Abdul El-Sayed’s attack on Usha Vance is backfiring across Michigan.
The Democratic Senate hopeful, who trails Republican Mike Rogers by less than a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average, faces mounting pressure from state GOP leaders and Indian-American voters after a pair of crude remarks about the second lady surfaced. El-Sayed, whose parents are Egyptian immigrants, posted to X last week: “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no …”
The unprovoked post targeted JD Vance’s late father James Lee Vance, known as “Pawpaw,” a central figure in the vice president’s autobiography “Hillbilly Elegy.” Michigan state GOP chair Sunny Reddy immediately condemned the attack. “We may have differences. We attack each other. But going to the family and the kids is a disaster,” he fumed. “They are not the one running.” Reddy predicted the swipe would cost El-Sayed support among middle-aged women, Indian-Americans, and other ethnic groups in a state where female voter participation ranks third nationally at 69 percent, roughly ten points above the national average.
Usha Vance herself brushed off the insult during an interview last week. She said she “kind of laughed” when she heard it. Then she turned the moment against her attacker by describing how “incredibly loving” JD Vance’s children were to her, and how the late Pawpaw would have treated her the same way.
The X post was not El-Sayed’s first jab at the second lady. During an April appearance on “The Allen Analysis Show” podcast, he delivered an even cruder line that also brought up her pregnancy. “What do you think is going through Usha’s head when [JD Vance] talks? She’s like, ‘Damn, I have to sleep with him,'” he said. “I guess she’s pregnant so something is happening.” Reddy slammed El-Sayed for dragging Usha’s pregnancy into his attacks and said the state party is already working to put both comments into an ad. The state party and Indian-American leaders demanded Friday that El-Sayed apologize.
A GOP insider who spoke to The Post accused El-Sayed of victimizing women to appear tough. “I think Abdul has a Napoleon complex and he victimizes women to look tough instead of the actual men he claims to have a problem with,” the insider said. Reddy added his own forecast about the coming fallout: “For sure” JD Vance is going to come out swinging when he flies to Michigan Monday to campaign in the state’s 10th Congressional District near Detroit. “He’s going to see more reaction from the community,” Reddy said.
The controversy compounds existing headaches for El-Sayed’s campaign. He has been trying to insulate himself against critics from within his own party demanding he end his association with Hasan Piker, who is accused of antisemitism and said “America deserved 9/11.” El-Sayed appeared Thursday in Ann Arbor with Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), where Dingell tried to shut down questions about Piker. “Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” she told a crowd of supporters. “It’s not what November is about.”
Former Bill Clinton advisor James Carville rejected that approach on his “Politics War Room” podcast. “I find this guy [El-Sayed] to be really, really troubling. I think he’d do himself some good if he made very clear the specific things that Hasan Piker said that he disagrees with, because I gotta tell you, they make me really, really uncomfortable,” Carville said. JD Vance himself invoked his Pawpaw during a trip to Ohio last Friday, accusing El-Sayed of claiming that if you criticize Sharia law “you’re a white supremacist.” The vice president has not yet directly addressed the swipe at his wife.
JD Vance is scheduled to campaign in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District near Detroit on Monday.