With less than two weeks left before Michigan’s Democratic primary, Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed earned support from another US senator on Thursday, with Sen. Tina Smith praising the progressive as “a fighter.”

The endorsement comes as El-Sayed’s opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, rakes in massive support from large super PACs but continues to be massively outraised by him among small donors.

Smith (D-Minn.), who is not seeking reelection in 2026, is nevertheless the fourth member of the chamber to endorse El-Sayed, following Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“I’ve been a United States senator for nearly nine years. And in that time, I have seen there are basically two kinds of senators,” Smith said in a video posted to social media. “There are the ones who go along to get along, that hoard their power, and do everything they can to pacify big money. And then there are the fighters—the ones that are ready to challenge the status quo and fight a system that too often seems like it’s rigged for the rich and the powerful.”

El-Sayed, she said, was one of the latter, crediting his support for Medicare for All, his longtime union membership, and his refusal to accept corporate PAC money.

“Abdul is the best candidate to win Michigan in November,” Smith said, “because he is the one who has the capacity to build the grassroots movement that is going to power Democrats to victory.”

The endorsement comes as new Federal Election Commission filings released Thursday showed El-Sayed’s grassroots fundraising advantage. Between July 1-15, he raised over $2.3 million from individual donors compared to about $921,000 for Stevens during the same period.

The divide is even starker among small donors, where El-Sayed leads Stevens by nearly 9-to-1.

Stevens still has the vast funding advantage thanks to the intervention of powerful outside groups. According to OpenSecrets, the United Democracy Project, the political spending arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has poured nearly $20 million to push her over the line.

Another super PAC, known as A Stronger Michigan, has spent an additional $14 million on ads promoting Stevens. The dark money group that provides nearly all of its funding, Center Forward, has not disclosed its donors and won’t be required to do so until after the August 4 primary.

This wave of outside money has helped Stevens remain competitive against El-Sayed. But her struggles to raise money from voters have raised concerns about her ability to perform in the general election against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, who would be expected to suck up the AIPAC funding currently going to Stevens.

While Smith may not have the star power of other Democrats who have backed El-Sayed, journalist Zaid Jilani argued that her endorsement “is a big one” and “a sign [Democrats] think Abdul has a good chance of winning.”

“AIPAC is bailing [Stevens] out right now,” he wrote. “But I don’t see why they’d spend on her in a general when Mike Rogers is even friendlier to them.”

Journalist Ryan Grim asserted that without AIPAC money for a potential Stevens general election campaign, the Democrats could be forced to pull funding from “Ohio, and Iowa, and Alaska, and so on.”

“El-Sayed, meanwhile, has a built-in fundraising base, because he has regular people supporting him, not a super PAC that doesn’t care about Michigan or the Democratic Party,” said Grim.

Recent polls show El-Sayed with a slightly larger polling lead over Rogers than the one enjoyed by Stevens. Recent polls for next month’s Democratic primary, however, have been more challenging to parse, with some showing El-Sayed far in front and others showing leads for Stevens.

David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University, described the race to OpenSecrets as a “battle for the future of the Democratic Party” between powerful donors and the grassroots.

"The story right now… is that Stevens is dominating with outside funding,” Dulio said. “El-Sayed has momentum, and Stevens has money.”

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