Abdul El-Sayed claimed a historic Senate victory in Michigan, becoming the first Muslim elected to the chamber.
El-Sayed, a hard-left Democrat, defeated Republican Mike Rogers 52-46% when AP called the race at 2:27 AM, overcoming a bitter intraparty revolt that saw his former primary rival endorse his opponent days before the election. The win flips a seat vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters and boosts Democrats’ drive to reclaim Senate control.
“Michigan, we did it,” El-Sayed said at a victory party in Detroit.
“I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect from the great state of Michigan.”
The triumph came despite a ferocious three-way primary that left El-Sayed politically bruised and exposed deep fissures within the state party. He ran on abolishing ICE, replacing private health insurance with Medicare for All, steep taxes on the wealthy, and cutting military aid to Israel. His stance on Israel became a defining wedge against Rep. Haley Stevens, a self-described Zionist and comparatively moderate Democrat whom he defeated for the nomination.
Stevens roiled the general election just two days before voters went to the polls by making a surprise endorsement of Rogers. She appeared with the Republican at a Detroit church and publicly ripped into El-Sayed in a video, revealing she had faced pressure from her mother and fiancé to back Rogers. One driving force behind her decision was El-Sayed’s refusal to demand that a controversial ad by Cenk Uygur be taken down, plus her frustration at being excluded from a unity event with him.
“Our Democratic nominee for US Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he’s right,” Stevens said in her video endorsement of Rogers.
“And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign. I do not stand with Hasan Piker.”
El-Sayed had stumped during the primary with Piker, a controversial left-wing streamer who once said “America deserved 9/11,” remarks El-Sayed denounced while continuing to appear alongside him. He also refused to disavow Piker throughout the campaign. The candidate further drew scrutiny for declining to state that Iran poses a greater threat to the US than Israel, and for leaked audio in which he sounded nervous about commenting on the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fearing it would alienate his base.
Rogers, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman, hammered El-Sayed as a national security threat throughout the contest. He highlighted connections between members of El-Sayed’s family and groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, noting that El-Sayed’s biological mother worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, designated a terrorist group in 2004 for supporting Al Qaeda and Hamas. El-Sayed countered that he was raised by his American stepmother and denounced the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Democrat returned fire with equal ferocity, accusing Rogers of being bought and paid for, mocking his yacht ownership, casting him as a carpetbagger, a Trump stooge, and a surveillance state champion. At times El-Sayed framed his foreign policy as a left-wing version of “America first,” while voicing frustration that his name and Muslim faith created political obstacles. Still, he predicted confidently that he’d “smoke” Rogers by seven points, a margin that proved slightly inflated but directionally correct.
El-Sayed has remained noncommittal about backing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to lead the Democrats, instead preferring Sen. Chris Van Hollen. “The current minority leader has given all of us ample reason to question whether or not he would be our best bet heading into a cycle where we might have the majority, and I think there’s absolutely room for change,” El-Sayed told The Post in August.
“A vote is a choice between two or more options. I don’t know what other options are. If it happened to be a guy named John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, or Chuck Schumer, well then, I’d make a different decision,” the lefty Democrat added.
Although El-Sayed described himself as a capitalist and was never officially a Democratic Socialists of America member, prominent DSA figures rallied to his cause. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both backed his bid. AOC said in October that an El-Sayed victory would break the “entire political calculus in America.”
“If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere,” she said.
El-Sayed’s win in a purple battleground where conventional wisdom held that a hard-left candidate could not prevail now stands as a test of whether that calculus has indeed shifted, with the balance of power in the Senate hanging on outcomes across multiple states.