Senator Bernie Sanders was so irate when he learned on Wednesday that the nation’s top pro-Israel lobby planned to spend as much as $9 million to defeat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s Senate race, that he immediately transferred $1 million to him.
Then Mr. Sanders and his team started making calls.
They dialed other progressive allies, urging them to pony up to counter the spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to help elect Dr. El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim senator in American history.
“What I have done today was not only put a million into Abdul’s campaign, but we are also reaching out to other individuals to try to raise money because this is just outrageous,” Mr. Sanders, the 85-year-old independent from Vermont, said in an interview.
By the end of day on Wednesday, the Sanders operation had collected promises and pledges totaling $300,000 from a dozen other Democrats, including Senators Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, according to a list provided by Mr. Sanders’s team.
“That’s nowhere near what AIPAC is doing,” Mr. Sanders said. “It’s nowhere near what other super PACs — billionaire-funded super PACs — are doing. But it is a way to stand with democracy and with Abdul’s campaign.”
Mr. Sanders had already given the Abdul for Michigan Victory Fund — a joint effort of Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Michigan Democratic State Central Committee — $250,000 in the first week of October. The elder progressive had $22.4 million in his campaign coffers entering October, among the largest sums for a sitting senator.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that AIPAC was making a rare decision to invest in a Republican in a general election, contributing as much as $9 million to a super PAC supporting Mike Rogers, a former congressman and the Republican nominee.
Mr. Rogers had opened the door to AIPAC’s support in an Oct. 8 debate, saying he would “take all of that help.” AIPAC has not commented on its spending.
Mr. Sanders is not the only big-name progressive who has added to Dr. El-Sayed’s finances this month in a race being watched nationwide. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York donated $1 million while campaigning with him in Michigan last week.
Mr. Sanders has been fighting with AIPAC for years over the direction of the Democratic Party. In the 2022 midterms, he told The Times, “This is a war for the future of the Democratic Party.”
The disdain appears to be mutual.
After Mr. Sanders wrote in a post on social media on Thursday that “AIPAC is why we’re at war in Iran,” the organization delivered a tongue-in-cheek response.
“AIPAC is why your fantasy football team stinks,” the main AIPAC account wrote on X. “AIPAC is why the weather is bad. AIPAC is why you need an app to park. Say NO to Bernie’s obsessive scapegoating.”
Mr. Sanders did not care for the phrase.
“No, this is not Bernie Sanders’s obsessive scapegoating,” Mr. Sanders said. “This is a fact.”
Referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he added, “The fact is, the American people do not want to continue spending billions of dollars on Netanyahu’s extremist government.”
On Wednesday, Dr. El-Sayed called Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, after The Times reported the coming AIPAC spending.
“Can you help?” he asked her, Ms. Jayapal recalled.
Her leadership PAC had given $350,000 to support Dr. El-Sayed in the primary, and she said she was reviewing how much more she could help now. She called for Senator Gary Peters, the retiring Democrat whose seat Dr. El-Sayed is seeking, to chip in, too.
“I think he’s got $7 or 8 million in his bank account — I’d love to see him come in with $1 million as well,” she said. “I think we need to see moderate and establishment Democrats be as committed to the party rallying around the nominee as they are when we get flak for progressives not rallying around a nominee.”
The office of Mr. Peters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
