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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel this week issued a blunt warning to Democratic leadership ahead of the upcoming midterms: Stop minimizing Jewish voters’ concerns, or they’ll walk. Former Hillary Clinton staffer Kaivan Shroff agreed, saying the issue is whether Jewish Democrats will feel like they have to “explain or defend a basic part of their identity to remain in good standing with the party.”
Appearing on the Atlantic’s “David Frum Show,” Nessel accused the Democratic Party of not valuing its Jewish constituents and making them feel less welcome than members of other minority groups.
“I think it’s a fundamental mistake for the Democratic Party to think that you can just push Jewish Democrats out and simply replace them with any other population,” Nessel told Frum on Wednesday’s podcast episode.
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Michigan AG Dana Nessel. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Nessel’s comments were echoed by Shroff, a media commentator and former digital organizer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Shroff told Fox News Digital that Democrats risk losing key Jewish voters as the party grapples with internal divisions over its ideological direction.
“What Nessel is saying should make Democrats nervous because this isn’t really a debate about Netanyahu or even Israeli policy — it’s about whether Jewish Democrats are starting to feel like they have to explain or defend a basic part of their identity to remain in good standing with the party,” Shroff told Fox News Digital. “Ironically, Democrats cannot afford to keep shrinking their political tent in the name of expanding it to folks like Hasan Piker — and then act surprised when pieces of the coalition start walking out.”
Shroff added that Democratic leaders should stop courting socialist-aligned candidates and start shoring up the establishment supporters who have long defended the party — especially ahead of the midterm elections.
“Of course, Nessel is a prominent Democrat in Michigan — a state where a lot of this debate has now centered around Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and his affiliation with streamer Hasan Piker, who has made controversial comments that many other Democrats have just condemned as antisemitic,” Shroff said. “It’s a critical Senate seat for Democrats to win and they need all their voters and more to show up. So turning off loyal Democrats like Nessel is a huge issue and should be causing major alarm.”
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According to Nessel, Jewish Democrats have felt ostracized by their own party following the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and accused leadership of cherry-picking issues that are relevant to supporters.
“When a Black person says that a phrase that you’re using or the way you’re talking about this issue to me is racist, I’d like you to stop doing it — we respect that,” Nessel said on The David Frum podcast.
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Nessel then pointed to what she said was a discrepancy in how members of her party handle concerns raised by Jewish voters.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel addresses the Michigan Democratic Party People’s Town Hall in Warren, Mich., on March 29, 2025. (REUTERS)
“This has been an outlier to me,” Nessel said. “I have people saying, ‘You are not going to tell us what you deem to be antisemitic. We’ll decide what’s antisemitic. That’s not up for you, the Jewish population, to decide.’”
“I find that to be very off-putting and offensive,” she continued. “I think that’s totally unacceptable.”
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Following her condemnation of the Democrats’ treatment of Jewish constituents’ concerns regarding antisemitism, Nessel added that if faced with the choice, she would choose her Jewish heritage over her party affiliation.
“If that’s the deal that has to be made, and I’ve been really candid about this, I was Jewish before I was ever Michigan attorney general — I’m going to be Jewish afterwards,” Nessel said.
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Abdul El-Sayed speaks to supporters at his Get Out to Vote rally in Detroit, Mich., on Aug. 3, 2026. (JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
“I was Jewish before I was ever a member of the Democratic Party, and if I have to, I’ll be Jewish afterwards too,” she continued.
Nessel also took aim at Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, for previous comments he made following an attempted terrorist attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield earlier this year, in which he remarked, “Hurt people do hurt people.”
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“A lot of us perceived that as sort of making excuses for someone that sought to murder over 100 pre-K schoolchildren and that’s the kind of mentality that bothers me a lot,” Nessel said.
She added that although El-Sayed has met with Jewish leaders in the community, his unwillingness to retract his previous comments is cause for concern and risks amplifying such views.
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Nessel did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. Fox News Digital also reached out to the El-Sayed campaign for comment.
Piker previously told his viewers, “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”
Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., who is Jewish, called out Piker this week in response. In a social media post. She wrote, “This shouldn’t be hard: no community should face the threat [of] violence for their political views. Period,”
Slotkin continued, “That goes if you’re pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-choice, pro-life or any other cause you care about. And blaming the victims of violence for bringing it on themselves only further endangers people.”