DETROIT: Democrat Abdul El-Sayed said early Wednesday that he had won a US Senate seat in Michigan over former Republican lawmaker Mike Rogers, which would make him the first Muslim elected to the upper chamber of Congress.
“Michigan, we did it!” El-Sayed said in a speech at his election headquarters in Detroit. “I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect from the great state of Michigan.”
El-Sayed won despite a last-minute hiccup in his campaign when congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost the primary to El-Sayed, came out in support of Rogers at the 11th hour.
El-Sayed, a candidate with a rising national profile, has been a vocal critic of the US alliance with Israel, calling for a halt to arms sales to that country.
Similarly, Adam Hamilton won the US Senate race in Kansas, according to media projections, ousting Trump-backed Republican Roger Marshall to become the state’s first Democrat elected senator in 94 years and helping Democrats cement control of the chamber.
It was a striking Democratic gain in a state President Donald Trump carried by more than 16 percentage points in 2024 and where the race had initially been expected to be safely Republican.
Hamilton, pastor of the country’s largest United Methodist congregation, campaigned on affordability and bipartisanship, calling himself an “independent-minded Democrat” and rejecting Republican portrayals of him as far left.
Wearing a pin that said “love one another,” Hamilton spoke in his victory speech of the need for unity between Democrats and Republicans, and for curbing cost of living increases caused by Trump policies like tariffs and cuts to food assistance.
In electing him, “the people in Kansas, Republicans, Democrats and independents, were saying, what’s happening in Washington is not okay,” Hamilton said.
The race tightened in its final weeks, drawing Trump and Vice President JD Vance to Kansas to campaign for Marshall.
At a Wichita-area campaign rally on October 19, Trump said the US Department of Agriculture would launch a “harvest fuel relief program” to provide farmers with $8 billion to offset diesel costs during the harvest season.
