Democrats gain Senate control after Tuesday’s election
Abdul El-Sayed, “the doctor and progressive insurgent” as The Guardian described him, defeated Republican Mike Rogers in the closely watched US Senate race in Michigan on Wednesday, becoming the first Muslim US senator. He declared victory early Wednesday at the Michigan Democrats’ headquarters in Detroit. The result came after Democrats took control of the Senate on Tuesday and adds to a decisive Democratic majority.
El-Sayed credited a movement built over a year and a half of campaigning in Michigan’s biggest cities and smallest towns. He said voters gave him strength in his lowest moments. “You welcomed me in your homes, your churches, your synagogues,” he said.
Mike Rogers was a former congressman whom Donald Trump endorsed and who ran as his close ally. Rogers had previously lost the 2024 Senate race to Elissa Slotkin by roughly 0.3 percentage points. El-Sayed was a doctor and former Wayne County health director who defeated Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary earlier this year. The Guardian described Stevens as the Democratic establishment favorite. Both candidates were seeking to succeed outgoing Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who had held the seat since 2015.
El-Sayed advocated Medicare for All, a proposal for universal health care, and called for an end to US military aid for Israel. Republicans cast the general election as a referendum on the Democratic left, while The Guardian said the race was seen as a test of whether a progressive insurgent could win a swing state.
The Guardian said El-Sayed’s opponent and detractors, including Donald Trump, mounted a largely Islamophobic campaign against him that often pointed to his name and faith. Trump called him a “communist” and alleged that he was a “jihadist” and a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Trump also claimed El-Sayed would need to walk through a metal detector to get into the Senate.
El-Sayed said his detractors chose to be divisive rather than address the cost of gas and groceries because they did not have an answer 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.”
The pro-Israel lobby Aipac, through its Super PAC United Democracy Project, spent roughly $30 million in the primary trying to stop El-Sayed, a record for a single race. By mid-October, more than $220 million in total advertising had been spent in the general election by both parties, according to AdImpact.
Republicans had sought to portray El-Sayed as too far left for a swing state. A Fox News poll in August found that 54% of Michigan voters thought El-Sayed’s positions were too extreme. The same poll found that 51% said Rogers was too close to Trump.
Rogers backed Trump’s aggressive tariff policy and war with Iran before breaking with the president in the closing weeks of the campaign. He called for an end to the US-Canada trade war and a swift conclusion to the Iran conflict. The Guardian said Rogers has previously opposed the Affordable Care Act, defended the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and has repeated Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
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.”