Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan, becoming the latest leftwing candidate to capture the party’s nomination ahead of November’s midterm elections.
El-Sayed, a progressive, beat Haley Stevens, a moderate US representative backed by the party’s establishment. He will now face Republican Mike Rogers in the race to represent the midwestern purple state in the Senate. The Associated Press called the race on Wednesday morning, moments after Stevens’ campaign said she had called El-Sayed to concede.
El-Sayed succeeded with relatively close margins in a sign that battleground state voters are still grappling over the direction of the Democratic party.
Michigan voters also delivered victories for other progressive candidates, nominating climate activist William Lawrence and Donavan McKinney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, both of whom are backed by Bernie Sanders in their bids for seats in the House of Representatives.
Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 and 2024, though Joe Biden won it in 2020. Both the state’s current senators are Democrats and retaining the seat remains critical to Democrats’ hopes of winning back the US Senate this year, and a crucial part of the map for the 2028 presidential election.
El-Sayed, 41, is a former public health official who centered his run on the Medicare For All model of universal healthcare, while confronting massive outside spending against him, which became another theme of the race. Stevens, meanwhile, touted her work on the US auto rescue taskforce, where she served as chief of staff.
Rogers, a former congressman from the state, was also the Republican nominee for US Senate in 2024, when he lost to the senator Elissa Slotkin.
While El-Sayed is not a democratic socialist, his run came amid a wave of wins by democratic socialist candidates elsewhere in the country. He has said he is a “capitalist who understands how capitalism works” who wants to regulate monopolies.
Stevens saw the backing of establishment Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, while El-Sayed received endorsements from prominent progressives such as Sanders.
Until earlier this summer, the race was a three-way race with Mallory McMorrow, a state senator who eventually dropped out. Early Wednesday, McMorrow threw her support behind El-Sayed. “Huge congratulations to Abdul El-Sayed for winning the Democratic primary to become our nominee to be Michigan’s next US Senator. I’m proud to give Abdul my full endorsement and support as we head to November together as a unified party,” she said in a statement.
The role of Black voters in the Democratic primary came into focus in the final weeks of campaigning, with both candidates seeking to turn out the vote in Black communities, which make up about one-fifth of the Democratic primary electorate, via events at churches and festivals.
More than $40m has poured into the race from outside groups supporting Stevens or attacking El-Sayed, including from groups associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a pro-Israel lobby. Some ads elevated Stevens’ connection to Barack Obama on the auto rescue, which voters have seen as a quasi-endorsement, despite Obama not formally endorsing in the race.
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