Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic nomination in the US Senate seat in Michigan, beating Haley Stevens in a bitter competition that became a referendum on the changing face of the Democratic party.
Narrow Victory
El-Sayed won the race by a single point, fewer than 15,000 votes, according to the Associated Press. He will now face Republican nominee Mike Rogers – who ran unopposed – for a key battleground seat that is vital for Democrats to retain in order to achieve their lofty goal of reclaiming the majority in the upper chamber of Congress.
Proxy Battle
The Democratic primary became a proxy battle between the establishment and progressive wings of the party, with El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former state public health official, receiving the backing of many leaders on the left flank. Meanwhile Stevens, a serving US congresswoman who flipped her district blue in 2018, received support from party leaders – including the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer – and was supported by tens of millions of dollars in outside Pac funding from the pro-Israel lobby. The latter was a point on which El-Sayed hammered on the campaign trail in Michigan, the birthplace of the uncommitted movement – which saw a sizeable portion of Arab-American voters eschew Kamala Harris in 2024 over the Biden administration’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war.
Campaign Reaction
“This was always going to be the many versus the money, and tonight, we have shown that Michiganders want money out of politics, money in their pockets, and Medicare for all. We are building a coalition that is fired up and ready to go beat Mike Rogers,” said El-Sayed’s campaign manager, Alia Kapasi, in a statement.
