Who is Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan Democrats' best hope at taking back the Senate?

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 02:04 Issued on: 05/08/2026 - 17:22Modified: 05/08/2026 - 17:25 Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic primary election to contest one of the state's two Senate seats. He is just the latest progressive upstart to upset the game plan of the Democratic party's centrist establishment, with a platform that focused on working towards universal health care and getting corporate money out of elections… His criticism of Israel too was a flashpoint in the campaign – representing a growing shift among Democrats against what many see as an apartheid state currently carrying out a genocide while dragging the US into unnecessary wars in the Middle East. His portrait by Bryan Quinn. Keywords for this article