Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, whose tight race in Michigan could make or break his party’s goal to win the Senate in November, is working this weekend to win over Jewish Democratic voters in his state.

El-Sayed began Saturday by apologizing to a group of Jewish Democrats for remarks he made following an attack on a synagogue outside Detroit in March, when he said “hurt people hurt people.”

“I made a mistake,” El-Sayed said, according to The New York Times, when asked about his comments at a Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus event in Lansing. “I should have issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop.”

He reportedly told the group of Jewish Democrats, “Nobody deserves to have their pain trampled on.”

The Democratic Senate nominee was scheduled to appear again on Sunday afternoon at another Democratic Jewish Caucus event to continue extending an olive branch for the comments he made after a man drove his car into a synagogue filled with preschool children — none of whom were injured — in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan.

“I know that our ideas can win when we take the time to actually explain them. It’s what people really want,” El-Sayed, who has publicly denounced antisemitism during his campaign, told MS NOW in a phone interview on Friday.

“Meanwhile, my opponent, Mike Rogers, won’t even debate me and his entire campaign is about trying to point to a streamer in California,” he said, referring to provocative comments made by far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, which some Jewish leaders and voters have characterized as antisemitic.

El-Sayed and Piker attended campaign events together during the Democratic primary race, but the Democratic nominee has since appeared to distance himself from the streamer amid the backlash.

Michigan Democrats, all too aware of the Senate race’s high stakes, are trying to look beyond the controversial streamer, whom more than half of Democratic voters don’t even know.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., appearing on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” Sunday, didn’t directly answer when co-host Jackie Alemany asked her why El-Sayed hasn’t disavowed Piker.

“I don’t understand Hassan Piker,” said Dingell, who told reporters last week to stop asking her questions about Piker. But she said she has had “very direct” and “blunt” conversations with El-Sayed.

“I tell him what I think,” she told MS NOW, noting that the Senate candidate apologized to the Jewish Caucus at the state party’s convention on Saturday and is expected to again on Sunday.

“So he’s listening. He’s taking the intake. We got to get this behind us. I want to talk about the issues,” Dingell said. “I have nothing to do with this on Piker.”

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