Jeffrey Soros, George Soros's nephew and a Hollywood producer, hosted a fundraiser Monday for Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed at his home — and told the crowd that his family's fellowship program had once paid for El-Sayed's tuition. Hollywood celebrities attended the gathering, though organizers asked those in the room not to record it.
The revelation, first reported by The National News Desk, adds a new wrinkle to a Senate race already shadowed by questions about outside money. Jeffrey Soros said he has known El-Sayed since 2012, when he personally interviewed him as a finalist for the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans — a program that provides a stipend and tuition support worth tens of thousands of dollars to help immigrants and their children succeed in the United States. El-Sayed won that fellowship in 2012, according to the outlet's reporting, and Jeffrey Soros said his family helped El-Sayed launch his career.
Notably, the fellowship that funded El-Sayed's graduate education was not created by George Soros himself. It was established in December 1997 with a $50 million trust by Paul Soros — George Soros's older brother — and his wife Daisy, specifically to fund graduate education for immigrants and their children, per the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Awards under the program can be worth up to $90,000 over two years.
A West Hollywood Gathering With National Progressive Muscle
The Monday fundraiser wasn't a solo effort. According to 930 WFMD, the event was co-hosted by Jeffrey Soros and his wife Catharine alongside “Pod Save America” hosts Jon Favreau, Tom Vietor, and Ben Rhodes — a lineup that underscores how much national progressive infrastructure has lined up behind El-Sayed's campaign. Jeffrey Soros also serves as CEO of Los Angeles Media Fund, the production company behind the 2022 docuseries “Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers,” and as president emeritus of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the station's report notes.
Neither El-Sayed's campaign nor Los Angeles Media Fund responded to Fox News' request for comment, per the original report. The Abdul for Michigan Victory Fund, the joint fundraising vehicle tied to the campaign, accepted donations of up to $57,800, and the report states that the Soros family's political machine has donated millions of dollars to political action committees supporting El-Sayed's bid.
The Money-in-Politics Contradiction Republicans Are Pouncing On
The optics cut against the core of El-Sayed's stump speech. He has said the political system allows corporations and billionaires to buy politicians, and that he wants to get money out of politics and put it back in voters' pockets — messaging paired with his support for Medicare for All. Alyssa Brouillet, communications director for Republican nominee Mike Rogers' campaign, argued the fundraiser exposed that contradiction, saying El-Sayed was raising “dark Soros money” in California after seeking money from Chuck Schumer in Washington, D.C.
El-Sayed's campaign has pushed back with its own money-in-politics framing, saying corporate special interests are spending millions of dollars in dark money trying to buy Rogers a Senate seat. That exchange is consistent with the primary campaign, when El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic nomination on August 5 despite facing nearly $65 million in outside opposition spending, including multimillion-dollar ad campaigns funded by pro-Israel political action committees, according to CNN-News18. That primary win made El-Sayed the first Muslim candidate in American history to secure a major party nomination for the U.S. Senate, as NBC News reported at the time.
An Open Seat, a Dead-Heat Race
The Michigan seat is open because two-term Democratic Senator Gary Peters chose not to seek re-election, leaving a battleground contest in a state Donald Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election, per Ballotpedia. El-Sayed, who earned a DPhil in public health as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 2011 and an MD from Columbia University in 2014, later served as Detroit's Health Director from 2015 to 2017 and Wayne County Health Director from 2023 to 2025, according to the same source.
Polling in late September showed a tight race: a New York Times/Siena College poll had El-Sayed leading Rogers 49% to 44%, while a Data for Progress poll put El-Sayed's lead at just one point, 47% to 46%, per Forbes. Despite El-Sayed's anti-establishment messaging, the Democratic establishment's Senate Majority PAC invested an additional $10 million in mid-September to boost his general election campaign, bringing its total Michigan investment to $30 million, according to Axios.
The fundraiser also lands amid other friction on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, Rogers declined to participate in a televised FOX 2 Detroit debate against El-Sayed after objecting to the moderator, leaving El-Sayed to face an empty podium, as Hoodline previously reported. With both campaigns now trading accusations over dark money, the tuition disclosure gives Rogers fresh ammunition heading into the stretch run to November.
