“Disrespectful. Dismissive. Dishonest.”
These words have targeted Black Michiganders over the last two weeks as part of a $1.5 million attack campaign against Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
The video ads launched on Oct. 19 by an outside group called Empowering Black America PAC, just 5 days before former U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Detroit for a highly anticipated rally with El-Sayed as early in-person voting got underway.
The ad blitz - first reported byThe Michigan Chronicle – was part of a larger effort by Republican candidate Mike Rogers’ campaign and the outside groups supporting it to chip away at a critical part of the Democratic base.
Since the primary, outside groups backed by dark money have spent millions of dollars targeting Black voters with negative ads against El-Sayed with a focus on messages that depict the candidate as dismissive towards the Black community.
Those efforts have complemented Rogers’ push to make inroads with Black voters, recruiting Black politicians and community leaders to become surrogates for his candidacy, and making campaign stops in places like Detroit, Pontiac, and Flint.
Who is ‘we’?
With a name like Empowering Black America and the use of “we” and “us” in the ads, it’s easy to assume that the commercials were created and funded by members of the Black community.
According to campaign filings, the lone reported donor lives in Florida and gives heavilyto Republicans and Political Action Committees associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The pro-Israel lobby spent $30 million against El-Sayed ahead of the primary election.
The money isn’t from Michigan. The public relations group that developed the message isn’t either, though they do have previous ties to the state, including one of the worst public health emergencies in Michigan history.
Flint Spin
In late 2015, as damning evidence emerged about contaminated water in Flint and the first lawsuits started trickling in, then-Governor Rick Snyder turned to wealthy donors and a cadre of crisis PR consultants, lawyers, and other advisors to survive the growing scandal.
One of the firms hired by the embattled Republican governor was the Washington D.C.-based lobbying and public relations firm Mercury Public Affairs. French water conglomerate Veolia also hired Mercury for a related response after the company was sued by Flint residents and the Michigan Attorney General’s Office of Special Counsel for its brief work on Flint’s water system.
Snyder paid Mercury on a monthly retainer until September 2016 -- although he claimed to have stopped with them months earlier -- but the firm continued its crisis management work for Veolia as the universe of Flint water lawsuits worked their way through the justice system. As part of that work, Mercury helped devise Veolia’s sprawling, years-long digital plan and social media strategy that perpetuated disinformation about the Flint water crisis, according to documents obtained through public records requests and court filings. Over the course of the litigation PR campaign, Veolia deployed websites, targeted advertising, and social media accounts to push misleading information about the company’s role in the crisis, the health effects of lead, while at times pitting Flint residents against their own attorneys. The tactics eventually triggered scrutiny from a federal judge over concerns that the methods were designed to influence the jury pool.
Since launching in 2024, the Empowering Black Americans PAC has paid Mercury Public Affairs more than $80,000 for services like polling and hosting the group’s website. Tax filings for a non-profit organization connected to the Super PAC show Mercury was paid a total of $844,000 for consulting services in 2024; tax filings for 2025 and 2026 are not yet available.
Flint resident Arthur Woodson has experienced these misleading tactics before. He had a front-row seat to Mercury’s work in Flint and now is watching it unfold statewide in a U.S. Senate.
Woodson isn’t supporting a candidate in the Senate race. Like many in Flint he’s exhausted by politicians and officials who he feels have repeatedly failed and abandoned the city’s residents, but he believes the public should know about Empowering Black Americans PAC and Mercury’s role.
“They use Black communities to try to get you to go against the people who really are trying to help you,” Woodson said of Mercury and Empowering Black Americans PAC, saying that their latest attack campaign in Michigan was deployed “just to help pump fear or agitate our community.”
In a statement, El-Sayed spokesperson Roxie Richner expressed concern over Mercury’s involvement.
“The same PR firm Rick Snyder hired during the Flint water crisis is now trying to mislead Black Michiganders about a doctor who has spent his career fighting to improve health outcomes and equity,” Richner said. “Republicans and special interests are resorting to divisive attacks because they can’t defend Mike Rogers’ record of selling out Michigan families.”
The Rogers campaign did not answer specific about the ads working on his behalf.
Speaking to reporters after a debate earlier this month, Rogers told reporters that Democrats have left the door open in Black communities.
“We've had a lot of great conversations in Flint on how we can get that (water infrastructure) fixed, get their schools turned around,” Rogers said. “What's interesting about this is those are supposedly Democrat strongholds. They don't hear from Democrats.”
Snyder was sued by Flint residents in cases that settled in 2020 and was also charged with a criminal misdemeanor in 2021, but the charges were dismissed after a state Supreme Court ruling found the use of a one-person grand jury to issue the indictments was unconstitutional.
In Flint, the messaging often focused on longstanding mistrust in the government and medical community while seeking to pit residents against their own lawyers. And much like with the current attacks against El-Sayed, they at times relied on weaving together partial quotes to create a misleading narrative.
Back in the U.S. Senate race, the ads feed into the narrative that Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t have Black support.
It’s then recycled through a cable news feedback loop and becomes a self-sustaining story. The seeds that were sown by anti-El-Sayed/pro-Haley Stevens ads in the primary have borne fruit in the discourse surrounding the general election.
That discourse doesn’t match reality.
A recent Glengariff/Detroit News poll showed El-Sayed has support from 88% of likely Black voters, while Mike Rogers has just 4%.
It should be noted that El-Sayed worked to combat lead contamination in Detroit, conducting widespreadtesting in schools after the Flint crisis and establishing Detroit’sLead Safe coalition.
El-Sayed has remained critical of the Snyder administration and its use of an emergency manager in the lead-up to the disaster.
“The Flint water crisis was a devastating failure of government and families are still living with the consequences. Emergency management has been a devastating failure — it’s what happens when we deny people self-government,” El-Sayed said. “I’ll fight for sweeping investments in clean water infrastructure and accountability for the government agencies that have failed to keep our communities safe.”
Still, the ads do play on lingering sentiments within the Black community and real tensions with Arab-owned gas stations. Viewers have to be paying attention, because the out-of-context claims sound believable.
But for folks like Woodson, who have done the work of parsing the language and community context, it’s an exhausting and seemingly unending endeavor.
“I'm just tired of all the politics, man,” he said.
