Former public health official Abdul El-Sayed has achieved a dominant win in Michigan’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, winning by a narrow margin over Rep. Haley Stevens in a ground-shaking triumph over the $60 million spent by AIPAC and corporations to oppose him.
With over 95 percent of the vote counted, El-Sayed had 48.5 percent of the vote, compared to Stevens’s 47.5 percent. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the race, received 4 percent of the vote. AP called the race on Wednesday morning.
The race represents the latest major win for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which is increasingly defining itself through viewpoints like ending military aid to Israel, opposing data center construction, and abolishing ICE — all stances that El-Sayed has taken.
El-Sayed will face off in the general election against Republican Mike Rogers, who ran uncontested in his primary. Rogers is a former FBI agent and House representative who has the backing of President Donald Trump.
El-Sayed delivered a late night speech when he was leading Stevens by several points but the race had not yet been called. In his remarks, he struck a triumphant tone, praising his supporters for helping to beat the odds and focusing on uniting Democrats for the race ahead. He criticized Rogers for his ties to Big Pharma and his relationship with Trump.
“However we might feel about the campaign we’ve just come through, I want you to understand that it pales in comparison to the cynicism, it pales in comparison to the corporatism, in comparison to the lies that Mike Rogers and Donald Trump are going to tell,” he said. “There is so much more that unites us, however much we might disagree with our Democratic opponent.”
Stevens conceded on Wednesday, issuing a statement congratulating El-Sayed and saying that she would back him in the race.
“Donald Trump and Mike Rogers want us to come out of this primary tired and divided, so their billionaire backers can come in and let multimillionaire Mike Rogers walk away with this Senate seat,” she said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
El-Sayed centered his platform on getting money out of politics and backing Medicare for All. Through his campaign, he has balanced his policy wonkishness on the latter issue with what supporters saw as a charismatic personality that has elevated him to star status on the national level. His supporters were enthusiastic and high in number, with about 10,000 volunteers knocking on doors and making calls for the former Wayne County health director in this campaign.
“We all knew they were going to spend their money. We didn’t know they were going to spend $70 million of their money. We didn’t know that they were going to outspend us $11 to $1,” said El-Sayed. “And yet we’re still standing.”
While the primary result is a win for progressives within the party, it also marks a loss of seismic proportions for the establishment wing and the lobbyists who back them.
AIPAC, through an affiliated super PAC, poured over $30 million into backing Stevens and opposing El-Sayed — a record amount of spending for the pro-Israel group in a single race.
This was a formula that worked for Stevens in the past; Stevens originally won her House seat with $4.2 million in backing from AIPAC, which was targeting former Rep. Andy Levin for his support of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine.
But this support comes as AIPAC and support for Israel has become poisonous among large swaths of the electorate, three years into Israel’s genocide in Gaza and nearly six months into a historically unpopular U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. Polls have repeatedly found that Democratic voters and many independents say that the U.S. should decrease or end aid to Israel, as voters grow increasingly weary of the U.S.’s backing of the apartheid state.
Support for Israel has become a central issue in many primaries, and Stevens is one of Congress’s loudest backers of Israel. Her campaign in particular was plagued by a speech she once gave in which she said: “Israel comes to me in my dreams.” Last week, she additionally faced criticism for a bigoted comment in which she accused El-Sayed of wanting to “blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” seemingly in reference to the Muslim candidate’s opposition to funding Israel.
Stevens also got major infusions from corporate-backed PACs, which poured over $30 million into supporting her campaign. Her campaign’s corporate ties ran deep, as reports found ties between her consultants and tech and AI firms like Palantir.
Meanwhile, Stevens had the backing of establishment figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who quietly lined up behind her. Some Democratic Stevens backers, like Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Michigan), have even suggested that they won’t back El-Sayed in the general election.
Democratic Michigan voters also expressed support for another progressive candidate on Tuesday in the MI-07 district, which encompasses Lansing.
Voters have chosen progressive activist William Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), in the district’s Democratic primary. Lawrence has also carved a space for himself as progressive figure, condemning Israel for committing a genocide and endorsing progressive priorities like Medicare for All.
Lawrence decisively won with 44 percent of the vote, 15 points over the next candidate. The district is currently represented by a Republican, Rep. Tom Barrett, but is the former seat of Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin.
