The first Muslim elected to the Senate in United States history stood on the stage early Wednesday in front of a Michigan flag and an American flag and introduced himself. El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Rhodes scholar and former public health official in Detroit and Wayne County, was not just an anti-establishment economic populist winning on what proved to be a beyond-their-wildest-dreams night for Democrats. He was all of that and the son of Egyptian immigrants.
And he didn’t merely beat former Representative Mike Rogers. He won after prevailing in a contentious primary election against Representative Haley Stevens — and then shrugging off her 11th-hour endorsement of Mr. He won, too, after a general election that was among the ugliest, most racist, most Islamophobic campaigns in the history of American politics, with President Trump again and again calling him “a jihadist” and Mr.
Rogers and his supporters all but painting him as a terrorist. 54 Democrats Dem. Republicans Rep. 50 44228 Democrats Dem. Republicans Rep. 218 139 “As I was campaigning, some of you would come up and ask, ‘How come you don’t hit back?
How come you don’t call them racist or hateful?’” Dr. El-Sayed told the partyers during his victory speech an hour before The made its official call. They weren’t just attacking me.
They were targeting and attacking you. They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America.” The Michigan Democratic Party’s election night party at the Department at Hudson’s in Detroit.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times Hours earlier, before even the first polls closed, Rasha Basha, 56, stood near the stage. She wore an American flag bandanna tied around her neck.
Atop her head scarf was a blue cowboy hat with white letters spelling out “ABDUL.” “The last month — the bigotry, the hate — it actually reminded me a lot of the Sept. 11 attacks,” said Abe Basha, 37. El-Sayed’s election to the Senate “would be bigger than anything maybe we’ve ever experienced as Muslim Americans,” Mr. For months, polls had suggested it would happen.
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