Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan Democratic primary for Senate
DETROIT — Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, won a razor-thin victory in the Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan that serves as the most significant triumph for his party’s left wing this year.
Dr. El-Sayed prevailed in a highly contentious contest against Representative Haley Stevens, who argued to the end that he was unlikely to win a general election in a battleground state.
Now Dr. El-Sayed will test the longstanding progressive hope that left-wing candidates can energize enough voters to beat Republicans in swing terrain. He will face former Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican who narrowly lost the state’s 2024 Senate race and ran unopposed in this year’s primary. They are competing for the seat of Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat who is retiring.
The stakes for both Mr. Rogers and Dr. El-Sayed are perhaps higher than two years ago. Michigan is widely seen as a crucial state for Senate control. And how a progressive like Dr. El-Sayed performs in a must-win state in November is likely to have ramifications on how Democratic primary voters perceive their presidential candidates’ ideology and electability in 2028.
Dr. El-Sayed campaigned hard against the Democratic political establishment. That was enough to win, but enough voters backed Stevens to suggest that the establishment still has plenty of influence.
Stevens showed strength among Black voters in Detroit and Flint and carried most of the state’s interior rural counties, aside from a few with college towns and resort communities.
With more than 95 percent of the votes counted, El-Sayed claimed victory on Wednesday. "We won. I am so proud to be your Democratic nominee for US Senate. Let's win in November," he wrote on X.
El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate defeating Congresswoman Haley Stevens.
The result represents an enormous blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which backed Stevens, who spent more than $60 million on the campaign mostly with support from pro-Israel groups.
El-Sayed will face former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in the November 3 general election. The race is considered one of a handful of competitive Senate contests in the November midterms and could determine which party controls the chamber for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.
If El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, wins in November, he would become the first Muslim senator in US history.
Wednesday’s result in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2024, will have major implications for the Democrats’ policies on conflicts in the Middle East.
El-Sayed recognizes Israel’s atrocities in Gaza as a genocide and argues that money spent on conflicts that benefit Israel should be invested in local communities in the US to address healthcare, housing and infrastructure problems.
Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, a non-partisan advocacy group that does not endorse candidates, called El-Sayed’s victory a “big deal”.
She said voters “did not buy” the avalanche of ads that did not talk about policies and only launched negative attacks “about an Arab American Muslim man named Abdul”.
“I am thrilled for the rest of the country to learn that Michigan is not going to take it,” Berry told Al Jazeera.
Stevens is a staunch supporter of Israel, and AIPAC backed her heavily in 2022 to defeat Andy Levin, a progressive Jewish legislator.
The Michigan result is the latest election defeat to pro-Israel Democrats as the party’s base – and US public opinion generally – turns against the Middle East ally.
El-Sayed will now look to unite the Democratic base after a bitter primary where Israel and AIPAC’s spending took center stage.
Even before his victory was assured, El-Sayed called on his supporters to “begin to mend fences” within the Democratic Party.
“I’m going to ask all of us as we think about where we go from here, always magnanimity in victory,” he said.
The Democratic candidate went on to warn that the primary contest “pales in comparison to the cynicism” that Rogers and Trump will unleash in the general elections.
Polls had suggested that El-Sayed was set for a comfortable win, but Stevens outperformed expectations across the state and had a strong showing in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city.
As the night went on, Stevens kept closing in on a lead that El-Sayed had built in from early returns. The race remained too close to call for hours after the polls closed.
As soon as that announcement was made, Mallory McMorrow – a state legislator who was in the US Senate race but dropped out weeks before the elections – endorsed El-Sayed.
