Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, has made history after media projections declared him the winner of Michigan’s US senate race on Tuesday, becoming the first Muslim elected to the chamber and handing Democrats a crucial victory in their battle for control of the parliament.
Mike Rogers, 63, a former congressman and FBI agent, ran against El-Sayed with the backing of President Donald Trump and prominent Republicans.
During the campaign, Rogers sought to portray his opponent as an extremist by alleging links to the Muslim Brotherhood — accusations El-Sayed rejected.
El-Sayed, 42, centred his campaign on reducing the cost of living for working families and curbing corporate influence in politics.
“They want an America that is too small for some of us. We know that America is big enough for all of us,” El-Sayed said
El-Sayed had earlier defeated Haley Stevens in the Democratic Party’s primary.
Rogers and El-Sayed contested the seat held by Gary Peters, outgoing Democratic senator, who has represented Michigan in the chamber since 2015.
Rogers previously lost the 2024 senate race to Elissa Slotkin by a razor-thin margin of 0.3 percentage points.
He had backed Trump’s tariff policy and war with Iran before breaking with the president in the closing weeks of the campaign, calling for an end to the US-Canada trade war and for a swift conclusion to the Iran conflict.
Meanwhile, Democrats won full control of the US Congress in a sweeping midterm rout with a landslide of upsets.
The victory handed Democrats both the house of representatives and senate, giving them power to block Trump’s agenda and investigate alleged corruption for the last two years of his presidency.