Michigan-born Abdul El-Sayed has emerged from a bitter election campaign in his home state to be crowned America’s first Muslim senator.
The 42-year-old Democrat will take his place in the upper house on Capitol Hill following an historic victory over his Republican rival.
Mr El-Sayed’s win was part of a ‘blue tsunami’ that saw the Democrats seize control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in a remarkable sweep.
The crushing losses for Donald Trump‘s party have left him facing the prospect of being a ‘lame duck’ US President for his remaining two years in the White House.
Mr Trump has attempted to dismiss the astonishing result by insisting he would have ‘won in a landslide’ if he had been on the ballot paper.
But the Republicans’ defeat has been widely-attributed to the deep unpopularity of Mr Trump’s war with Iran, which has caused soaring fuel prices, among US voters.
In Britain, fellow Left-wingers have hailed the Democrats’ victory – and especially that of Mr El-Sayed – as a win against ‘corporate greed’, ‘racism’ and ‘genocide’.
It comes after he focused his campaign on a pledge to US voters to ‘get money out of politics’ and ‘put money in your pocket’, while also opposing military aid for Israel.
Michigan-born Abdul El-Sayed has emerged from a bitter election campaign in his home state to be crowned America’s first Muslim senator
The 42-year-old Democrat, pictured with his wife Sarah Jukaku, will take his place in the upper house on Capitol Hill following an historic victory over his Republican rival
Mr El-Sayed, branded a ‘firebrand’ and a ‘progressive populist’, staved off furious attacks from both Donald Trump and rival candidate Mike Rogers to win in Michigan
Mr El-Sayed, branded a ‘firebrand’ and a ‘progressive populist’, staved off furious attacks from both Mr Trump and rival candidate Mike Rogers to win in Michigan.
Mr Rogers, the Republican nominee, sought to portray Mr El-Sayed as sympathetic to Islamist extremism.
He tried to tie his Democrat rival to the Muslim Brotherhood, branches of which were designated as terror groups by the Trump administration earlier this year.
Mr El-Sayed, born to Egyptian-immigrant parents, disavowed the group and denied any connection with it, while his supporters rejected Islamophobic attacks on him.
Pollsters and political strategists said the attacks were aimed at dissuading Jewish and Black voters in the Detroit area from voting for him.
Mr Rogers based his claim in part on a 2012 letter signed by Mr El-Sayed and other Egyptian-Americans in support of then-newly elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The letter urged Mr Morsi to ‘purge the media and police’ following the toppling of Egypt’s authoritarian regime in the Arab Spring.
Last month, Rogers agreed with a social media post calling Mr El-Sayed a terrorist and appeared with Mr Trump at a rally where the US President likened Mr El-Sayed to the 9/11 terror attackers and said his goal was to keep a ‘jihadist’ out of the Senate.
Mr Trump also suggested that Mr El-Sayed would ‘have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate’.
‘If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas,’ he added.
In Britain, fellow Left-wingers have hailed Mr El-Sayed’s victory as a win against ‘corporate greed’, ‘racism’ and ‘genocide’
Mr El-Sayed himself responded to the US President’s decision to refer to him by his middle name, Mohamed, saying during a rally of his own: ‘I’ll be Senator Mohamed to you, bro.’
‘They think that by pointing at my name and my faith, that somehow you’re going to ignore the fact that you can’t afford your gas or your groceries, can’t see a doctor,’ he added.
Despite being aligned with the Democrats’ Left-wing, Mr El-Sayed has described himself as a capitalist and rejects being labelled a socialist.
He is a former public health official and previously spent time at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
Mr El-Sayed’s fierce criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, which he has branded a genocide, and his attack on corporate political donors has endeared him to Left-wingers across the Atlantic.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski issued a congratulatory message to the new Senator-elect on X, saying his win was among victories across the US ‘for communities standing up to billionaires and the media empires they own’.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn posted: ‘Congratulations to Abdul El-Sayed on a stunning victory in Michigan.
‘You stood up against corporate greed, against racism and against genocide.
‘Your incredible campaign shows that there’s something more powerful than big money, hatred and lies: hope.’
And Labour MP Naz Shah wrote: ‘When you vilify, smear and demonise good people who refuse to let your hate define them, other good people don’t stand by.
‘They stand up and vote for hope over fear. Congratulations @AbdulElSayed.’
