Washington Isn’t Ready For Abdul El-sayed

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. — Washington isn’t ready for Hurricane Abdul.

The midterms are still a few weeks away, but the biggest individual story of 2026 may turn out to be the election of the country’s first Muslim senator, Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan Democrat.

Yet that’s only the start.

El-Sayed, by dint of his history-making story and enemy-making swagger, is poised to have the biggest impact of any new lawmaker if he wins next month. He told me he’ll leverage what he calls his “movement” to build a platform in the Senate, push his party unapologetically left and become the man to see for Democratic presidential aspirants coming through Michigan, now an early primary state.

How do I know?

He says as much.

“You think my goal is to win — only?” El-Sayed said last week after a long day on the road. “That’s not my goal. My goal is to govern well. We treat getting elected as if that's some sort of achievement. That's when the thing starts.”

And “the thing” is more than just delivering good government. It’s El-Sayed in full, coming soon to a screen near you, America.

“Politics is the alchemy of turning attention into power,” he says on the stump.

This is all, of course, all contingent on whether he prevails over former Rep. Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent.

But El-Sayed claims he has already guaranteed victory. He told my colleague Adam Wren upon winning a closer-than-expected primary this summer that the general election would be easier — he’d win by seven points, he anticipates.

I brought up that Namath-esque prediction when I interviewed El-Sayed last week.

“I'm not pulling back my call,” he said.

Imagine an Arab Pete Buttigieg: of the Midwest and proud of it — but also perhaps because of it, quick to show you how smart and dexterous he is and why he deserved that Rhodes.

Then add in some Barack Obama. At his most inspiring, summoning the best of America by placing his unlikely ascent in line with the country’s capacity for self-improvement and better angel-reaching. And at his least-inspiring, the slightly patronizing professor-type who assumes that you, normal Michigander, had never heard of the Strait of Hormuz before this past February.

Then comes the id — and, believe me, it’s Donald J. Trump, but a millennial who never skips leg day: Self-referential, hungry for media attention and hungrier still for affirmation.

That’s Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, 41, an Egyptian-American and Michigan man.

He's an MD — though he never practiced — and previously ran the Wayne County Department of Health while also co-authoring a book about Medicare for All.

He alternates between joking about how long his first name is — it summons “sounds that come out of people's throats they don't know they have” — and scorning Trump’s casual race-baiting. The president has taken to mocking El-Sayed, and making sure people know he’s a Muslim, by calling him only “Mohamed.” (Defusing claims he supports Sharia law, El-Sayed shakes his thing and says he abides only by Shakira law, the one commandment of which is that “the hips don’t lie.”)

If we’re being honest, however, El-Sayed doesn’t sound at all unhappy as he repeatedly reminds audiences that Trump “can’t keep my name out of his mouth.” The joke is on Trump, though, because, as El-Sayed asks supporters, do they know what Mohamed means? “The praised one — so go ahead and call me that.”

It’s easy to find him appealing, impressive, even charming, if, as I do, you have an affection for shit-talkers.

It’s also easy to find him insufferable, and many in both parties here do. There’s a reason why he’s running closely in an enviable climate for Democrats and in a state that hasn’t elected a GOP senator since 1994 — and it’s not just bigotry.

There’s an edge in his contempt for Israel, and it has already stung him, first when he had to apologize for seeming dismissive of the attack on a Michigan synagogue and then more recently when he wouldn’t answer whether Iran or Israel pose the bigger threat to the U.S.

The vaulting ego can also be an acquired taste in a state not known for its bravado. In fact, some Michigan Democratic women have taken to privately calling him “Bro-duel.”

In an auditorium at Central Michigan University last Friday night, though, the liberal students and AARP-eligible types filling most every seat were excitedly chanting “Ab-Duel!” before he even arrived on stage.

I sat down with El-Sayed after the rally. By the time we talked, it was after 9 p.m.; he had already been on the trail for 12 hours and had pre-tapedMeet the Press before taking the stage.

El-Sayed, though, was raring to explain what he had created and why it would endure.

“There are a lot of people who are going to try and do this, but can’t do it; they're just not credible,” he said. “It's the problem with a lot of politicians. They’re like, ‘What's the message now?’”

I interjected — what did he mean by “do this?”

“Build a movement like this,” he said. “If you're out here waffling on what your message is, trying to find the next message, you're not going to be able to pull it off.”

He seemed to be pulling it off. Most statewide candidates don’t draw such crowds to mid-sized towns in the middle of the state on a Friday night. Plus, timing is the best strategy in any campaign, and El-Sayed picked a great year to run as a Democrat.

But wasn’t that the point — why make the campaign about himself, rather than following the easier course of letting Trump’s unpopularity be the overriding theme in a state where tariffs and gas prices have brutalized Republicans?

Couldn’t El-Sayed have won his race more easily if he hadn’t seemed so eager to be the main character of the midterms, going on Fox News and giving to Trump as good as he gets? On the stump earlier in the day, El-Sayed had, for example, said his marriage was built on love while the president and first lady were “in a weird business relationship.”

He dismissed the idea of playing it safe, or safer. And — given his identity, left-wing politics and the GOP need to flip any Senate seats they can — El-Sayed was admittedly bound to be a central figure in the midterms.

There’s something else at work, though: El-Sayed enjoys the role.

He did media gaggles following every event throughout the day and, in Trump-like fashion, made a go at charming or teasing most every reporter he recognized. I asked him, after an event with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), if he embraced being a main character of 2026.

“From a personal standpoint, it sucks,” he began, citing his two young children and lamenting the “kind of targeting” that seems to grow ever more threatening in today’s politics.

Then came the pivot.

“From a political standpoint, yeah, absolutely,” said El-Sayed, returning to Trump. “I'm happy to eat his lunch, right? And notice, he stopped saying my first name, once I clocked him on how he said it.”

As he told me when we talked at the end of the day, staying off TV or avoiding debates or just spending the fall shaking hands outside the Big House was never an option.

“It’s just not honest to who I am,” El-Sayed acknowledged. “I want to have a conversation with the public. This is the problem that people have with Democrats, honestly. We get elected and then don’t seem to do stuff with it because we don’t want to go and push our ideas.”

There’s not much doubt about his plans to do just that, whether it's pursuing campaign finance reform, universal Medicare or a harder line on Israel.

Already, the talk among Michigan Democrats is less about 2026 than 2027, and namely the scorpions-in-a-bottle potential of having two senators brimming with self-confidence and ambition: El-Sayed and Sen. Elissa Slotkin. It could be a modern-day Lautenberg-and-Torricelli, but with both harboring presidential ambitions.

That’s cause for excitement here — where Michigander-by-marriage Buttigieg is also primed to run again for president and outgoing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will surely land on Veep lists.

Yet this is also a state where stalwarts such as former Sens. Debbie Stabenow, Carl Levin as well as Reps. John Dingell and Fred Upton were always Pure Michigan, without an eye toward the White House.

As one longtime Michigan Democratic operative grumbled: “So that’s all our two Senate seats have become — national platforms for individuals.”

Michigan itself will be bathed in the spotlight for the next year-plus. That’s thanks to the DNC’s decision, after decades of lobbying by the likes of Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), to make it the only Midwestern state in the party’s early primary window in the 2028 presidential race.

El-Sayed can’t wait to play host and vetter.

“I want Michigan to be the next Iowa,” he told me. “You're going to come here, you're going to meet all our people, all our diverse communities. And Michigan is going to have a say.”

So will El-Sayed, namely over a nosh at the Dearborn Meat Market.

“The kebab is phenomenal,” he promised. “Some of the best you’ve ever had.”

I’m told a series of Michigan Democratic elders have counseled El-Sayed to temper his cockiness, if not that bluntly. He’s also shrewd enough to sniff out concerns that he’s already looking over the mitten’s horizon.

Despite his budding reputation as the Michigan Mouth — and there’s more than a little Stephen A. Smith there, too — El-Sayed is far more diplomatic regarding home-state Democratic politics. First off, he’s emphatic that he won’t run for president in 2028 and will serve a full Senate term.

El-Sayed also curbs his lip when asked about Democrats who remain skeptical of his candidacy, suddenly sounding like every bit the conventional politician. When asked by a local reporter at a media gaggle about his private meeting with Lansing’s Jewish mayor, Andy Schor, El-Sayed twice only said it was “a great conversation” before moving on.

He also has only praise for Slotkin and how helpful she has been to him since the end of what was a bruising primary with Rep. Haley Stevens.

“Senator Slotkin is going to be a great colleague,” El-Sayed predicted, conceding that, while they have policy differences, “she says what she means, and she means what she says.”

When I pressed him on why Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee here, is poised to win by a larger margin than him, El-Sayed chalked it up to the money being spent against him and the national Republican targeting from Trump on down.

“You're not hearing Donald Trump tweet about John James,” he said, naming Benson’s Republican opponent — perhaps to avoid slighting her by suggesting Trump was ignoring her in particular.

He and his ticketmate were complementary, El-Sayed argued, before letting the swagger slip in a bit.

“A lot of the people she can talk to, she's having a conversation with, they're going to go and vote, like, straight ticket,” said El-Sayed. “And a lot of people I'm talking [to] would not come out if I wasn’t on that ballot.”

Michigan Democrats are concerned, and Michigan Republicans hopeful, that there are also voters here who will skip the Senate line or even vote for Rogers precisely because it’s El-Sayed on the ballot.

After a morning agriculture-focused event on a farm in Mid-Michigan, Stabenow, who served four Senate terms and has been a player here since being elected to Ingham County in 1974 at the age of 24, told me she expected El-Sayed to win. But she predicted there would be “drop-off” between him and Benson, who’s at the top of the ticket.

One reason is because of his coalition: Black voters largely supported Stevens in the primary. Stabenow said El-Sayed has “a little bit” of work to do with African Americans and “he’s got to go back” into that community (There has been a steady stream of Black Democratic surrogates stumping here, and Obama himself is coming later in October).

“I think it’s going to be close,” she said.

Dennis Kellogg, the farm owner and host of the event, got to the point about why there’s some resistance to El-Sayed. Some Michiganders believe Muslims are “going to come after you and all that kind of crap.”

One of Kellogg’s “coffee buddies,” in fact, had once told him: “I ain’t going to vote for no Arab.”

But then Kellogg pointed a finger over toward his barn, outside of which the chairs had been for the event, and said, “Well, guess what, he was here today.”

For all the talk about whether El-Sayed’s victory is proof of concept that the left can win in the heartland, far from the latte precincts on the coasts, equally telling is whether he can prevail on his terms, relishing all that main character energy.

“I go about doing this in a different way than most people,” he told me. “There's a trade-off. When you earn attention, you can't control it. Democrats are more interested in control than they are in volume of attention.”

You’re a volume guy, I pointed out, stating the blazingly obvious.

“Well, it's because I'm not a corporate guy,” he said. “So I can't buy attention like they can.”

But you get it for free.

“Exactly, so I go everywhere. I talk to everybody, I say the same thing. And I earn the attention that they can buy.”

There’s only one catch, El Sayed observed: “That also means I can't control it.”