LANSING, MI – Michigan Democrats gather Saturday in the battleground state’s capital city to hold their 2026 state nominating convention amid controversy over recent antisemitic harassment and open hostility within the party over U.S. support for Israel.
Democratic Michigan Attorney General , who is Jewish, recently announced she wouldn’t attend the confab due to security concerns, after anti-Israel party activists shouted down pro-Israel speakers, including Rep. Haley Stevens, at a prior convention in April.
This weekend’s convention comes as a growing number of Democrats push for cutting military aid to Israel, amidst the Israeli government’s ongoing war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
The convention is also being held just a few weeks after , a vocal critic of Israel who describes their military actions as “genocide,” narrowly edged Stevens to win the Democratic Senate nomination for a crucial seat the Democrats must hold in the midterm elections.
DEMOCRATIC MICHIGAN AG ACCUSES HER PARTY OF ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT’ DOING ENOUGH TO COUNTER ANTISEMITISM
“I dont feel safe going. I feel like my presence isnt going to be welcome. I dont want to get chased around. I dont want to get harassed. I dont want to get yelled and screamed at. I dont want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what Im saying,” Nessel said during a roundtable discussion last month. “I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because its been happening to me.”
Responding, the Michigan said it is “committed to ensuring party-hosted events are safe and secure environments for all attendees.”
“We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of hateful conduct. We are working diligently with stakeholders, elected officials, and party membership to prepare for our August convention and look forward to welcoming Michigan Democrats to the Lansing Center on August 29,” state party spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.
Joan Lowenstein, endorsement chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, told Fox News Digital she hasn’t “talked to anybody who thinks they will be unsafe at this convention.”
But Lowenstein, who also sits on the Michigan Democratic Party Central Committee, added, “Some people think it will be unpleasant and why should they bother.”
But other Jewish Democrats are very concerned.
“People are traumatized from the previous convention. Many people I talked to, many super progressive people, are really traumatized by the way they were treated, and the way Haley Stevens was booed, and the way other candidates were treated,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin told Fox News Digital last week.
Lopatin, who was interviewed after joining e former Rep. Mike Rogers at a campaign event to unveil Democrats supporting Rogers, referred to Nessel’s decision not to attend the convention and said “it just shows how terrible these extremists are that they’re intimidating even the attorney general of our state.”
But Lopatin emphasized, “We got to be strong. We got to be proud. We got to be courageous. The Jewish community cannot cower.”
Stacy Gittleman, a lifelong Democrat who is supportive of Israel, attended the April convention.
“I saw more Palestinian flags than American flags on the floor,” Gittleman, a writer who published her observations at the convention on substack, told Fox News Digital this week.
Gittleman said the jeers and what she highlighted as a “lack of decorum and disrespect” were signs to her of “how far left our party is drifting.”
The convention is being held as some Jewish leaders in Michigan are circulating an open letter urging Jewish Democra
