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Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor and progressive Democrat, has made history after winning Michigan’s closely watched US Senate election, becoming the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate.
El-Sayed defeated Republican candidate Mike Rogers in Tuesday’s election and used his victory speech to take a swipe at President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who had been among his prominent critics during the campaign.
Addressing Vance, he said: “JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January. So you know what that means? Wolverine 1, Buckeye 0.”
He then addressed Trump, who had repeatedly struggled with the pronunciation of his name during the campaign.
“Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name, so after JD swears me in in January, you can just go on and call me senator,” he said.
El-Sayed also took aim at political action committees and special-interest groups that spent millions of dollars campaigning against him.
He singled out the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, saying it had spent $42 million against him and thanking the organisation for giving him the opportunity to defeat it twice.
The incoming senator said his campaign had overcome huge financial disadvantages, including what he described as record outside spending and a quarter of a billion dollars spent during the general election.
“We showed that together, we can defeat a record $70 million of outside spending, an 11-to-1 money disadvantage in a primary election, that we can defeat a quarter of a billion dollars in a general election,” he said.
He ended by declaring that his campaign had defeated the political establishment, telling supporters: “Tonight, Michigan, we beat a machine.”
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