DETROIT — As a professional driver navigated a gleaming new Ford Bronco Sport up a steep ridge, Mallory McMorrow found herself pinned in the back seat clinging to the overhead roll bar.

The Detroit Auto Show course is designed to show off the Bronco’s capabilities — while putting an escapist scare into its thrill-seeking passengers. But it just reminded McMorrow of her day-to-day reality running for Michigan’s open Senate seat.

“It’s a teeter-totter, man,” McMorrow told POLITICO about her race, after having navigated a very literal giant teeter-totter in the Bronco. “It could go any direction.”

McMorrow is locked in a tight three-way primary with Rep. Haley Stevens and physician Abdul El-Sayed that has emerged as a test for what the next generation of Democrats will look like — and whether they can win a key swing-state election that will help determine Senate control.

In recent days, the trio of candidates’ squabbles careened hour to hour from whether they should embrace Medicare for All, to how far Democrats should go in fighting ICE. In fact, the contest has emerged as a catch-all for every question and problem plaguing Democrats politically and tactically: Where should they stand on Israel and Gaza? Should they send their aging congressional leaders packing? What does electability look like in this political environment? Should Democrats tap into the attention economy or focus on traditional campaigning?

El-Sayed, on the left, has taken consistently maximalist positions fitting for a man who wrote a book titled “Medicare For All: A Citizen’s Guide” and has vocal support from Sen. Bernie Sanders. Stevens, a classic swing-state centrist favored by many establishment Democrats, has taken smaller-bore stances. Between them sits McMorrow, who’s aiming to appeal to voters in both of their lanes.

But this three-way battle to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) isn’t just about what direction the Democratic Party takes in Washington — it’s whether they can get there in the first place.

Democrats think they see a route back to the Senate majority. But if they don’t hold on to their seat in Michigan, that faint path won’t materialize.

“It’s already a long shot, but it’s a doable thing — but not without Michigan,” said David Axelrod, the longtime senior adviser to former President Barack Obama.

Axelrod called it the “most fascinating and consequential primary” in the country.

Democratic leaders both in Michigan and D.C. are growing more worried by the day that the hard-fought contest, which won’t be decided until the August primary, will exacerbate ideological tensions and leave the nominee in a weakened position heading into a contest against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).

“We’re used to having long primaries,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. “No one loves them, but we’re used to having them. And I don’t think it’s insurmountable.”

For now, the race is wide open.

Most public polls have found a tight three-way race in the primary, with Stevens or McMorrow holding a slight lead depending on the survey; in those same polls, Stevens runs slightly ahead of Rogers in the general election, with McMorrow just a bit behind her and El-Sayed a bit further back.

Stevens has a fundraising edge. According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, which posted on Saturday, she brought in $2.1 million in the past quarter and has $3 million cash on hand; McMorrow and El-Sayed both raised around $1.75 million and each has just under $2 million in the bank. Rogers raised just under $2 million and has just under $3.5 million cash on hand.

Part of the lack of separation in the polls is that voters haven’t engaged yet. The campaigns don’t expect cleavage until paid media starts happening in full (El-Sayed is the only candidate so far to roll out a statewide ad.)

“Only the most political have started to click in,” Slotkin said.

Michigan Democrats also worried about the impact the primary could have on the rest of the party as they fight to hold on to term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office and win back control of the Legislature.

Whitmer, with her 60 percent approval rating, is facing a pressure campaign from some in the party to endorse either Stevens or McMorrow early in the race to narrow the field, according to two senior Michigan Democratic officials granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. Otherwise, one of them worried, “we could see real losses.”

Whitmer and El-Sayed duked it out in a 2018 gubernatorial primary, and the officials say bad blood remains between them.

A Whitmer spokesperson declined to comment.

A clash of ideologies

The candidates have sharp ideological divides on major issues including health care, Israel and Gaza and accepting corporate PAC money.

After a second person was killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, the three candidates’ diverging approach to ICE and its funding supercharged the primary.

While McMorrow and Stevens glad-handed at the Detroit Auto Show and union halls around the MLK holiday, after immigration agents killed Renee Good and before they killed Alex Pretti, El-Sayed, who has championed the Abolish ICE movement since 2018, went to Minneapolis and filmed man-on-the-street interviews for social media that were reminiscent of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful viral campaign videos.

He told POLITICO he was there to “understand what it looks like when an arm of the government lays siege to a city in America.” (El-Sayed also jetted to California for a fundraiser earlier that week).

McMorrow has expressed supportfor reforms to ICE, such as requiring agents to be unmasked, and argues Republicans and Democrats should “deny DHS one penny more until complete overhaul and accountability of this agency” happens.

Stevens, meanwhile, is co-sponsoring a bill that would divert what she called ICE’s $75 billion “slush fund” to state and local law enforcement agencies; she has also called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s impeachment.

The candidates are also at odds over health care, an issue over which they’ve sparred in recent days.

In an interview with Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen last week, El-Sayed reignited the health care debate. He said, “if you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there for you,” apparently flipping on his stance on Medicare for All. McMorrow and her allies seized on his remarks as El-Sayed seemingly embracing a position he had repeatedly attacked her on. El-Sayed hosted a December health care town hall with Sanders where he contrasted his Medicare for All support with McMorrow’s and Steven’s backing of a public option.

“It’s wild to call yourself the ‘next generation’ of Democratic leadership and be running AGAINST Medicare for All in 2026,” he posted on X a month ago, quote-tweeting McMorrow.

In an interview with POLITICO after the dustup, El-Sayed declined to discuss specifics of his position on the record. In a statement, a spokesperson said that he supports Medicare for All as a baseline option for everyone, “and if folks want additional private coverage through a union or an employer then that can be there for them too.”

The conflict in Gaza has also led to sharp divisions in the race.

El-Sayed, who is the son of Egyptian immigrants, has been an outspoken critic of Israel, which he has long said was committing genocide in Gaza. That’s a major issue in a state with the highest percent of Arab-Americans in the country; more than 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” instead of backing then-President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary over his administration’s support of Israel — an effort El-Sayed helped lead.

He told POLITICO that when he talks about U.S. tax dollars “being misappropriated to weaponize food against children and to subsidize a genocide, rather than to invest in real people in their communities and their kids and their schools and their health care, it is the single biggest applause line in every speech.”

McMorrow took a bit more time to come to that view. In October, when asked whether she thought the conflict was a genocide, she paused for several seconds, exhaled, and responded, “Based on the definition, yes.” Her campaign said her view was informed by a September United Nations Commission of Inquiry report.

Stevens has been more supportive of Israel, and has the support of AIPAC, the politically influential pro-Israel lobby. Some senior Michigan Democrats have expressed concern that an AIPAC independent expenditure campaign backing Haley could make the primary even more toxic ahead of the general election. Asked about their plans, an AIPAC spokesperson told POLITICO they had no updates.

Asked by POLITICO in November whether she was comfortable with AIPAC support, Stevens dodged, saying she’s delighted to “see the hostages get home,” and added she “wanted to see an enduring ceasefire where Hamas surrenders and so that we can get the people of Palestine and Israel in long standing peace, living peacefully, side by side with one another.”

Stevens’ campaign also attacked both El-Sayed and McMorrow’s record on manufacturing, a sector that employs some 600,000 in Michigan. She told POLITICO that McMorrow “has a history of criticizing Michigan’s key industries” and that El-Sayed “supports policies that would decimate Michigan’s manufacturing economy,” citing his support for the Green New Deal.

“I’m going to call out what isn’t working for Michigan’s manufacturing economy, whether it is Mike Rogers or members of my own party,” Stevens said in an interview in the conference room of the Teamsters Local 234 union hall in Plymouth.

Old school vs. new school

The race is also shaping up as a test of offline coalitional politics at a moment increasingly defined more by viral videos than baby-kissing and union hall campaign stops.

Stevens has leaned hardest into traditional brick-and-mortar campaigning, while El-Sayed has been much more focused online, with McMorrow’s approach once again falling between them.

McMorrow’s biggest splash of the campaign so far came with a viral video that attacked NFL RedZone for adding ads as “the latest example of corporate greed,” and tied it to spiking grocery costs. It earned nearly 2 million views.

El-Sayed has built a national profile and fundraising network in part with a health care-focused podcast on Crooked Media, the network run by the Pod Save America team made up largely of former Obama senior advisers. At least three members, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes, appeared as hosts on an invite to El-Sayed’s fundraiser earlier this month in California.

Stevens has taken a different tack, putting more focus on campaign stops and meat-and-potatoes fights for local industry, especially auto and other factory jobs.

In a year-out-from-election day memo, Stevens’ campaign argued that her “strength with Black Michiganders and union workers, her relentless focus on lowering costs and protecting Michigan manufacturing, and her record fighting for Michiganders — which has led to her winning tough primaries and general elections — will propel her to victory.”

Campaigning at a Teamsters Local 234 union hall in Plymouth, she spent a lot more time talking about a local labor contract dispute than national concerns.

“Look, manufacturing might not light up the internet, but it fuels a lot of jobs here,” she told POLITICO afterward.

That dogged approach helped her flip and hold a swing seat, then win a tough incumbent-on-incumbent primary in 2022, and is one she thinks will pay dividends now.

“I’ve had a couple of tough primaries before, and I’m just out here trying to win it for Michiganders,” she said.

But it remains unclear how well it will translate in a statewide campaign.

“Haley seems to have more institutional support — whether or not it’s admitted as such — and that is a strength, but it also could be a weakness,” said a longtime Michigan Democratic operative who remains neutral in the race and was granted anonymity to assess the primary. “Her presence on the campaign trail I’m not sure is one that’s really like, Man, I got to be with her.”

Stevens has earned criticism over whether she can galvanize the online, grassroots activists, or electrify crowds on the trail. “She’s [an] uneven campaigner when it comes to the retail stuff,” said Adam Jentleson, a longtime Democratic campaign strategist whois pushing for the party to break more with left-wing interest groups and focus more on expanding the party’s coalition to win (he also voiced concern about El-Sayed as a general-election candidate).

Right now, both El-Sayed and Stevens have been training most of their fire on McMorrow rather than each other, seeing her as the bigger threat to their potential voting coalitions.

Insiders and outsiders

Stevens’ electoral track record is part of why many establishment-leaning Democrats in D.C. prefer her in the race.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) invited her to attend a fundraising retreat in Napa Valley that featured a crypto roundtable, but Stevens told POLITICO she did not attend due to the government shutdown.

In an interview with POLITICO, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was bullish on defending Michigan but declined to appraise any individual candidacies; a DSCC spokesperson declined to comment on whether the committee would officially endorse in the race.

McMorrow has taken a very different approach to D.C.’s Democratic leadership.

Shetold POLITICO last March, before she was even officially a candidate, that she wouldn’t vote for Schumer as party leader should she win her Senate seat. She also previously penned a scathing letter to Biden following his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, urging him to drop out.

“We’re drawing a contrast that is really about defining my lane,” McMorrow said in an interview at a campaign stop at a park in Grand Rapids late last year, suggesting Stevens, without naming her, was running “an uninspiring campaign that’s right out of the D.C. playbook” and that El-Sayed, also without naming him, was campaigning on the idea “that there’s just one weird trick to fix democracy.”

Stevens has said it’s too early to determine whether to would back Schumer; she has called him “a great leader.”

El-Sayed also hasn’t said whether he’d back Schumer for leader. But he’s made it clear he is running headlong against the Democratic establishment.

“The movement we’re building is about taking a bet on the divide in our politics not really being about left versus right, but being about the folks who are locked out and the folks who are locking them out,” El-Sayed told POLITICO.

About the only thing the candidates can all agree on is the stakes of the contest.

“The future of this party is going to be based on what happens in this race,” McMorrow said.

Elena Scheider contributed to this report.

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