Michigan Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Abdul El-SayedPaul Sancya/AP
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The guy who tried and failed to catch Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed with a gotcha question about his supposed loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood is reportedly the son of a Republican strategist who received $250,000 last month to campaign against El-Sayed.
In the five-minute confrontation that has now gone viral, the young man, who the Handbasket first identified as Thomas “Tommy” Teepell, asked El-Sayed if he would “disavow” the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite Islamophobic claims from Republicans like President Donald Trump, there is no evidence that the candidate has any ties to the group. El-Sayed answered, “Sure, yeah, absolutely,” and then proceeded to give Tommy a lesson on civics and the constitutional freedom of religion.
Tommy’s father, Timmy Teepell, worked as a strategist for U.S. Congressman and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and later played a key role in getting Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) into office. On Tuesday, the Guardian reported that America Next, a 501(c)(4) non-profit Bobby Jindal started in 2013 to help Republican candidates, gave Timmy Teepell’s firm, Breakthrough LLC, $250,000 for “canvassing and influencer marketing” opposing El-Sayed, citing its FEC filing. The paper also reported that the payment against El-Sayed is America Next’s only reported expenditure since 2015, when it paid for television ads supporting Jindal’s failed campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
America Next has reportedly been trying to manufacture negative press for the Michigan candidate. Earlier this month, the Michigan Daily, the University of Michigan’s independent student newspaper, reviewed the school’s College Republicans’ GroupMe chat messages in which a member said America Next reached out to him and a friend, offering $200 each to travel to El-Sayed’s October 3 town hall in Flint. They were supposed to boo him and ask difficult questions.
“Bring your friends,” the student, senior Iman Dashti, reportedly wrote. “Bring your girlfriend. Take her out somewhere nice with the $400 you two will make in literally 2.5 hours.” Last month, Dashti asked El-Sayed at a University of Michigan town hall if he stood “unequivocally against” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” El-Sayed responded that he would “always stand with movements for freedom and democracy” but wanted those movements to come from Iranians, not through US intervention. According to the Michigan Daily, in his callout to other College Republicans, he claimed his question “generated a VERY negative news cycle for him.”
FEC filings do not show that the younger Thomas Teepell, who served as an operations director at Sen. Hawley’s office and political director for Philip Sarnecki’s failed 2026 Kansas governor campaign, was paid by his father’s Breakthrough LLC or America Next.
According to the New York Times’ collection of polls on the Michigan US Senate race, as of Wednesday, El-Sayed appears to have a slight lead over his Republican opponent Mike Rogers.