Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor and progressive activist, has won Michigan's US Senate race, defeating Republican Mike Rogers and becoming the first Muslim American elected to the US Senate. His victory contributes to a decisive Democratic majority in the upper chamber after the party regained control on Tuesday.
Victory declared in Detroit
El-Sayed declared victory early Wednesday at the Michigan Democrats' headquarters in Detroit. "You welcomed me in your homes, your churches, your synagogues," he said, crediting a movement built over a year and a half of campaigning across Michigan's largest cities and smallest towns. He noted that voters gave him strength in his lowest moments.
His opponents, including Donald Trump, ran a largely Islamophobic campaign against him, frequently referencing his name and faith. Trump alleged El-Sayed was a "jihadist" and claimed he would need to walk through a metal detector to enter the Senate.
Campaign context and spending
El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health director, upset Democratic establishment favorite Haley Stevens in the primary earlier this year. He advocated for Medicare for All and called for an end to US military aid for Israel. Both candidates sought to succeed Gary Peters, the outgoing Democratic senator who has held the seat since 2015.
Pro-Israel lobby Aipac, through its Super PAC United Democracy Project, spent roughly $30m in the primary trying to stop El-Sayed, a record for a single race. By mid-October, more than $220m in total ad spending had been poured into the general election by both parties, according to AdImpact.
Reaction and policy positions
In his victory speech, El-Sayed said: "We want our taxes spent here, for schools here, and healthcare here, and infrastructure here. We don't want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war." He added that his denigrators chose to be divisive rather than address the cost of gas and groceries because they lacked answers to the problems he said they created. "They want an America that is too small for some of us," he said. "We know that America is big enough for all of us."
Rogers, a former congressman endorsed by Trump, previously lost the 2024 Senate race to Elissa Slotkin by roughly 0.3 percentage points. He had backed Trump's tariff policy and war with Iran before breaking with the president on both in the final weeks, calling for an end to the US-Canada trade war and a swift conclusion to the Iran conflict. He has opposed the Affordable Care Act, defended Trump's immigration enforcement, and repeated Trump's false claims about the 2020 election. A Fox News poll in August found 54% of Michigan voters thought El-Sayed's positions were too extreme, though 51% also said Rogers was too close to Trump.
