A Loyalty Test With a Marketing Budget
In the military, there were times when the unexpected happened despite hours of preparation and months of training. We referred to these instances as “teachable moments.” Voters have experienced important teachable moments during the run-up to the midterms. Times when circumstances might quickly deviate from the smooth path yet continue onward.
The young man in the gray long-sleeve shirt stood up in a town hall crowd in Caro, Michigan, on October 17 and asked one question. "Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?"
Abdul El-Sayed answered on the first try. "Sure. Yeah, absolutely." Then, the Democratic Senate nominee asked what mattered. "What are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn't?"
That question had a résumé. The man who asked it came out of the political business. The man’s question corresponds to a playbook that a Republican group had previously circulated in Michigan. And he never wanted the answer he got.
Start with the man. He gave his name as Tommy. Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket identified him as Thomas Teepell, operations director for Missouri Senator Josh Hawley until February, then political director for Philip Sarnecki's failed run for Kansas governor. His own social profiles, Kabas reported, put him in Detroit. His father is Timmy Teepell, the Republican strategist who worked for Bobby Jindal from 2004 to 2011 and later helped put Hawley in the Senate.
Hold on to that name. Jindal.
Jindal founded America Next in 2013. On September 29, America Next reported spending $250,000 against El-Sayed, paid to Breakthrough LLC, for what the federal filing calls "canvassing and influencer marketing." A quarter-million dollars to shape what voters think they are seeing at this man's events. That number comes from a federal disclosure America Next filed itself. You can see what America Next spent. You cannot see who paid for it. As a 501(c)(4), it does not have to name its donors.
Days later, The Michigan Daily published messages from a University of Michigan College Republicans group chat. Engineering senior Iman Dashti, saying he was working on behalf of America Next, offered members $200 apiece to drive to El-Sayed's Flint town hall on October 4. They spelled out the plan: “We are going to coordinate questions to ask him and spread out to increase the chances we’re called on.” Then, "We're gonna boo him."
Coordinate the questions. Scatter through the room. Boo on cue. A folding chair plays a role in influencing marketing.
Here is where I hold the line. Nobody has shown that Tommy Teepell was paid a dime for Caro. Kabas asked America Next whether it had hired or paid him and got no answer. HuffPost reported that the University of Michigan College Republicans confirmed the messages were real but said the group "did not in any manner coordinate" with Dashti's solicitation, and The Michigan Daily found no evidence that Republican nominee Mike Rogers' campaign had any direct involvement.
So read the receipts in order. The Jindal group put $250,000 into influencer marketing against El-Sayed. A student claiming to work for that group tried to buy a booing section for Flint. Thirteen days later, the son of Jindal's longtime right-hand stood up in Caro with a gotcha about Islam. You can call that a coincidence. I call it a pattern with a payroll question nobody at America Next will answer. They could settle it in an afternoon. Release the list of people Breakthrough paid to canvass and post about El-Sayed. If Thomas Teepell is not on it, say so on the record.
Both political party organizations leverage data-driven micro-targeting to align their messaging with the specific ideological biases and behavioral profiles of key demographic segments to maximize voter mobilization. I mean, that is the game.
Before anyone writes in: Democrats play this game, too. WIRED reported last year that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal dark-money network, was bankrolling an influencer program whose organizers told creators that over 90 influencers were set to take part. In 2016, two Democratic operatives lost their jobs after an undercover video caught them talking about provoking confrontations at Trump rallies.
If a Democratic group paid somebody to stand up and ask a Christian candidate to disavow a church, I would write this same column with the names flipped. But the money in this race is not close. Bridge Michigan counted $59.3 million from GOP groups against $23 million from El-Sayed's backers in early October. And Caro was worse than a paid heckler, because the target was a man's faith.
Now, consider what the creators designed the product to sell. Tommy did not ask about health care, El-Sayed's donors, or a single vote he would cast. He asked a Muslim man to renounce a foreign organization because he is a Muslim man. El-Sayed said "absolutely," and Tommy kept insisting he had not heard him disavow anything. The answer was never the point. The demand was. His religion does not make him the customer service department for every organization that somebody associates with Islam.
So El-Sayed asked him straight: did Tommy assume he would hold "some higher order allegiance than to the Constitution"? Tommy said, "Yes." There it was, out loud. Your faith makes you a suspect, and you stay one until you clear yourself in front of a room full of cameras.
Somebody will say candidates get asked to disavow groups all the time. They do. In January, the State Department and the Treasury put the Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon on terror lists. But a Republican gets asked about the Proud Boys because of something he said or somebody he stood beside.
But for me, there is a distinct and obvious difference. El-Sayed got asked because of where he prayed. He asked Tommy whether he had ever put that question to anyone else in his life. "I have not," Tommy said. Call that what it is: explicit bias, admitted out loud, twice.
Then El-Sayed handed Tommy the same test. Would he disavow attempts to read religious doctrine into American law? "I do not," Tommy answered, according to the recording. "So I think it's you who needs to understand the Constitution now," El-Sayed told him. Tommy walked out.
The man who came to audit another citizen's loyalty would not sign his own.
A week earlier, Donald Trump deliberately called El-Sayed "Mohammed" and labeled him a "jihadist." Caro sounded like the retail version of that wholesale message, delivered by a Hawley alumnus with a borrowed microphone.
"I'm going to swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States," El-Sayed told Tommy. I already swore mine. I wore the uniform for 23 years, and that oath to support and defend the Constitution never mentioned a church. Article VI of that Constitution says, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." John F. Kennedy had to stand in front of Houston ministers in 1960 and promise that he did "not speak for my church on public matters," and that "the church does not speak for me." Sixty-six years later, Josh Hawley's former operations director wants a Muslim physician to perform the same ritual on cue for the internet.
Todd Breadon, whose YouTube channel had fewer than 200 subscribers, posted the five-minute clip that night. By Sunday, it had close to 100,000 views on his channel alone. El-Sayed has put it to work, captioning it, "This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his." Fair enough. He is running a campaign, not hosting a seminar for the people paying to embarrass him.
Demand answers from El-Sayed. Demand a defensible record, workable policies, and an honest account of what he intends to do with power. Ask America Next what Breakthrough did with $250,000, and whether any of it found its way to a town hall seat. But stop pretending the loyalty test was a sincere question from a worried neighbor.
Tommy came to Caro, holding a form and asking a Muslim candidate to fill it out. The Constitution already threw that form away. His citizenship is not an application sitting on Tommy's desk.
So remember to vote on November 3rd for the candidate that most represents the best interests of your community and aspires to defend those interests in Washington, D.C.
Sources
- [Mother Jones, Alex Nguyen, "Abdul El-Sayed Flipped the Script on a Bigoted Gotcha Attempt," Oct. 18, 2026](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/10/abdul-el-sayed-tommy-town-hall-michigan-senate-bird-dog/)
- [The Handbasket, Marisa Kabas, "'Tommy' from viral El-Sayed video is former Sen. Hawley staffer with Christian nationalist ties," Oct. 18, 2026](https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/tommy-teepell-abdul-el-sayed-viral-video-town-hall-josh-hawley)
- [Town hall recording, Todd Breadon (michigantodd) on YouTube, posted Oct. 17, 2026 (97,520 views as of Oct. 18)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYKucEYGQw4)
- [Viral clip on TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTfYpLukd)
- [FEC filing, America Next Inc independent expenditure to Breakthrough LLC](https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202610019908500519)
- [Inside Political Money, "Political Money Wire" (America Next $250,000 to Breakthrough LLC, Sept. 29, 2026)](https://insidepoliticalmoney.com/news/political-money-wire-65-4-million-in-new-spending-across-83-races/)
- [The Michigan Daily, "Conservative PAC offering College Republicans $200 to heckle at Abdul El-Sayed rally, group chat messages seem to show"](https://www.michigandaily.com/news/conservative-pac-paying-college-republicans-to-disrupt-abdul-el-sayeds-rallies-group-chat-messages-seem-to-show/)
- [HuffPost, "Right-Wingers Scramble To Extract A Win Out Of Heckler Booted From El-Sayed Campaign Event"](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heckler-el-sayed-campaign-event-michigan_n_6ac19cdde4b0e84f83813081)
- [Business Report, "Remaining mum on presidential run, Jindal forms new group to win 'war of ideas'" (America Next as a 501(c)(4))](https://www.businessreport.com/article/remaining-mum-on-presidential-run-jindal-forms-new-group-to-win-war-of-ideas)
- [Bridge Michigan, "Trump PAC helps drive Michigan Senate race toward record spending," Oct. 2026](https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/trump-pac-helps-drive-michigan-senate-race-toward-record-spending/)
- [Nieman Lab, "A dark money group is secretly funding high-profile Democratic influencers" (WIRED report), Aug. 28, 2025](https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/a-dark-money-group-is-secretly-funding-high-profile-democratic-influencers/)
- [Bangor Daily News, "Two Democratic operatives lose jobs after James O'Keefe sting," Oct. 19, 2016](https://www.bangordailynews.com/2016/10/19/news/two-democratic-operatives-lose-jobs-after-james-okeefe-sting/)
- [Homeland Security Today, "U.S. Designates Three Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Terrorist Organizations," Jan. 2026](https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/u-s-designates-three-muslim-brotherhood-chapters-as-terrorist-organizations/)
- [Democracy Now, Oct. 12, 2026 headlines (Trump misnames El-Sayed)](https://www.democracynow.org/2026/10/12/headlines/i_can_call_him_whatever_the_hell_i_want_trump_misnames_michigan_senate_candidate_abdul_el_sayed)
- [El-Sayed on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/abdulelsayed.bsky.social/post/3my4gocauzs2x)
- [U.S. Constitution, Article VI, Clause 3](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-6/clause-3/)
- [JFK Presidential Library, Houston Ministerial Association address, Sept. 12, 1960](https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/houston-tx-19600912-houston-ministerial-association)
*Wayne Ince writes as Big Sarge at [big-sarge.blog](https://big-sarge.blog).*
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