Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, defeating Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, according to a projection by Decision Desk HQ, and is set to become the first Muslim American elected to the Senate. With about 80% of the expected vote counted, NBC News showed El-Sayed ahead 51.7% to 46.3%. He will succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
The win came despite a last-minute blow: Rep. Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed narrowly beat in the August Democratic primary, endorsed Rogers two days before the election. Rogers, who lost a Senate bid in 2024, had the backing of President Donald Trump. In his victory speech, El-Sayed cast the result as a rejection of a politics of exclusion: "They wanted an America that's too small for some of us. We know that America is big enough for all of us."
Moments later, he summed up the night in four words for a cheering crowd: "The bad guys lost."
"JD, habibi"
El-Sayed then turned to Vice President JD Vance, who as president of the Senate administers the oath of office to new senators. "JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you're constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January," he said, using the Arabic term of endearment.
He saved his sharpest line for Trump, who had repeatedly mocked him on the campaign trail as "Mohamed El-Sayed" and claimed at a rally for Rogers that El-Sayed would "have to go through a metal detector before he's allowed to go into the Senate." "Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name," El-Sayed said. "So after JD swears me in in January, you can just go on and call me Senator."
Gaza and "our taxes spent here"
El-Sayed also returned to Gaza, a defining issue of his campaign in a state with one of the largest Arab American communities in the country. "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 to peace, dignity, and self-determination, that's not hate. It's love."
He tied the issue to pocketbook concerns at home. "We want our taxes spent here, for schools here, and healthcare here, and infrastructure here," he said. "We don't want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war."
He closed with a message for the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which he said had spent $42 million against him: "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice."
El-Sayed, a physician born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents, previously served as Detroit's health commissioner and Wayne County's health director and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018. His victory came on a night when, according to NBC News projections, Democrats captured control of both chambers of Congress.
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