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Abdul El-Sayed Wins in Michigan
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has been elected to the Senate from Michigan, defeating Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Mike Rogers with a progressive platform in a race frequently consumed by drama: Isla
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Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has been elected to the Senate from Michigan, defeating Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Mike Rogers with a progressive platform in a race frequently consumed by drama: Islamophobia, criticisms of Israel and criticisms of those criticisms, millions of dollars in contributions from pro-Israel groups to his opponents, attacks from Republicans, attacks from fellow Democrats, and a shock switch in allegiances by that same primary rival.
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and public health administrator pushing “Medicare for All” and endorsed early in the race by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), ran a campaign that was a key test for Democrats—could a more progressive, less-established candidate win against a Trump-endorsed, long-serving Republican member of Congress? While Republicans have not won a US Senate seat in Michigan for over two decades, the state has become a toss-up nationally, voting for President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024.
In the August primaries, establishment Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer favored El-Sayed’s opponent Haley Stevens, who received millions of dollars in super PAC money—more than $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s allies aiming to keep critics of Israel out of the US government—to make the race the most expensive primary in Democratic Party history. El-Sayed narrowly won that primary.
As my colleague Noah Lanard wrote shortly after El-Sayed’s primary win, the general outline of the election was not new, but the “stakes and the scale of the effort to defeat him” were.
Those stakes and scale grew even more intense in the lead-up to November. Among other Islamophobic remarks, Trump said that if El-Sayed won, he would be “the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector,” Rogers questioned whether he was “for America” or “these terrorist groups overseas,” and one heckler asked if he would “disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.” Opponents even targeted members of his family.
El-Sayed was also the subject of attacks over his criticisms of Israel, its genocide in Gaza, and Trump’s support of it. Stevens suggested that El-Sayed’s campaign stood with “hate,” linking him to political commentator and online live-streamer Hasan Piker’s past comment on the Sept. 11 attacks in relation to US military actions in the Middle East—which El-Sayed had already distanced himself from over the summer. According to an October report by the New York Times, AIPAC made a last-minute contribution of as much as $9 million to a pro-Rogers super PAC.
In the final days before Election Day, it all culminated in a soap opera: Stevens retracted her endorsement of El-Sayed and switched her support to Rogers over a longstanding feud with her former competitor—with many of those criticisms of Israel acting as a key contributor—angering much of the Democratic Party. Predictably, Stevens received praise from Republicans like Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson for her bravery.
Despite the onslaught against El-Sayed, Michigan voters didn’t share Trump and Rogers’ fears—the physician and epidemiologist will become the first Muslim US senator in January.