In a political move that’s stirring significant controversy, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has directed a racially charged comment at Second Lady Usha Vance. This action appears to be backfiring, potentially alienating Michigan’s 130,000 Indian-American voters along with crucial female constituents, sources revealed to The Post.
The ill-advised remark showcases El-Sayed’s vulnerabilities, according to a GOP source. The insider criticized the anti-Israel Democrat for targeting women to project toughness. El-Sayed’s controversial post on platform X questioned, “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no …”
“I believe Abdul suffers from a Napoleon complex, choosing to victimize women to seem formidable, rather than confronting the men he professes to challenge,” the insider conveyed to The Post.
While JD Vance has yet to respond directly to the remark aimed at his wife, strategists expect him to address it head-on. Vance is scheduled to campaign in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District near Detroit on Monday, where insiders anticipate a strong rebuttal to El-Sayed’s comments.
State GOP party co-chair Sunny Reddy expressed confidence that Vance will adopt an assertive stance, telling The Post, “He’s definitely going to come out swinging. Expect a significant response from the community,” Reddy added.
The swing state ranks third nationally in female voter participation, with 69% of women turning out, according to Census Bureau data, about 10 points above the national average.
Republicans see an opportunity to try to peel away South Asian voters from El-Sayed, whose parents are Egyptian immigrants, in a race that pits him against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).
El-Sayed leads Rogers by less than a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average.
Michigan state GOP chair Reddy said family members should be off limits.
“We may have differences. We attack each other. But going to the family and the kids is a disaster,” he fumed. “They are not the one running.”
Reddy predicted it would hurt El-Sayed with middle-aged women, Indian-Americans, and other ethnic groups, and slammed him for dragging Usha’s recent pregnancy into his attacks.
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“Enough is enough,” he said, adding that the party is already working to put El-Sayed’s comments into an ad. The state party and Indian-American leaders demanded Friday that El-Sayed apologize.
Reddy was referencing another crude El-Sayed remark that brought up Usha – this one during the candidate’s April appearance on “The Allen Analysis Show” podcast. “What do you think is going through Usha’s head when [JD Vance] talks? She’s like, ‘Damn, I have to sleep with him,’” he said. “I guess she’s pregnant so something is happening.”
The nasty attack, which relates to the vice president’s late father James Lee Vance, known as “Pawpaw,” ultimately fell flat on its face as Vance deftly neutralized the smear.
She told Fox News in an interview last week she “kind of laughed” when she heard it – but then punctured the attack by saying how “incredibly loving” his children were to her and that the late Pawpaw would have done the same.
Vance invoked his Pawpaw on a trip to Ohio last Friday when he accused El-Sayed of saying if you criticize Sharia law “you’re a white supremacist.”
Pawpaw features prominently in Vance’s autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” where Vance called it “one of the great regrets of my life that Mamaw and Papaw never met” Usha.
The Post reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign for comment.
The Usha flap comes as El-Sayed is trying to insulate himself against critics from within his own party demanding he end his association with Hasan Piker, who is accused of antisemitism and said “America deserved 9/11.” He appeared with Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a prominent Jewish House member, and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich) in Ann Arbor Thursday.
“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” Dingell told a crowd of supporters. “It’s not what November is about.”
Former Bill Clinton advisor James Carville wasn’t so willing to side-step the issue in a race that has El-Sayed leading by less than a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average.
“I find this guy [El-Sayed] to be really, really troubling. I think he’d do himself some good if he made very clear the specific things that Hasan Piker said that he disagrees with, because I gotta tell you, they make me really, really uncomfortable,” Carville said on his “Politics War Room” podcast.