Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Photo:Reuters/USA Today Network

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday that she will not attend the Michigan Democratic Party’s upcoming state nominating convention, saying she fears facing antisemitic harassment amid deepening tensions over Israel and mounting concern about antisemitism within segments of the party.

Nessel, one of the country’s most prominent Jewish elected officials and the first openly LGBTQ person elected to statewide office in Michigan, said she does not feel safe attending the Aug. 29 convention in Lansing. She made the remarks at an Anti-Defamation League-organized antisemitism roundtable that she moderated in the state capital.

“I feel like my presence is not going to be welcomed. 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. And I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying. And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen,” Nessel said.

She lamented that antisemitism in the state has gotten “worse and worse and worse” in the nearly three years since the Hamas-led massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed roughly 1,200 people.

“I have profound fears about what is going to happen to this state, and what is going to happen to this country if we don’t have a significant change of course,” she said.

Nessel also described experiencing depression and “despair” over the growing prevalence of antisemitism in American life, saying she now feels “very naive” for previously believing that Jew-hatred would not become a fixture of modern American society.

“I’ve never seen it in my lifetime,” she said, noting that her grandparents fled Eastern Europe. “To see some of the same language that was used during that time period, and we’re seeing it emerge now in modern-day America — if you would have told me that … I still will say I was very naive and I didn’t think, ever, that this could happen in modern-day United States of America.”

Her decision comes as the war in Gaza and U.S. support for Israel have become defining fault lines within the Michigan Democratic Party. The state, home to large Arab American and Jewish communities, has emerged as a focal point for political battles over Israel, campus protests, and allegations of antisemitism.

Nessel has repeatedly warned that criticism of Israeli government policy has, in some instances, crossed into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation directed at Jewish public officials and community members. She said Thursday that the threats she receives are “almost exclusively antisemitic,” rather than attacks based on her gender or sexual orientation.

The controversy comes days before Michigan Democrats vote in a closely watched Senate primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a strong supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and progressive former Detroit health director Abdul El-Sayed.

El-Sayed has made opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel and criticism of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a central part of his campaign. He has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and has repeatedly declined to answer directly when asked whether Israel has a right to exist specifically as a Jewish state, instead expressing support for “equal rights, peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike.”

El-Sayed also faced criticism over his response to the March 12 terrorist attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, which the FBI subsequently characterized as a “Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism.” He condemned the attack and said there was “never a justification” for targeting innocent people or houses of worship, but also argued that “hurt people hurt people” and connected the assailant’s actions to the deaths of his relatives in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.

Polling in the Senate primary has produced conflicting results. A WDIV/Detroit News survey conducted from July 8 through July 11 found Stevens leading El-Sayed 48.2 percent to 41.4 percent, while a later Tavern Research poll reported El-Sayed ahead by 10 percentage points.

Other prominent Jewish officials in Michigan have also faced threats and harassment. University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker’s home and car were vandalized with pro-Palestinian graffiti in December 2024, an incident university leaders described as antisemitic intimidation. His law office had previously been vandalized with messages including “Free Palestine” and “Divest Now.”

At the Michigan Democratic Party’s April convention, delegates denied Acker renomination and instead selected Dearborn attorney Amir Makled for one of the party’s two University of Michigan regent nominations. Makled had drawn criticism for reposting social-media content lamenting the death of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as material containing antisemitic rhetoric. He has denied supporting the positions attributed to him. Makled will appear on the November ballot but has not yet been elected to the board.

Acker’s defeat, however, also followed the publication of lewd messages attributed to him concerning a Democratic strategist and a female University of Michigan student. An independent university investigation subsequently confirmed that the messages were authentic, and Acker later apologized. That controversy complicates claims that his position on Israel or his Jewish identity alone determined the convention’s outcome.

Nessel’s announcement nevertheless underscores the degree to which some Jewish Democrats feel increasingly unwelcome in political spaces they once regarded as their own.

“I don’t feel safe going,” Nessel said of her party’s convention. “Something’s got to change. This cannot continue.”