El-Sayed wins Michigan Senate race, first Muslim senator

Detroit — Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan's US Senate race, defeating Republican Mike Rogers to become the first Muslim elected to the upper chamber of Congress, after a campaign in which President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly attacked his faith and name. The 42-year-old doctor and progressive declared victory in Detroit early on Wednesday, telling the crowd: "You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates."

The result holds the seat of retiring Democrat Gary Peters and adds to a decisive new Democratic Senate majority, after the Guardian reported the party also captured seats in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina. It is part of a broader midterm sweep that has handed Democrats control of Congress.

El-Sayed ran on an unabashedly left-wing economic pitch: universal government-funded healthcare, getting money out of politics and tackling the affordability crisis squeezing Michigan households. "You deserve to be able to see a doctor without getting a huge bill," he told voters on the eve of the vote, pledging to upend what he called a multi-billion-dollar for-profit medical system. Voters interviewed by Al Jazeera in Detroit cited petrol prices driven up by the Iran war, grocery costs and immigration raids as their top concerns.

The race was among the ugliest of the cycle. Trump branded El-Sayed a "jihadist" and, according to the Guardian, claimed he would need to pass through a metal detector to enter the Senate. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent more than $30m against him in the Democratic primary, Al Jazeera reported; El-Sayed is a vocal critic of Israel's war in Gaza. In the campaign's final days, his former primary rival, congresswoman Haley Stevens, endorsed Rogers.

Voters in Dearborn, the Detroit suburb known as the capital of Arab America, turned out in large numbers. Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute told Al Jazeera the electorate's rejection of what she called bigotry mattered for every child growing up with a name like Abdul or Zainab. Early results showed El-Sayed also performed strongly with Black voters in Detroit, despite Republican attempts to exploit Arab-Black tensions.

According to The Hindu, he will be the first Democratic doctor in the Senate since 1969. He is sworn in on January 3 — the first test of whether his healthcare agenda can survive a chamber where Democrats now hold the gavel.