It had been a bumpy flight, she said. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had flown from New York City, changed planes in Chicago, and landed in Escanaba, Michigan. She blamed rain for the turbulence, but AOC had also just traveled through some choppy political meteorology.

On this day in mid-October, she was standing in the “Miracle of Life Pavilion,” a livestock birthing barn on the state fairgrounds in Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula, a region that went for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by 18 points in 2024. Days earlier, AOC had been standing in front of a crowd of cheering liberals, including Michael Stipe and former mayor Bill de Blasio, who had paid as much as $57,000 to gather in a swanky downtown Manhattan hotel for a campaign fundraiser.

Both those efforts were on behalf of Democratic senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — and for the larger project the two of them represent. “What we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America — period,” AOC told the New York crowd. “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere. Anywhere.”

On Tuesday night, night, the first half of that equation paid off. The brash El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers easily; at press time, he was leading by almost exactly the seven-point margin he’d predicted. After a series of shocking Democratic victories in deep-red states, El-Sayed will join a new Democratic senate majority that might swell as high as 56 seats, higher than just about anyone expected.

In his boisterous victory speech during the small hours of Wednesday morning, El-Sayed relished in cataloguing — and rebuking — the barrage of often straightforwardly Islamaphobic attacks he has been subject to from his opponent, as well as from some of the most powerful people in the country. He will become the first Muslim senator in American history. And the charismatic El-Sayed will continue to be an attention magnet, especially with Michigan moving to an earlier slot in the 2028 presidential primary........

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