DETROIT — Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate race with an unapologetic, progressive approach to politics — the type many Democrats were skeptical could win in a battleground state.
He shares that brand with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), one of his high-profile backers in the race, and his successful campaign has generated even more enthusiasm for a possible 2028 run by Ocasio-Cortez.
The progressive star from New York is openly mulling a presidential bid, and the left was closely watching El-Sayed’s run in Michigan to see how much appetite there would be for a candidate like her outside of blue areas.
Tuesday’s nationwide sweep for Democrats only boosted confidence — at least among some factions of the party — that unabashedly progressive or populist candidates could succeed in what’s expected to be a crowded and chaotic Democratic primary in 2028.
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“I think El Sayed’s win in the context of tonight’s blue tsunami reinforces the thesis that Democratic voters, honestly across the ideological spectrum, are looking for the type of fresh, bold, get-shit-done-right-now leadership that AOC represents,” Bhavik Lathia, a progressive Democratic operative, told The Washington Sun.
He spoke to The Sun at El-Sayed’s watch party on Tuesday, where El-Sayed had just delivered his victory speech to an elated crowd who had watched Democrats take control of the House and Senate earlier in the night.
“She’s got to run,” Lathia said. “If AOC doesn’t take this moment right now … we’re going to be making the same mistake.”
The four-term lawmaker has taken steps in recent months that have ginned up speculation that she’ll run. She shared on social media in August that she was freezing her eggs. Around the same time, she said in a viral interview that “Woke 1 was crazy,” read as an effort to appeal to a broader group of people. And in the run-up to the midterms, she campaigned in battleground districts and gave financial support to Senate candidates in states like Alaska, Maine and Florida.
El-Sayed’s performance was a test for Ocasio-Cortez not just because of their ideological similarities but also because of the political muscle she flexed on his behalf. She endorsed him in the primary against the Democratic establishment’s pick, transferred $1 million to his campaign, joined him on a tour through the Republican-leaning Upper Peninsula, and campaigned for him in the Detroit area.
It paid off, and that hunger for a fresh style of politics that the two politicians embody was evident among some voters in Michigan who supported El-Sayed.
“People who, like me, have considered themselves moderate for a lot of their voting life, have realized that that’s not working, and you need to pick a side,” Allison Blaxton, a caregiver and El-Sayed voter, said at one of his rallies this week. “I think that [Ocasio-Cortez] is right that the more people that choose progress over the status quo will be beneficial for everyone.”
Weeks before Election Day, Ocasio-Cortez made a bold political hypothesis reported by The New York Times: “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”
A spokesperson for the lawmaker pointed The Washington Sun to a memo the lawmaker’s campaign sent on Election Day that outlined her fundraising efforts and battleground campaign blitz. The five-page document advises allies to “rely on the details of this memo” when asked about her 2028 plans but didn’t hint at what those might be.
“But, over the course of the last two years, she has proven herself to be one of the most effective voices in the country for America’s working class,” the memo concludes.
Ocasio-Cortez was not made available for an interview for this article.
The chair of the Michigan Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, Sadaf Ali, said the caucus’s group chat was buzzing with excitement about El-Sayed’s victory and the blue wave on Tuesday. On top of the Senate victory, Republican Rep. Tom Barrett was projected to lose in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District to his Democratic opponent, Will Lawrence, a progressive who won his primary after the centrist vote was divided between two candidates.
Ali told The Sun that “2028 is going to be the year for the progressives.” She said El-Sayed showed there is a pathway for a candidate who advocates for Gaza to win in a purple state, carving a way for Ocasio-Cortez to run for president with that same message.
“As long as she sticks to those messages and she says no, we are no longer going to support occupying entities, we’re not going to do endless wars, we’re going to focus on America … I think that she has a really strong shot,” Ali said.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
There’s likely to be an argument that a progressive like Ocasio-Cortez would be a risk as a presidential candidate, and there are plenty of examples of progressives falling short outside of blue areas: On Tuesday, Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist who ran for Senate in Florida, lost while other Democrats flipped Senate seats across the South.
But at least among Democratic voters, there’s been some level of appetite shown for progressives’ agenda, including in battleground states. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a close ally of Ocasio-Cortez’s who shares many of the same populist economic positions, won Wisconsin and Michigan in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary and Nevada in the 2020 primary.
El-Sayed winning proves “Bernie’s theory of the case” that a campaign focused on economic and power struggles can win, said Josh Orton, a progressive Democratic operative and president of Demand Justice, a progressive legal advocacy group.
“That opens doors for campaigns and movements in the future — not just in Michigan, but across the whole country,” he said.
While Orton said that Ocasio-Cortez’s “future is her decision,” he said Tuesday’s results show that “the realignment that we’re seeing and the fight that people want this newly elected class to bring to Washington is a fight that AOC has been leading for years.”
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