El-Sayed’s Progressive Breakthrough

By

Ed Kilgore,

political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015

By the time the votes were to be tallied Tuesday night, it was widely assumed, mostly because of some iffy polling, that former public-health official and progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed was poised for a comfortable Democratic primary win in Michigan over Representative Haley Stevens. Turns out the race was much closer than expected. With votes still trickling in from always-slow-to-report Wayne County (Detroit), El-Sayed leads Stevens by just under one percent of the vote. NBC News called the race in the middle of the night, with major news outlets following suit on Wednesday morning.