‘I didn’t expect to be a main character’: Abdul El-Sayed heads to the Senate with a mandate – and a spotlight

The successful Democratic contender for a Michigan Senate seat parried the many insinuations lobbed by Republicans What happens after the ‘blue wave’? Ask your midterm election results questions Abdul El-Sayed said he did not expect to be “a main character of this midterms”, but the first Muslim elected to the US Senate in history will take his seat in January after a vitriolic campaign that cast him as the central villain of the president and his party. By October he told the Associated Press he was “not shying away” from those rightwing fixations. “What are you implying?” El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, replied when a town hall attender asked if he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, in a now-viral exchange. Continue reading...

Joseph Gedeon in Detroit, Michigan · Fri, Nov 6, 2026, 4:46 AM
US news | The Guardian

‘I didn’t expect to be a main character’: Abdul El-Sayed heads to the Senate with a mandate – and a spotlight

The successful Democratic contender for a Michigan Senate seat parried the many insinuations lobbed by Republicans

What happens after the ‘blue wave’? Ask your midterm election results questions

Abdul El-Sayed said he did not expect to be “a main character of this midterms”, but the first Muslim elected to the US Senate in history will take his seat in January after a vitriolic campaign that cast him as the central villain of the president and his party.

By October he told the Associated Press he was “not shying away” from those rightwing fixations. “What are you implying?” El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, replied when a town hall attender asked if he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, in a now-viral exchange.

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