Abdul El-Sayed has narrowly won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Michigan, according to a race call by The Associated Press. The result marks a win for the progressive wing of the party, with El-Sayed defeating Rep. Haley Stevens, who had the backing of party centrists.
Vote counting went through the night and into the morning before the race was decided. Now El-Sayed will face former Rep. Mike Rogers this fall for the Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. The match up is seen as a must-win for Democrats hoping to retake the chamber from Republican control.
“We know that to defeat Trumpism we have to defeat Trump’s handpicked candidate,” El-Sayed told NPR’s Morning Edition shortly before the race was called.
El-Sayed is an epidemiologist and a former health director for Detroit and later the surrounding county. He ran for governor in 2018 but came in second to now-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in the primary.
His platform includes embracing Medicare for all and cutting the influence of corporate money in politics. During his campaign he highlighted and criticized the money being spent against him by an organization aligned with the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
He attracted the biggest stars on the political left, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who traveled to Michigan to campaign with him.
El-Sayed does not identify as a socialist and calls himself a capitalist. While he is not endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, whose candidates have won races this primary season, he holds some similar positions. He supports abolishing ICE, for example.
He was up against Stevens, a four-term congresswoman who flipped a suburban House seat in 2018 and served on the team President Obama tasked with rescuing the auto industry during the 2008-2009 recession. She pledged to fight Trump on his tariffs and rising costs because of the war with Iran and focused on her support for Michigan manufacturing.
Stevens’ supporters had argued that she would have had a better chance of winning in a purple state in November’s general election.
El-Sayed had been leading the polls in the primary contest while Stevens had the money advantage with groups that supported her outspending El-Sayed’s on the airwaves by several times, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.
Voters had to decide between two millennial Democrats vying to beat Rogers.
The Senate primary became a test of how candidates further left on the political spectrum will fare outside liberal cities where they have won elections earlier this year.
Michigan is a swing state. After Joe Biden won Michigan in 2020, Donald Trump carried the state in 2024, even as Democrat Elissa Slotkin narrowly won an open Senate seat that had been held by Democrats.
NPR’s Sam Gringlas contributed to this story.
