Michigan's Democratic Senate Nominee Answers JD Vance's 'Little Weasel' Jab

Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's Democratic Senate nominee, answered Vice President JD Vance's "little weasel" insult on Thursday with a nod to the University of Michigan mascot and a jab at Vance's home state of Ohio.

"JD Vance called me a little weasel today. I'm like, no, no, no. What you're talking about is a fucking Wolverine," El-Sayed said at a rally in Marquette, in the Upper Peninsula, where he campaigned alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. He opened the riff by calling the insult funny before correcting the vice president's choice of animal.

The exchange came in one of the closest Senate races in the country. El-Sayed is running against Republican former Representative Mike Rogers, and both men are trying to define the race on their own terms in its final weeks.

What JD Vance Said in Monroe

Vance made the remark earlier Thursday at a rally for Rogers at an indoor soccer facility in Monroe. "You deserve better than a little weasel who should shut his mouth and show a little gratitude," Vance said, according to a Bridge Michigan fact check of the speech.

The vice president cast the race as "a battle between grievance and gratitude," the Michigan Advance reported. Bridge Michigan's fact check found that some of Vance's claims about El-Sayed were taken out of context.

El-Sayed Turns to the Michigan-Ohio Rivalry

El-Sayed leaned on the decades-old football rivalry with Ohio State, where Vance earned his undergraduate degree. Vance represented Ohio in the Senate before becoming vice president.

"You could take your Buckeye and go shove it somewhere else, Ohio," El-Sayed told the Marquette crowd.

He then listed the mascots of Michigan's big schools. Northern Michigan University, which is in Marquette, has the Wildcats; Michigan State has the Spartans.

"Here we might be Wildcats, we might be Spartans, we might be Wolverines, but we will never be Buckeyes," he said.

El-Sayed also told the crowd that Vance had no business coming from Ohio to lecture him about America, Bridge Michigan reported.

Michigan Senate Polls Show a Tight Race

The insults are flying in a race that polling shows is within reach for both parties. El-Sayed leads Rogers 48.7 percent to 45.3 percent in PolitiKool's polling average, and control of the chamber is a toss-up on PolitiKool's Senate map.

Recent individual polls show the same narrow edge:

• An Emerson College poll conducted September 12-14 had El-Sayed at 48 percent and Rogers at 46 percent among likely voters, a lead within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.
• A Fox News poll conducted September 24-28 found El-Sayed up 50 percent to 49 percent among likely voters.
• A Mitchell Research & Communications poll released October 5 put El-Sayed at 45.6 percent and Rogers at 41.4 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 points.

Mitchell's firm cautioned that "the race could tighten, perhaps dramatically," pointing to late Republican gains in past Michigan Senate contests, CBS Detroit reported.

Rogers and El-Sayed Have Already Traded Insults on a Debate Stage

The two Senate candidates met for an hourlong debate in Grand Rapids on October 8. Bloomberg Government described the two men on that stage as "trading insults, accusations and even comparisons about their mothers."

Vance's rally in Monroe and El-Sayed's reply in Marquette on the same day carried that tone from the debate stage onto the campaign trail. Whether a rivalry joke moves votes in a race this close is another matter.