Roxie Richner, the communications director for Michigan progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, directed racially charged attacks at white women in a series of social media posts made between 2019 and 2020, Fox News Digital reported. The disclosures land as El-Sayed's campaign separately grapples with the federal indictment of a former staffer, deepening scrutiny of a candidate still building statewide standing.
What Richner Wrote — and When
The posts appeared on X, then called Twitter. The earliest content Fox News identified dates to 2019, when Richner rebuked white people for defending then-candidate Joe Biden's comments, which she called "straight-up racist."
The bulk of the unearthed posts cluster around May and June 2020, in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's death. On May 26, 2020 — the day after Floyd died — Richner wrote that "white women are making shit up trying to get Black people killed," and followed it with the declaration that "all white women are policy failures." In a separate post the same day, she said she made a point of speaking with family members about "dismantling white supremacy almost every day."
On June 4, 2020, as rioting in Minneapolis was at its height, Richner mocked white Ann Arbor residents who contacted her about looting, calling their concern evidence of racism and threatening to identify them publicly. The day after the November 2020 presidential election, she credited "POC youth" for delivering Biden's victory while expressing explicit disappointment in "white youth and white women."
A Campaign Accumulating Liabilities
El-Sayed ran for Michigan governor in 2018, finishing second in the Democratic primary behind Gretchen Whitmer. His current Senate platform carries forward earlier positions, including abolishing ICE and establishing universal healthcare.
He has drawn sustained criticism for campaigning alongside social media influencer Hasan Piker, who at various points stated that "America deserved 9/11," described Hezbollah's flag as his favorite, and drew an equivalence between Hamas and Israel. Last week, a separate former staffer, Mariam Odeh, was indicted alongside seven others for alleged threats directed at University of Michigan officials, private businesses, and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit — conduct tied to an effort to pressure the university into divesting from Israeli-linked companies. Odeh faces a charge of conspiracy to transmit threats in interstate and foreign commerce. The campaign said it had no knowledge of Odeh's activities at the time of her hiring.
Why This Compounds
El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on Richner's posts. Together, the controversies — a communications director with documented inflammatory posts, a former staffer facing a federal indictment, and association with figures who have voiced support for designated terrorist organizations — create a compound political liability. In a Democratic primary where electability arguments tend to carry real weight, the candidate's ability to contain the accumulating narrative may prove as consequential as his policy platform.