Abdul El-Sayed, a public-health official who lost in a primary landslide when he ran for governor of Michigan eight years ago, eked out a victory over Representative Haley Stevens on Tuesday night in one of the most closely watched, bitterly contested and expensive Democratic Senate primaries in the country.
He overcame more than $60 million in super-PAC spending against him, most of it from AIPAC, the deep-pocked pro-Israel group that’s spending in this midterm cycle has backfired against its chosen candidates as much as it has helped. In this campaign, El-Sayed wore the spending barrage against him as a badge of pride.
“As I reflect on the last 15 months, I reflect on people coming together, believing that we really could have a politics bigger than what they said we could have,” he said at an election-eve rally at a cocktail bar and café in Detroit’s wealthy Boston–Edison Historic District. “A politics bigger than a record amount of spending to try and pick a U.S. senator that represents the interests of corporations or special interests rather than the interests of Michiganders.”
For progressive Democrats, the general election between El-Sayed and Mike Rogers, a former representative who lost the 2024 Senate contest to Elissa Slotkin by less than half a percentage point, is set to be a proof-of-concept contest. Win, and they have shown that being as left-wing as El-Sayed is — he once called for defunding the police (a position he now disavows) and favors Medicare for All — isn’t a hindrance. Lose, and Democrats chances of retaking the Senate drop dramatically and with it the appetite among Democrats for a lefty candidate in the upcoming presidential primary, whether it be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, or anyone else.
