Layered PAC Money Trace · Federal · Outside spending only

Abdul El-Sayed

MI Senate 2026 Democratic primary · Election 2026-08-04
What this report measures: independent expenditures (IEs) reported on FEC Schedule E — money spent by outside Super PACs to support or oppose this candidate. It does not include the candidate's own campaign-committee fundraising, which is shown below for context.
$50
Outside (PAC) spending — total
$50
Outside spending in support
$0
Outside spending in opposition
1
Outside spending committees
For context — Abdul El-Sayed's OWN campaign committee (ABDUL FOR U.S. SENATE ↗) as of 2026-03-31:
$7.65M raised · $5.12M spent · $0 cash on hand
This own-committee total is reported separately and is not included in the outside-spending numbers above.
How to read these numbers

Outside spending is currently 0.0% of what the candidate's own committee has raised. The election is in 73 days. Major outside-spending groups typically deploy in the final 4–8 weeks; a small total now does not mean a small total in the end. The skill should be re-run closer to election day.

✓
NO AIPAC-NETWORK MONEY DETECTED
checked against roster of 6 committees + 18 individuals
Report ID MI_Senate_2026_Democratic_primary_Abdul_El_Sayed · Generated by the federal money-trace pipeline · Depth 3, min material transfer $25,000. Every figure traceable to the official FEC API.

What this report is about

There's a race for MI Senate 2026 Democratic primary. One of the candidates is Abdul El-Sayed. This report tracks the outside money in the race — money spent on TV ads, mailers, and digital ads by groups that aren't Abdul El-Sayed's own campaign. Those groups are called Super PACs.

Super PACs can spend unlimited money on ads, as long as they don't coordinate directly with the candidate. They have to report every dollar to the federal government — which is what makes investigations like this possible.

The headline, in everyday words

About $50 has been spent on outside ads supporting Abdul El-Sayed so far. That's a small amount — big Senate races usually see tens of millions. We're at the mid-cycle picture — We're inside the typical deployment window for outside spending. The numbers below are real-time and likely to keep rising.

The biggest spender is THE PEOPLE UNITED PAC, which spent $50 — about 100% of all the outside money in this race. That group is funded by: STRATEGY & HUSTLE L.L.C. ($54K, 92%). So when you see an ad supporting Abdul El-Sayed, there's a real chance these donors paid for it.

The AIPAC piece

The detector checked every committee and donor in this race against a curated list of 7 AIPAC-aligned committees and 18 known pro-Israel mega-donors. No matches. Pro-Israel money does not appear to be a factor in this race.

What to watch for

It's still 73 days until the election. Outside-money pushes typically deploy in the final 4-8 weeks. If this race is competitive, expect the totals below to grow significantly between now and election day. Re-run this report in 6-8 weeks for the updated picture.

The bottom line

  1. Most early ad money supporting Abdul El-Sayed comes from the funders named above.
  2. Pro-Israel money is not a factor in this race based on the disclosed filings.
  3. Big late-cycle outside-money pushes are still ahead.
  4. All of this is legal and public — every dollar in this report comes from the FEC's own filings.

The headline, in one paragraph

Outside-spending committees disclosed $50 in independent expenditures supporting Abdul El-Sayed in the MI Senate 2026 Democratic primary. 1 committee filed; the largest, THE PEOPLE UNITED PAC, accounts for 100% of that total.

AIPAC-network check
NOT DETECTED

No AIPAC-network committee or individual on the curated roster appears anywhere in this trace, at any layer.

Checked 1 committees and 1 distinct donor names against the roster of 7 committees and 18 individuals (last updated 2026-05-23).

Roster: skills/_shared/aipac_network.json (last updated 2026-05-23). Detector: skills/_shared/aipac_detect.py. Negative and positive findings are both auditable — running these checks against the same trace will reach the same conclusion. Match confidence on individual donors is medium (name-only); analysts should verify employer/location to rule out homonyms before publication.

Where the money flowed

Each ribbon shows a disclosed money flow. Donors and parent committees on the left → spending committees in the middle → the candidate on the right. Width is proportional to dollars.

donor → PAC transfer PAC support spending PAC opposition spending

Spending committees in this race

THE PEOPLE UNITED PAC
FEC C00776419 ↗  ·  Super PAC (Independent Expenditure-Only)
Independent expenditures in this race
$50
$50 support $0 oppose
SINGLE_FUNDER_92PCT Suggestive name
Treasurer
PHELAN, MICHAEL
Registered address
3723 GREENVILLE AVE STE 41077, DALLAS, TX, 75206
Cycles active
2022, 2024, 2026
Total receipts (2026)
$58,909

Who funded this PAC

Org STRATEGY & HUSTLE L.L.C.
$54,450 (92.4%)
Operational & media vendors
Top operational vendors (Schedule B)
VendorPaid#Category
STRATEGY & HUSTLE L.L.C. $66,000 22 DIGITAL CONSULTING SERVICES
WORKING FAMILIES PARTY PAC $40,000 4 CONTRIBUTION
THE ACTION NETWORK $39,786 22 FUNDRAISING SOFTWARE
KATZ COMPLIANCE $20,427 24 COMPLIANCE SERVICES
NGPVAN INC $3,581 8 SOFTWARE SERVICES
Top media vendors (Schedule E)
VendorPaidIEsOther candidates targeted
STRATEGY & HUSTLE L.L.C. $3,338 43 PLATNER, GRAHAM, LARSON, JOHN B, AHMED, JUNAID, LANDER, BRAD MR.

Cross-cycle activity

Committee receipts disclosed in prior election cycles — to show whether this is a long-running operation or a single-cycle vehicle.

THE PEOPLE UNITED PAC
C00776419
2022
2024

This is the wider-audience summary. The full analyst-grade markdown report — with every endpoint, every caveat, the request-for-comment letter drafts, the PDF review queue, the FCC scaffold, and reproducibility instructions — lives at reports/MI_Senate_2026_Democratic_primary_Abdul_El_Sayed_final_report.md in the same folder.

How to read flag badges
  • Single funder ≥80% — one source provides almost all of the committee's money. The clearest shell-PAC fingerprint.
  • Top PAC funder ≥40% — concentrated, but with at least some donor diversity.
  • PAC aggregate ≥50% — most receipts come from other PACs rather than individuals.
  • Suggestive name — committee name matches a known shell-PAC linguistic pattern (e.g. "Americans for…", "Citizens for…").
  • Few donors (≤3) — three or fewer disclosed contributors.
  • Single-cycle activity — committee was active only during one election cycle.

One flag is suggestive, not probative. Two or more flags together is publishable analysis. Zero flags is not a clean bill of health — it just means none of these specific fingerprints fired.

How this report is reproducible

Every dollar figure comes from the FEC's public API. To re-run this trace end-to-end:

export FEC_API_KEY="<your_key>"
python skills/fec-money-trace/fec_run.py \
  --candidate "Abdul El-Sayed" \
  --cycle 2026 \
  --race "MI Senate 2026 Democratic primary" \
  --election-date 2026-08-04 \
  --depth 3 \
  --min-transfer 25000

Primary endpoints used: /candidates/search/, /schedules/schedule_e/ (independent expenditures), /schedules/schedule_a/ (receipts), /schedules/schedule_b/ (disbursements), /committee/{id}/ (Form 1 registration).

Named individuals are public donors of record under federal campaign finance law and appear in primary-source FEC filings. They are listed for disclosure transparency, not as accusation. Any narrative use of these names should give each individual an opportunity to respond before publication — request-for-comment letter drafts are already produced and live in followups/comment_letters/.