BS BULLETIN:
- Michigan Democrats gather for their state convention Saturday without Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish and says she fears harassment from members of her own party.
- “I don’t feel safe going,” Nessel said, warning she could be chased, screamed at, harassed or booed off the stage.
- The extraordinary boycott comes after ugly scenes at the party’s April convention and amid a widening Democratic rupture over Israel following Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary victory.
Michigan Democrats are gathering in Lansing Saturday for their state nominating convention.
One prominent Democrat won’t be there.
The state’s own attorney general.
Dana Nessel, the first Jewish person elected Michigan attorney general, says she doesn’t feel safe attending an official gathering of her own political party.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome,” Nessel said during an antisemitism roundtable last month.
Then she spelled out exactly what she fears.
“I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
That is a remarkable sentence for any state attorney general to utter about a political convention.
It’s considerably more remarkable when she’s talking about her own party.
Nessel has said the threats she receives are “almost exclusively anti-Semitic threats” and complained that Michigan Democratic leaders haven’t adequately addressed harassment within the party. She also revealed that she filed a formal complaint against a party official who she said called her a “neo-Nazi” because of her views.
Saturday’s drama follows a nasty April Democratic convention where pro-Israel Rep. Haley Stevens struggled to speak over boos and chants from anti-Israel activists.
Former Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow later said an attendee hurled an antisemitic slur at her Jewish husband while he was walking with their five-year-old daughter.
“People are traumatized from the previous convention,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin told Fox News Digital. “Many people I talked to, many super progressive people, are really traumatized by the way they were treated.”
Lopatin said Nessel’s absence “just shows how terrible these extremists are that they’re intimidating even the attorney general of our state.”
Nearly 200 rabbis and Jewish leaders went so far as to petition Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Curtis Hertel ahead of Saturday’s convention, demanding protection for Jewish delegates.
“If Jews — including the highest-ranking Jewish state official in Michigan — are intimidated into staying away from your convention, it will not stop there,” they warned.
The Michigan Democratic Party says it is taking the problem seriously.
“We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of hateful conduct,” party spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said, adding that officials have been working to ensure Saturday’s gathering is “safe and secure” for attendees.
All of this comes at an especially awkward moment for Michigan Democrats.
Abdul El-Sayed, a fierce Israel critic who has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, recently defeated Stevens for the Democratic Senate nomination. He has opposed unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel and repeatedly declined to directly answer whether Israel has a right to exist.
El-Sayed insists he stands against antisemitism.
“My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids,” he said after winning the nomination.
But some Jewish Democrats are already looking across the aisle.
Jewish leaders are circulating an open letter encouraging Democrats and independents to support Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, while Lopatin has joined Rogers’ “Dems for Mike” coalition.
“There are many lifelong Democrats who are feeling homeless,” one person involved with the effort told Fox News Digital. “It’s not just a leftward drift but has turned into an anti-Jewish drift as well.”
That’s a brutal warning for Democrats in one of America’s most important battleground states.
But perhaps nothing illustrates their problem quite like Saturday’s empty chair:
Michigan’s Jewish Democratic attorney general believes staying home is safer than attending the Michigan Democratic Party convention.
DBS WIRE SOURCES
- Fox News — Jewish AG’s convention boycott exposes deepening Israel fault line among Michigan Democrats
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency — Jewish Democrats back Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency — Michigan rabbis call for protection of Jewish convention delegates
