El-Sayed Urges Supporters to Be Respectful After Stevens Boos

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/20/2026) (DETROIT) – Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive U.S. Senate candidate, has apologized to opponent and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham) who was booed at during Sunday's Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) endorsement convention.

El-Sayed's backers attended the Democrats' conference in multitudes, welcoming his speech on stage with a standing ovation and “Abdul” chants. But at the same time, numerous progressives started shouting his name as state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak), another U.S. Senate candidate, was concluding her remarks ahead of him, and then booed at Stevens extensively as she spoke after El-Sayed.

Multiple members had grown restless that afternoon, some arriving around 8 a.m. to stump for their favorite candidates and anticipating voting to start promptly and results announced at 6 p.m. The endorsement convention did not adjourn until around 9:50 p.m.

"That's unkind and unnecessary. Our campaign was not a part of that, and I would not condone that kind of behavior," El-Sayed said. "This movement is not about what we oppose, it's about what we hope for."

As she was greeted by loud booing Sunday, Stevens told the crowd "I love you even when we disagree."

Democrats and political pundits have been reflecting on Sunday's convention. Some viewed it as a progressive takeover of the party and others were concerned about disruptive groups of boo-shouters and pushers that surfaced. On the other hand, some said that Republicans should “see the writing on the walls,” that excitement is on Democrats' side.

Michelle Zukowski-Serlin, a Kalamazoo counselor, kicked off her MDP convention morning handing out Jewish caucus stickers, cheerfully going through two rolls. Although she said her weekend was mostly positive, she did become bothered by Sunday's clusters of booing and a "lack of self-control."

The MDP hosted a record-high endorsement convention with 7,252 delegates participating inside of Detroit's Huntington Place. Unlike the Republicans' endorsement convention, where most participants were precinct delegates elected locally in the 2024 primaries, the MDP allowed participants to vote if they signed up for the party by late March.

Zukowski-Serlin approached the convention's media table around 6:19 p.m., as party members were voting.

Numerous Democrats arrived at Huntington Place around 8 a.m. Sunday, thinking that voting would begin right at 3 p.m. However, it didn't commence until 5:31 p.m., as the party worked through a registration issue and nomination speeches were made for all convention candidates.

Zukowski-Serlin was upset as she approached journalists, claiming that during remarks, two women jumped on their chairs as several participants yelled out things like "fuck you" and "eat my pxxxy" in protest to different convention remarks. She and her husband, Troy, were seated in the very front row.

"They were screaming F-U-C-K Y-O-U at (MDP Chair Curtis HERTEL Jr.) and at (U.S. Senate candidate Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham)) and at the person who was nominating Jordan Acker. They were saying to 'P--X--X--X-Y.' They were saying 'We will not follow the rules,'" Zukowski-Serlin said. "We talked to a lot of people around us, and they were equally disgusted. They could not believe this was allowed, and the thing we thought was the most disgusting was that Abdul or Amir did not say 'this is not OK. Do not boo people . . . treat people with respect.'"

Sitting near the front as well was Michael Jerome Howard II, who's running to replace Congressional candidate Donavan McKinney (D-Detroit) in his 11th state House district, including both the southern Macomb and Detroit sides of 8 Mile road.

He walked away from Sunday's high-intensity convention believing that two of the top three statewide executive officers should not be decided by "just 1.5% of the electorate."

In Michigan, parties decide their picks for Attorney General, Secretary of State, the Michigan Supreme Court and the statewide-elected education boards through conventions.

Howard believes that, like the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, nominations should be selected in a state-run primary election, which he also "desperately" believes should be moved from August to May.

"There was some booing and some extreme obscenities uttered while other people and even Chair Hertel were speaking, and I think it is dishonorable," Howard said. "I might be old school, but I think we need to be focused on unity in light of everything that's going on in our nation."

One of the takeaways of the convention was that progressives came out in droves with visible excitement.

Progressive-backed candidates Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit (who's Jewish), Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and Dearborn-based civil rights attorney Amir Makled won endorsements respectively for Attorney General, Secretary of State and University of Michigan regent.

Attending their first-ever convention was 38-year-old Emerson Wolfe from Grand Rapids, who described themselves as a people's power-builder, a grassroots organizer and socialist. They wore a pink and white keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and solidarity.

Wolfe said they were there specifically to support Makled, who targeted defeated incumbent Regent Acker for cracking down on student protesters who demonstrated against U of M's endowment connections to Israel amid the war in the Middle East.

"I think the only people who are raising hell are the people who are fearing their power is being taken out from under them," Wolfe said.

Wolfe described Makled representing one of their personal friends who was "unjustly arrested for anti-war activism."

They were also upset about the April 16 article in The Guardian, which described 2020 and 2021 Slack messages from Acker speaking sexually about a U of M student and unnamed Democratic strategist.

Some of the comments featured him calling the woman "an absolute freak in bed" and "missionary doesn't do it for her. Like at all." Acker's attorney told the press that the supposed messages were highly suspicious, displaying "obvious evidence of fabrication."

"Our elected officials shouldn't be commenting on the sexualized bodies of young women, and therefore I'm here to support Amir Makled," Wolfe said.

Wolfe described their community as not institutional or traditional Democrats, "disillusioned" with the party. For folks 40 and under, Wolfe said they are concerned about "genocide against Palestinians" and war in Iran.

Additionally, Wolfe was worried about healthcare and wages.

"So many of us are having to choose between going to the doctor for an infection or WebMD-ing symptoms and seeing what home remedies we can use, and we're dying from it," Wolfe said. "One of my first boyfriends was actually, I would say, murdered by the healthcare system because he was a severe asthmatic, and he died because he couldn't get access to his inhalers."

When asked where non-institutional Democrats go if their preferred candidates aren't the nominees, Wolfe said, "there will always be a candidate I will vote for outside of the two parties." For example, they didn't vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November 2024, going the third-party route.

Wolfe said if third-party voters had cast ballots for Harris, she still would have lost to President Donald Trump because the Democratic Party's failure to speak to the base – instead seeing them as courting moderate Republicans – had led to low turnout.

Another attendant was Kaarli Makela, a 71-year-old Detroit native whose mother was very involved in Democratic politics. Growing up in their home not far from the Fisher Building, Makela said whenever her mother started playing jazz in the evening, she knew "all the Democrats are getting together."

Makela said the convention better represented those who have entered the political conversation since her mother's era.

"It's all about evolution, and the other side doesn't accept evolution," Makela said. "I think that everybody that's doing the right thing are the power players, whoever they are, and anybody that's taken money from the big corporations, these rich people or whatever, get them out."

The race between Acker and Makled – who also faces concerns for being the subject of 911 call reports which circulated on social media from December 2020 and May 2022 – was seen as embodying the MDP's present-day divide over the war in the Middle East.

In early April, The Detroit News reported that Makled had retweeted June and July 2025 X posts praising members of Hezbollah, the federally designated terrorist group. Makled won Sunday alongside incumbent Regent Paul Brown, who tried making the case that antisemitism existed on U of M's campus and was particularly targeted at Acker, the Jewish lawyer from Southfield.

"I had protesters come to my house in the middle of the night, and that was scary for my wife and kids, but nothing of what Jordan had to experience, and there's one difference between Jordan and I, and that is Jordan is Jewish and I am not," Brown said to the MDP's Jewish caucus. "I have the utmost confidence in his morals and his ethics and his work ethic."

Suzanne Perkens, a 58-year-old studying the effects of child abuse in Ann Arbor, suggested Acker should consider resigning over any sexual comments made about students in a group chat.

As for who she thinks is dominating Democratic politics currently, Perkens said that women are who get out the votes, which is particularly true of Black women. She added that issues around the Middle East are definitely going to be on everybody's mind when voting in statewide races.

As for the U.S. Senate race, Perkens thinks state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak) is probably going to win. She additionally was in attendance Sunday to support Savit, a personal friend.

"Affordability and just inequality – the amount of money that some people have versus the difficulty that other people have paying their bills," she said about what could be uniting issues for Democrats. "I think that's an issue that people really care about in terms of making sure millionaires and billionaires pay money, and so I think that's got people fired up."