Abdul El-Sayed is charismatic – and Muslim. Trump is defaming the Democratic candidate. But he is also controversial within his own party. Shortly before the election there was a scandal.
Washington. Abdul El-Sayed knows one thing for sure: neither his name nor his faith are to blame for the bad situation that Americans are currently in. The 42-year-old is running in the midterm elections on Tuesday in the state of Michigan. If he wins, he would be the first Muslim US senator in the history of the United States.
This provides a target for Donald Trump and his party. The Republicans are trying to portray El-Sayed as a threat to the country. The US President himself defames him as a “radical Islamist” who is doing everything to destroy America.
Trump claims that El-Sayed has ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood - an accusation that has already been refuted. And to emphasize all of this and to fuel the supposed fear of radical Islam in the country, he more or less consistently calls El-Sayed by his middle name, “Mohamed.”
Insulted and defamed by Trump
El-Sayed's answer: His name is not to blame for the fact that gasoline prices are currently so high. He said this to his supporters at an event in October. His name and his faith are not the reason why people can no longer afford food. “And my name is not the reason why people are worried about the future of our democracy.”
From his point of view, it is clear who is to blame: Donald Trump and the Republicans. But to change all that, the Democrats need a big win in the midterm elections. Above all, they have to win the Senate. And for that El-Sayed has to win the race in Michigan.
Who is the man Donald Trump is trying to portray as a Muslim terrorist?
A very American life story
El-Sayed himself was born in Michigan, more precisely in Rochester Hills, a suburb of the motor city of Detroit. His parents immigrated to the United States from Egypt - and separated when he was still a toddler. He was raised by his father and stepmother, a descendant of Abigail Adams, wife of the second US President John Adams. In this respect, El-Sayed's story is also a uniquely American one.
In high school he was captain of the wrestling, football and lacrosse teams - it is the physical activity that the still muscular, angular politician says helped him in his later professional life. “A lot of what I learned about leadership I learned from sports,” he said in a 2021 interview with a school newspaper. And: "Often you play with people you don't really like, but you still have to find a way to work together to achieve a common goal - and that's really important."
But that doesn't always work for El-Sayed. Two days before the midterm elections there was an open break with Haley Stevens. The moderate democrat previously failed in an internal party primary election against the left-wing El-Sayed in the summer. At the weekend she surprisingly announced that she would vote for Republican Mike Rogers in the midterm elections.
“Our Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Abdul, [has] said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and to stay away,” she said in a video on Sunday. "And he's right, and that's why today I'm supporting Mike Rogers as a candidate for U.S. Senate. I'm not part of Abdul's campaign."
It's a kind of taboo that Stevens is breaking. Not only did her staff resign as a result, Stevens was also expelled from the party in the state late on Sunday evening. “Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democrats, nor will she be in the future,” Michigan Democratic Chairman Curtis Hertel wrote on the X messaging service.
At its core, the dispute revolved around the issue that had already caused El-Sayed and Stevens to fight bitter words in the primary campaign: Israel.
Stevens repeatedly criticized her competitor sharply for his stance on Israel. Among other things, he calls for US arms deliveries to be stopped completely and called Israel's war in Gaza a “genocide”. In an April interview with CNN, he called both Hamas and the Israeli government “evil.”
Stevens, in turn, had to accept the accusation of having received millions from the Jewish lobbying organization AIPAC for her election campaign.
It is unclear whether the congresswoman decided to support Trump's party because she was personally offended or for substantive reasons.
Head-to-head race in Michigan
In any case, the open break could cause enormous damage to the Democrats – and not just in Michigan. The race in the state, along with Texas, is probably one of the most important decisions in this election. Although Michigan regularly changes sides in presidential elections, it has been more than 30 years since a Republican senator from the state entered Congress.
But the race between El-Sayed and Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent, is tight. Many polls show the Democrats slightly ahead, but it remains a neck-and-neck race.
The big concern is that Abdul El-Sayed could alienate Jewish voters with his stance on Israel. They make up less than two percent of the electorate in Michigan. But a few thousand votes can make the difference between victory and defeat.
This is also why the Democratic Party leadership would have preferred to see Stevens as the candidate. It is considered more employable.
El-Sayed wants to tax the rich more
El-Sayed is on the left-wing fringe of his party, but he is not officially a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist organization in US history. Members include Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
But although he is not a member of the DSA, El-Sayed is also in favor of free health insurance, wants to lower the cost of living and abolish the migration agency ICE as well as tax the rich more – and keep money out of politics.
“Money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all” – money out of politics, money in your pockets and health insurance for everyone. El-Sayed breaks his program down to this slogan.
A program that is so left-wing by American standards is risky in Michigan. The state is considered “purple,” meaning a state that switches back and forth between Republicans, whose color is red, and “blue” Democrats. The state voted for Donald Trump twice in the last three presidential elections.
He deliberately appealed to disappointed former Trump voters. Peter Trumbore, political scientist at Oakland University in Michigan
But that's exactly what he recognized, says Peter Trumbore, a political scientist at Oakland University in Michigan. “El-Sayed campaigned intensively in rural and more conservative parts of the state, where his events were well received,” Trumbore told the Tagesspiegel. “He deliberately reached out to disappointed former Trump voters.”
Of course, El-Sayed's election campaign is currently benefiting from the enormous increases in food and gasoline prices as well as cuts in health insurance. But improving healthcare is the central theme of El-Sayed's campaign.
It is also the area in which he is most knowledgeable. He originally wanted to become a doctor and studied medicine in New York - but then decided on a career in healthcare. He served as director of the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017 and held the same position in Wayne County from 2023 to 2025.
The man, who almost always wears a black V-neck shirt during his campaign appearances, wanted to change something in the system. “I studied medicine because I wanted to be a doctor,” El-Sayed said in an interview with The New Yorker magazine in August. But he then discovered that “our health system was actively pushing the very people I wanted to care for out of the system.”
On Tuesday, voters in Michigan can decide who they will send to the US Senate. If the state remains “blue” and Abdul El-Sayed becomes a US senator, there is a good chance that the Democrats will take over both chambers of Congress – and set limits on Donald Trump’s presidential power in the next two years.
If El-Sayed manages to win here, it could also have an impact on the entire party. Because the Democrats are faced with a fundamental question: What course will they take in the 2028 presidential election campaign?
