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Not long ago, Abdul El-Sayed was polling third place in the three-way race for the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s wide-open Senate seat, set to be decided by voters on Aug. 4. The race is critical to both Democrats’ and Republicans’ hopes of taking the chamber. If the 41-year-old doctor and former health official had a profile, it was decidedly local, not national. Then recently, that all changed.

First, El-Sayed campaigned with Hasan Piker, the leftist streamer and antagonist of many moderate and pro-Israel Democrats. Some Democrats have debated in recent weeks whether the party should associate with Piker at all, given his past comment that “America deserved 9/11” (which he’s said he regrets) and others about Israel and the war in Gaza that have been labeled antisemitic (which he strongly denies). The pair appeared together at college campuses in Michigan in fairly straightforward rallies aimed at reaching younger voters, who are Piker’s audience. It was when El-Sayed refused to condemn past comments from Piker—he said it wasn’t up to him to address all of Piker’s statements—that suddenly everyone wanted a piece of him.

“The Mamdani of the Midwest,” declared Bari Weiss’ Free Press, disapprovingly. El-Sayed became worthy of Fox News headlines but also more centrist criticism in the Atlantic. Leaks suggested that Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, would be fine with the nomination of either of El-Sayed’s two opponents—the moderate Democrat Haley Stevens or the more mainstream liberal Mallory McMorrow—but not El-Sayed himself. A boogeyman for both Republicans and establishment Democrats was born.

At the same time, something else happened. Recent polls in Michigan suggest El-Sayed is surging. One showed him with a gain of 8 points since January, tied with McMorrow with 24 percent support. (More than a third of voters remained undecided.) That rise has helped turn him into a proxy for fights that extend well beyond the state: how Democrats talk about Israel and Gaza, how much risk a progressive candidate can take without becoming “unelectable,” what the party’s future actually looks like. Enter that Atlantic article: “If successful, he would turn a very likely Democratic win into a jump ball,” Jonathan Chait wrote.

Indeed, El-Sayed is not just a proxy. He will actually have to win over Democrats—of many stripes—if he wants to move ahead in Michigan. Then he will have to take on a bigger, more complicated statewide electorate to defeat the Republican nominee and win the Senate seat, a sure-to-be-tight battle that primary voters are already trying to triangulate. If some of the sudden national attention can feel like hot air, the local fight over these issues is about to get very real.

El-Sayed was clearly well aware of all this when I stepped into his house in Ann Arbor last week. It looked disorientingly familiar to a fellow Egyptian American: Art from Egypt lined the walls, with brass pieces and calligraphy you’d find in a Cairo bazaar. In one corner, his kids’ drawings were taped up unevenly. In another, there was a carefully arranged coffee station, which El-Sayed moved toward almost immediately.

He was meticulous with his coffee brewing, treating it more like a lab experiment than a beverage. “If you have a complicated job,” he said, “it’s almost necessary to have an equally complicated hobby.”

Just hours earlier, he’d been at the Michigan Democratic Party’s nominating convention in Detroit, facing roughly 7,000 Michigan Democrats from all the party’s flanks. The event was not explicitly about the Senate race—it was for state-level positions—but it was also its own mini referendum on the future of the party in the state. El-Sayed expected to stump in the background. Instead, it turned into a crucial moment for his campaign that I had been surprised to watch unfold.

He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “I didn’t even know I was going to give a speech,” he said. “My team is like, ‘They’re trying to get you backstage.’ I’m like, ‘For what?’ And then as I’m walking up, they introduce Mallory. She’s got her whole family there. And they’re like, ‘Maybe we wait.’ I was like, ‘No. Let’s go right now.’ ”

El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim to serve in the Senate if elected, is running as a progressive populist. He’s campaigning on universal healthcare, economic justice, and, yes, a stop to U.S. aid to Israel’s military. He has held positions as a top health official in Detroit and accompanying Wayne County, but no major office. He ran for Michigan governor in 2018, but he lost the Democratic nomination to Gretchen Whitmer, who went on to serve for two terms.

McMorrow, a member of Michigan’s state Senate, is his clearest competition in this new race. In some polls, they are now effectively tied. On paper, they overlap on a lot—especially on affordability, a centerpiece of his campaign—but McMorrow is more legible to party leadership: governing experience, institutional familiarity, stronger fundraising. Even as Democratic voters often look for outsiders, the party still gravitates toward candidates who feel safe. The other competitive candidate, Haley Stevens, occupies that lane more explicitly. She is aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—AIPAC—and backed by corporate donors. (Some polls put her behind, but a new one suggested she could actually have a slight edge.)

As El-Sayed unexpectedly prepared to take the stage at the convention, this dynamic played out for all to see.

McMorrow, flanked by her family, got a........

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