The Democratic candidate for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat, Abdul El-Sayed, campaigned in the Upper Peninsula on Thursday. And he was joined by a rising star in the Democratic Party, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The two campaigned in Escanaba, Iron Mountain, and Marquette, with the election just 19 days away. El-Sayed and Ocasio-Cortez repeated their calls for free Medicare health care for every American. They also believe that college tuition should be free, and they vowed to reverse President Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce.
El-Sayed said that Trump has gutted the food safety inspection programs with those cuts, which he says led to “sh*t lettuce”, referring to the Mexican lettuce that sickened hundreds of Michigan residents earlier this year.
“A year ago, this administration impulsively fired all of these people,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “And again, it was to make a buck. We go into a grocery store, and every single week, beef is getting recalled. Chicken you can’t eat. Lettuce you can’t eat. Blueberries you can’t eat. Even if you can afford your groceries, you can’t know if you’ll get your kids sick or not when you’re cooking for them.”
El-Sayed voiced his opposition to the Line Five oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac, and the plan to build a new tunnel to house the pipeline.
“There should not be a Line Five,” El-Sayed said. “There are many reasons to shut it down. Having a pipeline in the Straits is insane. We need a new federal water bill that will guarantee 50 free gallons of water for every person in this country.”
El-Sayed went on to call Trump an “a**hole”, and Ocasio-Cortez said bluntly that “Trump does not want women to go to college”.
Both also said that the Upper Peninsula needs more doctors, and Ocasio-Cortez said that right now, people who get student loans to go into medicine are paying “extortion interest rates” that leave them in debt for many years. And they both argued that there needs to be increased taxes on the nation’s wealthiest people.
The “It Shouldn’t Be This Hard” bus tour started with an event inside a barn at the Upper Peninsula State Fairgrounds in Escanaba, where an estimated 400 people turned out.
There was also a small Republican protest of about 35 people, and they claim that El-Sayed is a communist and socialist, who observes Sharia Law, which they say degrades women. The GOP protesters were kept a half block away from the Miracle of Life building where the Democratic rally was held, and there was a large police presence.
The second stop was the Pine Mountain Resort in Iron Mountain, where a standing room only crowd gave the two a warm welcome. There were also a handful of Republican protesters at that venue, claiming that El-Sayed and his family are supporters of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed has repeatedly denied this.
The whirlwind day ended in Marquette, where the largest crowd of the day filled Northern Michigan University’s Vandament Arena.
El-Sayed, in a tight battle with Republican nominee Mike Rogers, says it was important to come to the Upper Peninsula, despite the region voting Republican in nearly all state and federal elections in the past decade.
“This is not my first time to Escanaba,” El-Sayed said. “I came during the primary. We had a real small room that time. But, I go everywhere and talk to everybody. I show up to places and take questions. I just think that democracy is about having a conversation and I want to have that conversation. Yoopers need to know that they have leaders who are thinking about how they can afford gas and their groceries. And whether or not that can have a good job that pays a living wage.”
Rogers, the former Congressman who’s trying to win the Senate seat for a second time, will do a bus tour of his own next Thursday, Oct. 22, with stops in Marquette, Gladstone, and Mackinaw City.
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