One social media post put a different set of numbers in front of Michigan voters after Barack Obama campaigned in Detroit on Saturday.
Milwaukee Bucks forward Kyle Kuzma wrote it. A Flint native, he took aim at the former president’s message and said residents of his home state are focused on their finances, not the religion of their senators.
Obama had appeared at Cass Technical High School to boost Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson.
Other Democratic candidates on the ballot also received his backing. Michigan votes in the November 3 midterm elections.
From the stage, Obama pictured El-Sayed serving next to Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin. He labeled the two a “power duo.”
He named El-Sayed’s Muslim faith and Slotkin’s Jewish faith, and he said Michigan could be proud to send a Muslim man and a Jewish woman to the Senate together.
Kuzma’s reply came online.
“This desperate pysop (sic) is unbearable to watch in Michigan. so tired of listening to it,” he wrote.
He followed with a figure on poverty.
“1 in 4 black people in Michigan are below the poverty line and the message is Muslim/jewish duo is what we’re talking about.
The 31-year-old then posted about the state’s religious makeup.
“Last thing that Michiganders care about is a religious identity pitch. And on top of that Michigan is a state where the population of Muslims and Jews are both 1 percent. What are we talking about.”
Kuzma grew up in Flint. He played at the University of Utah before the NBA drafted him in 2017. He won a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020 and later joined Milwaukee.
His social media accounts regularly carry his views on politics, the economy and culture.
Recent polling tracks the same subject he raised. Fox News surveyed Michigan voters in late September and asked what matters most in their Senate choice.
Cost of living landed among the issues they called extremely important. Immigration, President Donald Trump and U.S. policy toward Israel joined it on that list.
The poll, released September 30, showed El-Sayed ahead of Republican nominee Mike Rogers by a single point. That gap falls within the survey’s sampling error.
Rogers previously served in Congress and chaired the House Intelligence Committee.
He lost a close 2024 contest to Slotkin for Michigan’s other Senate seat. This year he is running for the open one.
Michigan’s recent results show how tight statewide races have been. Trump won the state in the 2024 presidential election by less than two percentage points.
Obama’s Detroit visit was one stop in a Democratic effort to turn out voters before Election Day. He is traveling to Midwestern battleground states on behalf of the party’s candidates.
At the Cass Tech rally, he also defended El-Sayed against attacks on his Muslim faith.
Obama compared them to the false claims about his birthplace and religion that followed him through his presidential campaigns.
“They may even use your name or your faith to somehow suggest you are dangerous,” Obama told the crowd. He said similar attacks had followed him during his own career in politics.
El-Sayed, whose father immigrated from Egypt, used his own remarks to talk about his love of country. He argued that criticizing American policies is not the same as opposing the nation itself.
He has denied any ties to or support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian founders created the Islamic organization in the late 1920s.
The United States, Egypt and other countries have designated it a terrorist organization.
