The Left has been crazy for a long time. But this is just strange.
And now a crazy Democrat challenged a Republican to a physical competition.
The Michigan Senate race has veered from policy sparring into playground-style trash talk, after Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed challenged 63-year-old Republican rival Mike Rogers to a no-pads game of tackle football — an unusual escalation that appears designed to blunt attacks on El-Sayed’s past comments criticizing football culture as a symbol of “toxic masculinity.”
The 41-year-old El-Sayed, a physician by training who ran an insurgent 2018 gubernatorial campaign before capturing his party’s Senate nomination last week, has increasingly leaned into fitness and sports imagery as he works to shore up support among male voters — a demographic Republicans have made significant inroads with in recent cycles.
An Old Essay Resurfaces, And El-Sayed Fires Back
The feud traces back to a 2021 essay in which El-Sayed wrote that “the toxic masculinity at the heart of America’s most popular sport — and men’s sports culture more generally — is way deeper than a few emails or a Jay-Z turnaround.” Rogers, a former FBI agent and House member, has worked to turn those comments into a liability, telling Fox News: “This guy spent hours hating on what most Michiganders would enjoy in their pastimes, and he should be held to account for that. These are views that he held, that he was pretty strong about, but he knew that he had to delete them all … if people really knew who he was, they wouldn’t vote for him.”
El-Sayed responded Wednesday on X with a direct challenge rather than a policy rebuttal. “Since you’re too afraid to debate me, how about you ‘hold me accountable’ on a football field instead,” he wrote. “Tackle, no pads like we used to play when we were kids. I’d be happy to show you [how] much I love football.”
Rogers’ Campaign Skips The Field, Goes For The Jab
Rather than accept or decline on the merits, Rogers’ campaign opted to needle El-Sayed over his height. “That’s an awfully tall threat coming from down there,” the Mike Rogers War Room account posted on X, while the campaign’s official account fired off a GIF of Will Ferrell’s “he’s an angry elf” line from “Elf.” El-Sayed was listed at 5-foot-9 during his University of Michigan lacrosse days, though an older news clipping put him at 5-foot-8.
For his part, El-Sayed has pushed back on the narrative that he dislikes football, noting he played growing up and captained his high school team, once calling the sport his “lifeline.” He’s also drawn criticism on unrelated fronts, including for past comments about Israel’s war against Hamas that he’s characterized as “genocide,” and for a wellness sideline that critics have mocked over products like “moon juice brain dust.”
A Preview Of A Bruising General Election
The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment. The exchange offers an early glimpse of a general election likely to feature sharp personal contrasts as much as policy disagreements, with El-Sayed working to defend a “Medicare for All” platform and a call to abolish ICE against a Republican opponent eager to cast him as out of step with a state President Trump narrowly carried in 2024.
