on community first,” she said. “I don’t care about moving up within the Democratic Party. I don’t care about making sure my pockets are better.”
She is not seeking reelection and will leave office when her current term ends this year. “I always try to be a voice of reason, and I’m not a go along, get along. So, my whole thing is it has to make sense, and I am definitely family over party. God over party is of the utmost importance,” she said. “So for me, when you point that out to people, it’s just common sense that El-Sayed is not the candidate. There’s just no way. It doesn’t line up. It doesn’t line up Biblically and it doesn’t line up with common sense.”
Whitsett also pressed El-Sayed on his signature policy proposal, Medicare for All. While she said she supports universal medical coverage in principle, she argued El-Sayed has not explained how such a system would function in practice. “This Medicare for All, it’s not for all. It’s not going to change the dynamics of how many doctors there are, or nurses or blood draws or anything else. You’re now going to put the government in your health system, and they’re going to decide for you,” she said.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on Whitsett’s remarks or on the broader criticism of the party’s leftward direction.
The senate candidate has also faced scrutiny over his association with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned for him in Michigan after being invited by El-Sayed. Piker said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11,” has praised Mao Zedong and Communist China, and has said capitalists should be killed in the streets. El-Sayed has declined to condemn Piker, describing him as a “streamer from California” with no relevance to the Michigan race.
Separately, a group of Jewish Democrats in Michigan issued an open letter saying they feel “threatened and alienated by the politics and allies embraced by Abdul El-Sayed, which has included demonization of Jews, equivocation on terrorism, exclusion of Jewish Americans from public life, and expression of implacable hatred of the world’s only Jewish nation.”
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