Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won a highly coveted Michigan Senate seat on Wednesday, and will become the first Muslim to serve in the upper chamber of Congress in January.
“I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect,” Sayed said in an energized victory speech, where he said he was able to overcome Islamophobic slurs aimed at him by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
“To all the parents who struggled to explain [to their kids] why the president openly mocked someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost,” he said to cheers and applause.
Sayed, smiling and responding to lively applause, specifically called out Vance and Trump.
“JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” he said, Middle East Eye reported.
To Trump he said: “Donald, I know you struggle with my name, so after JD swears me in in January, you can just go on and call me Senator”.
Sayed’s victory marks a watershed moment in US political history.
A progressive who shocked the party establishment when he narrowly defeated Haley Stevens, who was backed by pro-Israel lobbying groups, in the August Democratic primary, Sayed was endorsed early by the Senate’s leading voice on progressive issues, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Sayed specifically challenged the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel lobbying groups that spent tens of millions of dollars against him.
“To AIPAC who spent $42 million against us. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice,” he said.
“They try to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars,” he said. “If you believe in equal rights for peace, diginity and self-determination that’s not hate, it’s love,” he said.
“We want our taxes spent here…we don’t want our money sent to do apartheid or genocidal war,” he said.
That race proved so pivotal that half a million more Democratic voters showed up to the polls than in previous primary races, which typically see low turnouts, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel said at the time.
In the later stages of his campaign, Sayed received the backing of former President Barack Obama, who remains one of the most popular figures among the party establishment.
Who is Abdul El-Sayed?
The 42-year-old’s full name is Abdulrahman Mohammed El-Sayed. He is married to an Indian-American doctor and has two daughters. When he graduated from the University of Michigan and gave the commencement address in 2007, the event’s keynote speaker, former President Bill Clinton, praised his oratory skills at the podium.
The Michigan native then earned a medical degree from Columbia University and led the public health departments in Detroit and Wayne County before launching what was seen as a long-shot bid for the U.S. Senate in 2025.
But it wasn’t his first time.
In 2018, Sayed unsuccessfully sought the governorship of Michigan, but he managed to lay the foundations for his vision for Medicare-For-All: the establishment of a national health insurance program in the U.S.
As private insurance premiums have skyrocketed in the U.S. since then, that policy proposal grew increasingly popular among those on the left and the right, as did Sayed’s criticism of the closeness of the U.S.-Israel relationship – an approach that was very similar to that of the highly popular New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
Sayed has repeatedly said that he has never met with corporate lobbyists, and in both his campaigns, he raised money only from individual donors rather than corporations.
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