Vice President JD Vance took aim at Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed during a speech in Ohio, accusing him of representing how dramatically the Democratic Party has changed.
But the political fight quickly became personal after El-Sayed responded by bringing Vance’s wife, Usha, and late grandfather into the dispute.
Vance delivered his remarks Friday at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, his hometown, where he spoke extensively about American manufacturing and the importance of representing working-class voters.
During the speech, the vice president turned his attention to El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee running against Republican Mike Rogers in neighboring Michigan’s closely watched Senate contest.
Vance highlighted previous comments from El-Sayed concerning opposition to Sharia law and connected them to the Democratic Party’s broader political transformation.
“I would love to go back in time and tell my papaw, that there is a man who claims to stand for working people, who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you are a white supremacist,” Vance said.
“That’s not my papaw’s Democratic Party, my friends.”
El-Sayed’s campaign has previously said the candidate believes firmly in the separation of church and state and does not support incorporating religious law into American law.
The campaign said that while El-Sayed personally attempts to live according to the teachings of his Muslim faith, he opposes attempts to write any religion’s rules into the laws of the United States.
Vance’s criticism, however, referred to comments El-Sayed previously made about a controversial Oklahoma ballot initiative.
State Question 755 was approved by approximately 70 percent of Oklahoma voters in 2010 and sought to amend the state constitution to prevent courts from considering Sharia law in their decisions.
Federal courts subsequently blocked the measure.
El-Sayed later discussed the controversy while making an argument about racism and discrimination throughout American history.
“The same exact forces that drove native peoples from their land two centuries ago, destroyed Black Wall Street a century ago, bombed a building decades ago and tried to ban Sharia law not a decade ago, those forces are alive and well today,” El-Sayed said.
Those remarks provided the foundation for Vance’s attack Friday.
But rather than responding directly to the vice president’s characterization of his position on Sharia law, El-Sayed invoked Vance’s wife and grandfather.
“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no,” El-Sayed wrote on social media.
Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants and became the first Indian American second lady when her husband became vice president.
El-Sayed did not explicitly explain what he meant by the remark.
However, critics interpreted the post as suggesting Vance’s grandfather might have objected to his grandson marrying a woman of Indian descent.
The response immediately generated criticism online, with numerous conservative commentators accusing El-Sayed of making an unwarranted assumption about Vance’s grandfather based on his race and generation.
The exchange also shifted attention away from the original dispute over El-Sayed’s past remarks and toward the increasingly personal nature of the Michigan Senate campaign.
Vance has frequently discussed his grandparents and particularly his “Papaw,” James Vance, when describing his childhood and political worldview.
His grandparents played an enormous role in raising him during the difficult upbringing Vance later chronicled in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
El-Sayed’s decision to bring Vance’s wife into the argument therefore touched on two deeply personal parts of the vice president’s life.
The controversy arrives as El-Sayed attempts to win a statewide general election in politically competitive Michigan against Rogers.
The Democrat has already faced criticism over several previous comments and political associations, while Republicans are attempting to portray him as considerably further to the left than Michigan’s electorate, Breitbart News reported.
El-Sayed has also previously invoked Christianity when discussing elements of his political agenda, another argument that has attracted attention during the campaign.
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