Flanked by Detroit's top city officials and labor leaders, Abdul El-Sayed on Monday sought to shore up his support in Michigan's largest city in a hard-fought contest that may determine control of the U.S. Senate
As a former city public health official, El-Sayed said he, not his GOP opponent Mike Rogers, a former congressman representing Lansing, has shown the most commitment to Detroit voters and their needs.
"See, I didn't just get here to start asking for votes, didn't just open an office, you know, 16 days ago thinking maybe I could go sling some shots of tequila and win some votes," El-Sayed said. "I've been here since 2015. I've been here before I ever thought I would run for office. I've been here because I understood the incredible weight of the work that I had trained to do in public health."
Less than three months ago, El-Sayed eked out a win in the Democratic Senate primary. But the election results revealed a vulnerability: his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, won the city of Detroit with more than 60% of the vote, with El-Sayed garnering only 31% of the city's African American vote.
Rogers has made Detroit and black voters a visible part of his closing argument, opening a campaign field office in the city in mid-October. Although El-Sayed is up by 1.9% statewide in the RealClearPolitics Poll Average, some election experts believe that El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim senator if he prevails next week, faces challenges when it comes to racial, religious, and generational divides.
At an event billed as "Detroit for Abdul" on Monday, El-Sayed tied his public health record to the disparities facing Detroiters, calling the death rates of black mothers and infants a "moral abomination." He also blamed Rogers, who, as a state senator, helped write the prototype for Michigan's emergency management system, for the loss of local control over Detroit's public schools.
The message was unmistakable: I'm one of you – a native Michigander born in a Detroit suburb, not the outsider son of an immigrant that President Trump and Rogers have warned voters against sending to the Senate.
"I've been an Abdul in Michigan for 40 years," he said.
That El-Sayed is still making that case in the final days suggests his campaign is not taking the GOP attacks lightly in a state that has swung back and forth. Donald Trump carried Michigan in 2016 and 2024, while losing it to Joe Biden in 2020. Yet Democrats have held both of its Senate seats since 2001.
For a candidate whose family immigrated from Egypt and who has called for abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, immigration cuts both ways. Opposing the Trump administration's ICE raids and aggressive deportations serves as both a rallying cry for the Democratic base and an opening for Republicans who have fused the issue with attacks on his purported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
El-Sayed has repeatedly denied that he or his family has any ties to the Brotherhood and has disavowed the group. But Rogers has pointed to a 2012 Arabic statement supporting Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood figure, that El-Sayed signed. The statement urged Morsi to "purge the media and the police as quickly as possible." The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization earlier this year.
Immigration has taken on an outsized role in the race, with Trump and other Republicans pointing to violent protests in Europe, where demonstrators have waved Palestinian flags, as a warning about what Democrats' immigration policies could bring.
The Senate race is the most expensive in Michigan history. Rogers and his allies have spent more than $158 million compared to El-Sayed's and his supporters' $127 million, according to Votelog.com.
'Apple pie' vs. 'jihadist'
At a Sunday campaign event in Port Huron, Trump escalated his attacks on El-Sayed, opening his rally with Rogers by saying he had come to stop "a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member" from joining the Senate.
Trump said El-Sayed should have to pass through a metal detector before entering the Senate chamber, and he invoked the Sept. 11 attacks, likening the effort to defeat El-Sayed to the passengers who fought hijackers aboard United Flight 93. David Beamer, whose son Todd died on that flight fighting the hijackers, appeared on stage to drive the message home.
Trump also said electing El-Sayed to the Senate and handing Democrats majority control will help usher in a far-left agenda.
"They're going to annihilate your borders, decimate Michigan jobs, factories, mutilate your children with transgender," he warned.
Trump then cast Rogers in very different terms. "I call him Apple Pie," the president said. "He's like central casting. He's what your state is all about."
El-Sayed has called it "shameful" for Rogers to question his allegiance to the United States. Asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" about Trump's language, Rogers said the race was between him and El-Sayed and that he had never called his opponent a terrorist.
But at the rally, Rogers repeated his own allegations, noting that the Muslim Brotherhood had celebrated only one U.S. primary win this year: El-Sayed's.
A changing state
The charges and counter-charges are taking place in a state whose immigrant population has grown steadily while its native-born population has stagnated. Michigan was home to about 779,000 foreign-born residents in 2024, or 7.7% of the population, up from 637,000, or 6.4%, a decade earlier, according to USAFacts, a nonprofit that collects government data. That's still roughly half the national share of 14.8%.
Metro Detroit has driven much of the change. From 2010 to 2023, the region's native-born population fell by about 58,700 while its foreign-born population grew by about 109,000, according to a Census analysis published by Michigan Advance, a nonprofit news site. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, the metro area added more than 40,000 immigrants, helping Detroit post a second straight year of population growth. About one-third of Michigan's immigrants were born in Asia, nearly one-quarter in Latin America and nearly one in five in the Middle East.
The Trump administration's immigration crackdown has directly impacted those communities. ICE arrests and detentions of Michigan immigrants in Michigan nearly tripled in 2025, Bridge Michigan reported. Federal agents arrested 4,218 people in the state between January 2025 and February 2026, while only about 23% had criminal convictions, according to a Detroit Metro Times review of Deportation Data Project figures.
The administration has defended the operations. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security publicized recent ICE arrests in Detroit and Grand Rapids of people with records including armed robbery and identity theft.
"Every day, the steadfast patriots of ICE are arresting and deporting illegal aliens from all across the country, including the beautiful state of Michigan,"â?¯DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. "In recent days, they've arrestedâ?¯armed robbers, scammers, and drunk drivers. At DHS, we will always enforce the law and protect the American people."
A split electorate
Polls suggest Michigan voters are torn between the goal of the crackdown and the way it has been carried out. A YouGov survey of 833 registered Michigan voters, commissioned by the ACLU of Michigan and fielded in late January and early February after fatal shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis, found most believed ICE had been too aggressive. At least two-thirds backed state bills to rein in the agency. Nationally, a Marquette Law School poll in January found 60% disapproved of how ICE was doing its job, even as 56% favored deporting people in the country illegally.
But immigration remains Rogers' strongest ground. A Fox News poll released late last month had El-Sayed ahead 50% to 49% among likely voters, yet Rogers led by 26 points among the 44% who said immigration would be extremely important to their vote. El-Sayed led by 13 points among voters most focused on the cost of living.
The candidates' records give each side material. El-Sayed has called for dismantling ICE since 2018, when he was photographed in an "Abolish ICE" T-shirt. This year he called the agency "irredeemable" while saying the country still needs a secure border and comprehensive immigration reform. Rogers has defended ICE but said at the candidates' first debate that agents should have picked up their targets quietly and left. At last week's second debate, he accused El-Sayed of wanting to open the border.
The overall race remains close. A Marist poll of 1,185 likely voters taken Oct. 15-18 had El-Sayed ahead 50% to 48%. A New York Times/Siena poll in mid-September found just 34% of likely Michigan voters approved of Trump.
'We have seen this movie before'
Former President Barack Obama tried to blunt the criticisms Saturday at a rally at Cass Technical High School that drew about 3,000 people. Comparing the attacks on El-Sayed's name and faith to those he faced in 2008 and for years from Trump, Obama said: "We have seen this movie before. I starred in it."
Obama stressed El-Sayed's Michigan roots, noting that he was born and raised in the state to parents who worked in the auto industry and that he captained sports teams in high school in Bloomfield Hills.
"Abdul's as Michigan as it gets," he said.
The former president also waved off El-Sayed's past criticism of his administration, joking that he also has disagreements with his wife, Michelle, too.
Obama, who carried Michigan handily both times he ran for president and remains highly popular among Democrats, seemed to be trying to neutralize the criticism about El-Sayed's decision to campaign with far-left live-streamer Hasan Piker. In 2019, Piker said "America deserved 9/11," a comment he tried to walk back from afterward.
El-Sayed has also defended questionable immigration circumstances surrounding Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's naturalization process.
In a Sunday interview on MSNOW, El-Sayed said it was hard not to compare Republican criticism of his faith and family to what's happening to Omar, pointing to the recent federal search of her home and attacks on her Somali heritage.
"It's disgusting, and it's un-American," he remarked. "I mean, the thing about Donald Trump is that he has about as much regard for the Constitution as he has for a piece of toilet paper in his personal bathroom, because that's basically what he's done with it."
El-Sayed defended Omar while avoiding commenting on the merits of the immigration probe.
"When he goes after Congresswoman Omar, when he goes after me, he's going after that idea of America," he stated.
On Tuesday night, Omar was scheduled to campaign with Piker at a sold-out event in Minneapolis. Her campaign says early voting among people under 40 is down and is pitching the event as a way to get young people to the polls.
El-Sayed on Saturday told the crowd that growing up as the child of an immigrant and raising two daughters here has only deepened his appreciation for the United States.
"Don't get it twisted," he said. "I love America. I'm so grateful I get to raise my two daughters here in America. I just love America enough to call on her to be America for all of her kids," El-Sayed said.
Whether that message carries in Detroit may decide the race. More than 986,000 Michiganders had already cast early ballots as of Monday morning.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.Source link
