Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former public health official aligned with the left flank of the Democratic Party, won Michigan’s highly hostile Senate race, defeating his Republican rival, former Rep. Mike Rogers, according to NBC News projects.
El-Sayed, 42, overcame a wave of Islamophobia fomented by President Donald Trump and others to become the first Muslim elected to the chamber.
He also overcame a last-minute defection from Rep. Haley Stevens, a defeated rival who went back on her promise to support him and endorsed Rogers after going to church with him on Sunday.
El-Sayed’s victory extends a long drought for the Republican Party in the state. No Republican has won a Senate seat in Michigan since 1994. El-Sayed will succeed outgoing Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
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The clash between El-Sayed and Rogers, 63, was considered one of the most closely watched and aggressively fought in the country, given El-Sayed’s alliance with progressive firebrands such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. El-Sayed’s criticism of the Israeli government, which he accuses of genocide, has also been a constant flashpoint.
A group affiliated with the pro-Israel group AIPAC spent more than $30 million in an unsuccessful effort to put Stevens over El-Sayed in the Democratic primary and re-engaged in Michigan in the final weeks of the general election. Stevens, meanwhile, linked his defection from El-Sayed to her stance on Israel and her campaign’s suggestion that she was not welcome at his campaign events after she began to be more vocal about her criticism in the final days of the race.
Rogers and his Republican allies have attempted to spin El-Sayed’s anti-Israel stance into attacks evoking his religion and raising questions about his loyalties. Vice President J.D. Vance, in particular, loved to criticize El-Sayed — a rift born from El-Sayed’s sarcastic question about whether Vance’s late Appalachian-born white grandfather would have approved of his Native American wife.
Trump’s attacks on El-Sayed’s faith went further.
Days after El-Sayed’s primary victory in August, Trump began falsely claiming that “jihadists” were gaining ground in American politics and government. The attacks intensified over the next three months, with Trump at one point leading a crowd in Youngstown, Ohio, in a frenzied chant of “Expulsion!” Eviction! » He often referred to El-Sayed by his middle name, Mohamed.
El-Sayed had a practical retort about this.
“For you, it will be Senator Mohamed, my brother,” he said at an Oct. 25 event with Sanders.
Trump’s rally that same day in Port Huron, Michigan, led to an escalation in his speech.
“I’m here to stop a jihadist member of the Muslim Brotherhood from becoming a United States senator, and that’s a fact,” Trump said. “We are not going to allow this to happen.”
Rogers tried to distance himself from the more inflammatory speeches, but he also accused El-Sayed of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt in 1928. The Trump administration has designated sections of the group as terrorist organizations. El-Sayed denounced and denied any connection with the group.
El-Sayed structured his campaign pitch around a simple, ideologically focused slogan: “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All.” Although it established him firmly to the left of his party, polling throughout the race suggested his message helped him advance with Trump voters.
Rogers has struggled to escape Trump’s shadow. In the final weeks of the race, he tried to distance himself from Trump’s war in Iran and tariffs — two developments that have caused rising prices and deepened voters’ economic concerns.
“Well, there are some things that Canada is doing that are absolutely unfair to the people of Michigan and the rest of the country,” Rogers said in an interview this month with “NBC Nightly News.” “I’ve been an expert on targeted, temporary tariffs to fix these things. I thought the sweeping sweep was too ambitious and I’d like to see this wrapped up.”
Asked in the interview whether the war in Iran was a mistake, Rogers responded less confidently: “Well, we’ll find out. I don’t think so.”
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