Democrat Breaks with Her Own Party Over ‘Extremism’ Concerns

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat and term-limited incumbent, said she is skipping the Michigan Democratic Party’s nominating convention because she does not feel safe there.

Nessel, who is Jewish, made the remarks at an antisemitism roundtable with Jewish community members and the Anti-Defamation League. The convention was set for Saturday in Lansing.

Michigan's Jewish attorney general says she won't attend her own party's convention this weekend because she fears being harassed by pro-Palestinian activists — and she's not the only Democrat staying away.

Dana Nessel said she doesn't feel safe going after pro-Israel speakers… pic.twitter.com/PMsH3cMvzu

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“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” she said. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”

She cited earlier party events, including the April endorsement convention, and said she filed a complaint after an unnamed state-committee member called her and Rep. Haley Stevens “neo-Nazis.”

“Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” Nessel asked.

She said antisemitism that once sat mainly with “far-right groups” is now showing up on the left and inside the Democratic Party. Threats during her tenure, she said, have been “almost exclusively antisemitic,” with two or three people typically jailed, on probation, or under supervision for threats against her or her family.

“I will speak as a member of the Democratic Party here in Michigan that something’s got to change,” she said.

Party spokesman Derrick Honeyman said events would be “safe and secure” and that the party rejects antisemitism and Islamophobia. The split follows a bitter Senate primary in which Stevens, endorsed by Nessel, lost to Abdul El-Sayed.

In The Atlantic this month, Nessel left the door open to leaving the party. “I was Jewish before I was ever Michigan Attorney General. I’m going to be Jewish afterwards. I was Jewish before I was ever a member of the Democratic Party. And if I have to, I’ll be Jewish afterwards, too.”