DETROIT — As he wound up his victory speech early Wednesday, Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan asked supporters not to send him to Washington alone.
“I need you all to come with me. Winning a single U.S. Senate seat was never the goal,” he said. “The goal is to use that seat to transform our politics.”
In an interview later Wednesday morning, El-Sayed said the key to that transformation will be eradicating the influence of money in American politics, his first mission in Congress.
“It unspools everything else,” he said.
“Why don’t we have guaranteed health care? Money in politics. Why are we too busy fighting wars and spending our money on foreign governments? Money in politics. Why don’t we have unions? Money in politics.”
It may be a heavy lift in a party that relies on wealthy donors and corporations to power the campaign infrastructure that boosts its candidates.
But Democrats, surprised by the scope of their victory Tuesday night, are now wrestling with how to wield their newfound power while uniting with freshly elected lawmakers who in some cases ran against the party’s own leaders.
El-Sayed will join a small but growing group that’s pushing to ban corporate political giving, a caucus newly empowered by wins over opponents supported by large corporate donors.
Republicans and their allies dramatically outspent Democrats during the midterm campaign but still lost majorities in the House and Senate amid voter outrage at the economy and President Donald Trump’s policies.
“There is an urgency that everyone should feel to end the era of big money and dark money in our politics,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) said Wednesday.
“Yesterday, big money got seriously wounded,” Booker said. “Those who were victorious should ban together now to turn a serious wound into a death blow.”
El-Sayed defeated Republican former congressman Mike Rogers by courting both the far left and onetime Trump supporters with a populist message: that politics is broken and the system is rigged against working people.
He won despite his irreverence for his own party, rankling the leaders of what he described as a failed political system, and without relying on the typical corporate and party power centers.
He’s said that he prefers Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) over Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) as the new Senate majority leader. (Van Hollen told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was focused on a possible 2028 presidential bid.)
El-Sayed will join a Senate majority larger than many Democrats expected, giving them the power to throttle Trump’s agenda during his final two years in office.
El-Sayed said his campaign, which focused on selling three core policy ideas to Michigan voters, proved that a different style works.
“Too much of our politics is transacted behind closed doors between folks with a lot of money and folks with a lot of power,” he said. “We pushed the conversation out into the public, to take the conversation to the people. Who are we? Who do we want to be? What do we want from our politics? And that’s how our politics should work.”
Van Hollen, a progressive who campaigned for El-Sayed in Michigan, said Democratic victories Tuesday were primarily a repudiation of Trump’s policies, not a full embrace of the party, which now needs to demonstrate why it deserves to stay in power.
“We need to not only tell people what we’re against,” Van Hollen said. “We need to show people what we stand for.”
As Democrats debate the best way to use their new power, some have suggested that Trump should “lawyer up” as they try to hold him accountable. Others caution that voters want lawmakers to focus on making their lives better.
“I think as Democrats take Congress, they should apply a three-to-one rule,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) told Sirus XM radio Wednesday. “They ought to pass three bills that make life more affordable, or that build affordable housing, for every one hearing they hold on the Trump administration.”
“People want accountability,” he said. “But there’s a difference between accountability and retribution.”
El-Sayed said he’s focusing on the three promises he made to Michigan voters: to pass Medicaid-for-all, get money out of politics and make life more affordable.
With doctorates in medicine and epidemiology, El-Sayed said he also plans to harness the public sentiment that has powered the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again movement, and work to get additives out of food and address pesticide use.
“That doesn’t mean forgoing science,” he said. “That means using science to guide us about where to have righteous fights for the public’s health.”
He said “the gift of democracy” had been on his mind as the election results offer the country an opportunity to reconsider what self-governance really looks like.
“The choice is whether or not we want to be serious about that, or we want to allow a few very powerful people to corrupt our democracy for their own gain,” he said. “That really is the question of our moment.”
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