Abdul El-Sayed began in his victory speech, covered by C-SPAN, by saying, "Michigan, we did it," before prompting the audience to say with him in Arabic "alhamdulillah" which translates "praise be to God."
Despite warnings about his Muslim Brotherhood family connections, the voters of Michigan overwhelmingly handed Abdul El-Sayed the Senate seat over Republican Mike Rogers. It was part of a catastrophic defeat of Republicans across the country.
AFN reported on the multiple Democrat victories that resulted in the liberal party now having control over the House and the Senate. Voters have made it clear that they are frustrated over "high prices, the Iran war and concerns over government corruption," and the turnaround marks "a fundamental unraveling of the coalition that returned Trump to the White House two years ago."
El-Sayed is now the first Muslim senator in the U.S., reports Fox News.
Ron Armstrong, president of Stand Up Michigan, noted that citizens were well aware of who they were casting their ballot for.
"For obvious reasons, it's not as if people, by this point, didn't know what he (El-Sayed) represented or what he said or who he was aligned with. Let's set that record straight. This was not an election based on not knowing who he is," Armstrong says.
The turnout, he says, was a major factor.
"It actually was much, much closer, and I do believe that had it been a regular turnout across the country, Mike Rogers would have prevailed, but obviously that was not the case. Overall, the turnout was pretty much a 10-plus Democratic turnout, and it looks like Rogers overperformed that by 5-6-7%, but it just wasn't enough," Armstrong states.
Robert Spencer, is the director of Jihad Watch. He predicted this outcome, not because of El-Sayed's policies but because of what El-Sayed represents.
"I was saying all through the campaign that I thought that it was a very tough race for Mike Rogers to run because the whole campaign was about El Sayed, whether you were for him or against him, but it was all about him. And that's the kind of candidate that gets elected. If Mike Rogers had been able to make a compelling case that would have drawn attention away from Abdul El Sayed, then he might have had a chance. But not when you have that kind of publicity being given to El Sayed," Spencer said.
Spencer says Muslims are not like any other voting bloc.
"You have Methodists and Jews and Presbyterians and whatever else you want to name, and you can say, well, usually it goes 60-40, 65-35, 55-45. But with Muslims, it's 100 and 0. They vote absolutely in lockstep, and that's just very difficult for any politician to overcome."
Armstrong points to the youth vote as a significant part of that Democrat turnout. According to Associated Press, a survey of over 100,000 voter across the 50 states revealed that young people voted sharply left.
"And they voted in a huge bloc for Abdul El-Sayed because they seek the destruction of Israel. They seek the destruction of America as we know it. They would like to eliminate the Constitution or bypass it. They would like to pack the court. They would like to control things forever and eventually be a very socialist borderline communist society," Armstrong says.
