Michigan Senate Race Closes as a Referendum on Israel Policy

Abdul El-Sayed defeated Mike Rogers in the U.S. Senate race in Michigan early Wednesday, outlasting months of Islamophobic vitriol and offering a bright spot to progressives looking to test their message ahead of the 2028 presidential primary.

El-Sayed will be the first-ever Muslim U.S. senator. He rose to victory with a campaign animated by his opposition to U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, making him a key figure for a left critical of entrenched foreign policy interests and a target for a political establishment intent on preserving the U.S. relationship with the Israeli government.

“To the super PACs and special interests who tried to beat us, we are coming for your system of politics. To AIPAC, who spent $42 million against us, thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice,” El-Sayed said at his victory party at a Detroit banquet hall. “They tried to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars. If you believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination — that’s not hate, it’s love.”

“Michiganders, we want our taxes spent here for schools, and healthcare, for infrastructure here — we don’t want our money sent to an apartheid or a genocidal war.”

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El-Sayed, a former Detroit public health official, announced his victory amid a historic blue wave that saw Democrats take both chambers of Congress and oust a 30-year incumbent in Maine and flip Texas for the first time in a generation.

While the left elevated a class of ascendant progressives in blue districts this midterms cycle, El-Sayed’s win in the key swing state of Michigan marks a potentially era-defining moment for the party’s left wing, which has who have made cost-of-living concerns and opposition to funding U.S. war in Iran and Israel’s genocide in Gaza as key tenets of their platform.

“It’s proof that being pro-Palestine is good politics, it’s good policy, and no one should shy away.”

“It’s proof that being pro-Palestine is good politics, it’s good policy, and no one should shy away,” said the prominent pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, who attended the El-Sayed party. “The American people are now waking up to the fact this country is complicit in genocide.”

Tuesday’s win will likely reverberate for years to come as Democrats clash over what kind of candidate to run for president in 2028 in an effort to turn the page on the MAGA era of U.S. politics.

In the heavily Arab and Muslim city of Dearborn, voters across party lines said they were outraged at the Islamophobic attacks ads targeting El-Sayed that became a staple of airwaves and social media feeds in the campaign’s final days.

“I am a Muslim. And I’ve seen a lot of ads, and it’s disgusting, because we are good people,” said Gus Tarraf, a Republican running for a state House seat. “I love this country.”

Although Donald Trump carried many precincts in Dearborn two years ago due to voter frustration over the Biden administration’s support of Israel, Tarraf said his community is turning on the Republican Party this year.

“Not a lot of Arab Americans are happy with the Trump administration,” he said. “So it doesn’t matter if they know you, as soon as they know you are on the Republican ticket.” 

El-Sayed’s willingness to criticize U.S. policy on Israel animated soap-opera-level drama in the final days of the race, when his former primary opponent, centrist Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, announced she would switch her endorsement to support Rogers.

After demanding an apology from El-Sayed for an outside PAC’s ad, Stevens said on social media that she came to the decision after feeling “shut out” by El-Sayed’s campaign, adding that she’s heard from “Black voters, Jewish voters, and others about how deeply these messages hurt.” Rogers, she said, gave her “the hope that he can serve in the tradition of John McCain: a senator willing to put country before party and stand up to his own side when conscience requires it.”

Stevens’s late-breaking endorsement of Rogers drew a mix of eye-rolls and outrage from voters at three precincts in Detroit and Dearborn. None of the voters interviewed by The Intercept said it had swayed them to vote for Rogers.

“People have already early voted. People have already absentee voted,” said Noora Iskander. “I don’t think many people change their minds. So I think it’s just hypocritical.”

Stevens’s decision to make the endorsement while inside a Black church in Detroit may also have generated backlash from the Black voters that Rogers was hoping to win over, according to some who spoke to The Intercept. One said the church community has been buzzing — and not positively — about the weekend’s events.

“Unfortunately, she went to a Black church to use it as a backdrop,” said Dearborn voter Dorothea Sharon. “It really was a slap in the face for the Black community that that happened.”

On election night, Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who endorsed El-Sayed and will be the senior senator from Michigan in the next Congress, asked supporters to “take a step back from all the drama we’ve had in the last couple of days,” in an allusion to Stevens. She resisted narrative portrayals of a power struggle between centrists like her and progressives like El-Sayed. 

Voters should focus on “the idea that the state of Michigan can send one Jewish senator and one Muslim senator for the first time ever in history.”

“Let me just explain to all the media that Michigan is an independently minded state, we take orders from no one,” Slotkin said at the El-Sayed watch party in Michigan. “We don’t take guidance from anyone on how to think about our vote, we make up our minds. And it’s not progressive versus moderate, it is whether you are on team fight or team flight.”

Slotkin, who is Jewish, said voters should focus on “the idea that the state of Michigan can send one Jewish senator and one Muslim senator for the first time ever in history.”

While El-Sayed has had to face intense scrutiny over accusations of conflating opposition to U.S. aid to Israel with antisemitism, little accounting has been made of the blatant Islamophobia and xenophobia from the Rogers campaign, the Republican Party, and Trump. But in Dearborn, the rhetoric had clearly hurt several voters who spoke to The Intercept.

The father of state Senate candidate Abbas Alawieh, a Democrat who played a prominent role in the 2024 Uncommitted movement, grew visibly upset when asked about the ads targeting Muslims.

“These are weak people who don’t have anything to do — they don’t have any programs for our economy, for our health, for our future,” Zouheir Alawieh said. “That’s why they are attacking us as Muslims and as human beings. It’s never been like this. This is a shame. America is a place where the Black with the white with the yellow, the Muslim with the Christian with the Jews, can live freely. Don’t try to tear up our society.”

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Outside Dearborn, El-Sayed has tried to defuse the anti-Muslim smears against him by joking that he is only in favor of “shawarma law.” However, the Islamophobic attacks convinced at least one voter to cast her ballot for Rogers.

“I don’t want to live under Sharia law,” said Joann, a law firm employee who declined to give her last name after she voted in Detroit.

The fear of Islamic rule was the main issue for Joann, she said, although she also worried about El-Sayed’s campaign pledge of Medicare for All.

“I’ve worked my whole life, put all my stuff into the Medicare, but then I’ve got to let other people get it for free? It doesn’t seem fair to me when I’ve worked my whole life for it, and we’re not even sure that it’s going to be there when we really get ready to retire,” she said.

Yet it was that very messaging from El-Sayed’s campaign that excited many other residents in Michigan. Many voters who spoke to The Intercept said they were more focused on pocketbook issues.

“It’s the gas prices, the food. I mean, money is running out your pocket so fast,” Leigh James said after voting at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit.

James said she had walked to the polling place to avoid using gas. “I’m trying to save,” she said. “So thank God I live in the neighborhood.”

Other voters said they were inspired by El-Sayed’s personality, with one woman describing him as a “fighter.”

Noora Iskander, who voted for El-Sayed in Dearborn, said she approved of his stance in favor of Medicare for All, his affordability platform, and his solidarity with Palestine.

“I think he’s going to make a lot of change. He’s going to scare a lot of people — which I believe is a good thing, because you can’t really change for the better if you don’t scare a few people,” she said.

Matt Sledge reported from Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan.

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