Good morning and welcome back to the Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report written by Mike Cerulli.

We hope everyone had a great Independence Day!

For those still battling with the remnants of Saturday’s festivities, fear not. The Tip Sheet’s author empathizes with your plight. We’ve got an abridged version of this humble state politics newsletter coming out of this holiday weekend.

This week, we’re taking a look at the Connecticut connection to a major development in a battleground state.

Let’s dive in…

A Murphy favorite falls in Michigan

When Sen. Chris Murphy endorsed State Sen. Mallory McMorrow in the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Michigan, he described her approach to politics as “exactly what we need right now to take on Trump.”

Until yesterday afternoon, McMorrow was one of three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to succeed the retiring Sen. Gary Peters. She suspended her campaign with a video announcement, leaving Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the race to go up against former Congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee.

The Cook Political Report has labelled the general election as a “toss up” – meaning ultimate control of the U.S. Senate will likely be determined in part by the outcome of the Michigan race.

Generally speaking, McMorrow was viewed as falling somewhere in between her two would-be rivals on the ideological spectrum. Stevens is widely seen as the choice of the Democratic establishment, with the backing of Sen. Chuck Schumer. On the other hand, El-Sayed is an outspoken progressive who has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the influential streamer Hasan Piker.

The New York Times described McMorrow as a candidate who “tried to cut a middle path between moderate and left-wing rivals.”

A cynic might ascribe those same intentions to Murphy, who has embarked on a sojourn across the Democratic landscape that has led many to believe he’s eyeing a run for president in 2028. He’s long stood at the forefront of progressive causes but has recently taken to cautioning Democrats to avoid ideological purity tests. He’s personally embarked on a public journey to understand the cultural, political, and economic roots of the current iteration of American populism.

As he’s travelled across the country, Murphy has occasionally endorsed candidates. McMorrow was one of just a few in competitive primaries to get his public support.

In a tweet thread, David Axelrod declared that McMorrow “couldn’t carve a path” in this year’s race but was destined for a promising future.

Outside of Michigan, McMorrow achieved a level of notoriety that is limited mostly to the plugged-in political class. She vaulted to viral fame in 2022 for delivering a takedown of a Republican colleague in the state legislature and secured a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention a couple years later. But McMorrow’s ability to notch points in the never-ending attention war and her prowess as a legislator (she is part of the leadership team of Michigan’s State Senate Democratic caucus) were not sufficient to break out in the field of three.

There is already a vast supply of punditry on what the Michigan race represents in the context of Democratic politics. The presence of an establishment-backed candidate, an unapologetic progressive, and a candidate caught between the two made the race a particularly attractive case study for the commentator class.

Ezra Klein, the current oracle of elite liberal America, more or less called McMorrow’s fall in real time during a recent podcast episode with Chris Hayes, the MS NOW host.

“A year ago, if I were doing this, I’d call Mallory McMorrow one of the big, emergent attentional stars,” Klein said in mid-June.

Now, Klein believes El-Sayed is the favorite, citing polling momentum and the all-knowing prediction markets. 

The most recent polling (some commissioned by El-Sayed or his allies) shows El-Sayed with a lead. Of the polls that met the New York Times’ standard as “select polls,” El-Sayed has clearly gained some momentum.

The Times labels its “select pollsters” for their record of accuracy and nonpartisan backing.

In January, an Emerson College poll commissioned by WOOD-TV Channel 8, a Nexstar-owned TV station which the Tip Sheet is electing to call “The Other News 8,” found McMorrow in the lead. A subsequent April poll found the race even. By early June, a different pollster (also trusted by the Times as a “select pollster”) showed El-Sayed had a slight lead over Stevens. By then, McMorrow had fallen to a distant third.

“What happened was he started centering Israel and Gaza,” Klein said of El-Sayed’s rise.

In Klein’s telling, it wasn’t simply that El-Sayed took a position that Michigan’s Democratic base agrees with him on. It was also because his opponents went on the attack, placing El-Sayed at the center of attention. McMorrow went after El-Sayed for welcoming the endorsement of Piker, describing some of the left-wing streamer’s comments as “not entirely different” from the words of the right-wing streamer Nick Fuentes. Both have been labelled antisemites by their detractors.

The Times wrote that McMorrow’s attack on Piker “backfired quickly.”

Klein described the whole issue as an “attentional superconductor.”

Hayes offered emphatic agreement.

Through controversy, the race’s center of gravity has shifted firmly onto El-Sayed’s turf.

In the past few weeks, El-Sayed has continued to attract attention, not just with his policy stances but also with his charismatic style. It’s a style that stands distinctly apart from some of the other breakout Democratic stars in the post-2024 political landscape. Yes, El-Sayed has more than a touch of that smiling, earnest charm deployed by Zohran Mamdani and James Talarico. But unlike the New York City mayor or the Texas Senate hopeful, El-Sayed is, well...a bit more muscular. Literally and rhetorically.

Just take a look at El-Sayed’s social media pages. One video features El-Sayed in a tight black t-shirt describing the Republican playbook as he sees it.

“Republicans run against Democrats saying, ‘we’re strong and you’re weak,’” El-Sayed said. “I dare him to say that to me.”

Yes, there was a political point to be made. El-Sayed’s policies are certainly populist and pugilistic. But there was also a more visceral, personal message being sent with El-Sayed’s words and wardrobe. One commenter on Instagram took note of El-Sayed’s not-so-subtle presentation. 

“Bro benches for reps 315 by the way,” the commenter wrote.

Another video features El-Sayed clad in his black t-shirt dancing to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me.” It has racked up more than half a million views. El-Sayed changed some of the lyric captions to fit his campaign messaging.

Like Graham Platner, El-Sayed has leaned into his physicality as he pitches a populist message. Those black t-shirts are a choice. If you’re on the left and looking for a fighter, who better than a guy who loads six plates on the barbell, right? 

For his part, Murphy, who likely cannot bench 315, declined to make a new endorsement on Sunday evening. He simply offered words of encouragement to McMorrow.

“It was an honor to support you and your team,” Murphy wrote.

In her announcement, McMorrow also made no endorsement. She vowed to support the eventual Democratic nominee.

Despite Murphy’s non-endorsement on Sunday, it’s not difficult to imagine him eventually backing El-Sayed. Perhaps Murphy is just waiting for an opportune moment, after McMorrow has had the chance to gracefully bow out with all the accompanying praise from Democrats who saw her talent on display these past few years. An El-Sayed endorsement would make sense for Murphy, given his newfound role as a self-appointed diagnoser of the Democratic Party’s woes.

In El-Sayed, Murphy could possibly find some answers to the questions he’s been asking about how a progressive coalition can win back the hearts and minds of the politically disillusioned. Murphy, for example, has fixated on the very real plight of America’s wayward young men. Like Piker, El-Sayed offers a left-wing foil to the looksmaxxers and manosphere influencers, simultaneously offering professional pedigree – Columbia for medical school, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship – and gym bro cred.

Watch this race for a potential Murphy move.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet!