From "inshallah" to "alhamdulillah": Abdul El-Sayed celebrates historic Michigan Senate win in victory speech

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed declared victory in Michigan's U.S. Senate race early Wednesday, telling supporters in Detroit that "the bad guys lost" after a campaign in which, he said, his opponents went after his name and his faith.

CBS News projects El-Sayed, 42, a former Michigan health official, will become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. He defeated Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers after one of the most contentious contests of the midterm elections.

He opened by noting that he had said "inshallah," or "God willing," whenever the outcome of the race came up. "Today, tonight, we can turn that 'inshallah' into an 'alhamdulillah,'" he said, explaining that it means "praise be to God."

President Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, both Republicans, called El-Sayed a "jihadist" and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood ahead of Election Day, according to CBS News reporting. El-Sayed has said he has never been a member of the group.

El-Sayed said his opponents pointed to his name and faith, then "went all in on one of the ugliest campaigns we've seen in our lifetimes." "They want an America that is too small for some of us," he said.

He told Rogers to "enjoy your retirement."

"You chose hate, and Michigan chose hope," he said.

He also addressed Vice President JD Vance as "habibi," an Arabic term of endearment, saying there is "delicious irony" in Vance being constitutionally obligated to swear him in in January. "Wolverine one, Buckeye zero," El-Sayed said. Turning to Mr. Trump, he said, "I know you struggled with my name," and said the president could just call him senator after the swearing-in.

El-Sayed also criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, saying the group spent $42 million against him. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice," he said. He said people are called hateful for believing Palestinian kids should "get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars," adding, "that's not hate. It's love."

He said his opponents spent more than $350 million across the primary and general election campaigns, which he called a record for Michigan, including $70 million in the primary. "We built something bigger than a bank account," he said.

Winning a single U.S. Senate seat "was never the goal," he said. "The goal is to use that seat to transform our politics." He ended by calling for getting money out of politics, putting money in people's pockets and passing Medicare for All.

Read the full transcript of Abdul El-Sayed's victory speech

Thank you. All right, friends. How we do? Money out of…

[Crowd: "Politics!"]

Money in your…

[Crowd: "Pocket!"]

Medicare for…

[Crowd: "All!"]

Michigan, we did it.

My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, and I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect from the great state of Michigan.

Up until right about now, you might have noticed I always say "inshallah," or "God willing," whenever the outcome of this race was mentioned. But today, tonight, we can turn that "inshallah" into "alhamdulillah." For the right-wing ops, that just means "praise be to God," OK?

This movement for money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for all: I just want to thank you. Everybody who knocked on a door, made a call, sent $1, posted a story, and, most importantly, gave us your stake in democracy. You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates, so thank you. This is all yours, Michigan.

I cannot wait to serve you with the same big-heartedness, open-mindedness, grit and earnestness that you've shown me. You welcomed me to your homes, your churches, your synagogues, your VFW and union halls. You shared moments of frustration and sadness and vulnerability with me. You gave me grace and strength in my lowest moments, and the hope and inspiration that powered my best. I love you back, and I hope I can bring it all with me to Washington in your service. Thank you for your trust and your belief and your kindness. I'm gonna take it all with me, and I hope to bring back the kind of leadership that more than earns it.

The last month has brought the stakes of this election into sharp relief. Ours: this beautiful movement was built over the past year and a half, campaigning across Michigan's biggest cities and its smallest towns. We spoke of a brighter, bigger, more hopeful Michigan. Theirs: an astroturfed, corporate-funded advertising campaign built to deceive and distract.

Rather than try to unite us to contend with the crisis of gas or groceries, the opposition decided to try to divide us. At first, they pointed to my name and my faith, as if to say, "He's a little different." And when that didn't work, they tried to guilt me by association. And when that didn't work, they went all in on one of the ugliest campaigns we've seen in our lifetimes.

They might have been pointing to my name and my faith, but we all know that my name and my faith aren't the reason you can't afford your gas, not the reason you can't afford your groceries, not the reason you can't see a doctor.

Now, as I was campaigning, some of you would come up and ask me, "How come you don't hit back? How come you don't call them racist or hateful?" Because here's the thing: I didn't run for myself, and in truth, they weren't targeting me. They weren't just attacking me. They were targeting and attacking you. They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America.

See, they hate the idea of an America big enough for anyone who looks a little different, or prays a little different, or whose family comes from a different part of the world. That includes me, but it also includes anyone and everyone who doesn't look like them, pray like them, love like them, or isn't rich like them. So they turned this race into a simple choice. They want an America that is too small for some of us. We know that America is big enough for all of us. Big enough. We're big enough to take on the crises that we face.

Day by day, Trump's insults became uglier and coarser, but I got to spend those days with you, learning about your struggles, your hopes, and the things that inspire you.

A mom of two kids with a genetic lung disease in East Jordan, fighting the system to make sure her kids don't lose the meds they rely on to stay alive. Her hope? That they don't have to struggle with health insurance like she has.

A grandma on the east side, fighting to make sure that the violence that took her son doesn't take her grandson too. Her hope? An America where boys get to grow up.

I met Josh, the UAW autoworker, fighting the corporate bosses who hadn't raised their wages in two decades despite billions in profit. And they won that fight. His hope? An America where every single worker gets the right to a union.

I met a small business owner fighting to make sure that another heart attack doesn't take food off the table for his 30 employees or their families. His hope: that his workers don't have to worry about how they'll feed their families.

See, I didn't get into this to defend myself. No. I got into it because their fights are my fight, and their hopes are all of our hopes. We don't do this work for ourselves. We do this work for each other.

To defend us all from another generation's youth, treasure and opportunity squandered at the altar of endless war.

To defend us all from corporate oligarchs who've bought and sold our government to rig the system against us.

To defend us all from a health care system more interested in monetizing our illness than healing our bodies and minds.

To defend us all from air too putrid to breathe and water too putrid to drink.

To defend us all from losing our voting rights, our reproductive rights, our human rights.

See, I ran to defend us all from politicians who want to divide us, rather than movements that work to dignify us.

Across our primary and general election campaigns, they spent, get this, over $350 million trying to beat us. That is a record here in Michigan. $70 million alone in the primary, funded by all the same cats who funded the general election, and that's a record anywhere in this country.

But, y'all, Michigan, we built something bigger than a bank account. We built a movement: government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We showed that in a battle between the money and the many, the many really can win.

And so, to all the kids who watched this last month, to all the parents who struggled to explain why the president openly [mocks] someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost. Let them know. I want you to let them know. Let them know that we, together, fighting for something bigger, we won.

So, Mike, enjoy your retirement. I know you got a house in Florida and two yachts. See, you chose hate, and Michigan chose hope. May we never have to see the likes of you in this state again.

J.D., habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you're constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January. So you know what that means? Wolverine one, Buckeye zero.

Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name. So after J.D. swears me in in January, you can just go on and call me Senator.

To the super PACs and special interests who tried to beat us: we are coming for your system of politics. To AIPAC, who spent $42 million against us, thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice.

And I want to say something here. See, they try to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars. If you believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination, that's not hate. It's love.

Michiganders, we want our taxes spent here, for schools here, and health care here, and infrastructure here. We don't want our money sent to do apartheid or genocide or war.

Michiganders believe in Michigan, and I believe in Michiganders, and I am so honored that Michiganders believed in me. See, you took a bet on the least likely of candidates. I'm not a politician. I'm a doctor with an 11-letter first name.

They told us, when I started this campaign, there was no way to beat the money. They told us that someone with a name and a story like mine, a Muslim, was unelectable, let alone in a statewide Senate race in Michigan. They told us that old-fashioned politics was dead. That traveling the state to have real conversations with real people in real places was a fool's errand. They told us that the establishment was too strong. That D.C. was going to dictate who won and who lost. That Washington and its special interests didn't want us. They told us that when all the votes had been counted on Aug. 4, and then again on Nov. 3, it would have been time and money and energy wasted.

Guess what? It's Nov. 3, and the votes have been counted. And guess what? We just showed them that a movement of the people, by the people, and for the people will ultimately win. Michigan understands solidarity. It's the people who decide who we send to Washington and what Washington will do. We decide, not the big money or their stooges. The people of Michigan will be heard.

We showed that, together, we can defeat a record $70 million of outside spending and an 11-to-1 money disadvantage in a primary election. That we can defeat a quarter of a billion dollars in a general election. We can defeat the cynicism of a politics that preys on our earnestness, undersells our intelligence and exploits our disagreements.

Tonight, Michigan, we beat a machine, and we proved once again just how big America really is. Because where else, where else but in America, can a doctor named Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, a child of immigrants raised by his father and his Daughter of the American Revolution stepmother, get elected senator from America's greatest state?

They tried to confuse you, so let me just set the record straight. I love America. I know exactly what America gave to me. I saw it up close on trips to my family's native Egypt. In a 15-hour journey, I'd cross a 10-year difference in life expectancy. I didn't have to go 15 hours. I could go 15 minutes, to Detroit or Pontiac, and cross that same difference. This is why I became a doctor.

America vaccinated me against diseases that killed an aunt and uncle I never got to meet. It gave me incredible public schools. It gave me a public university education. It paid for my medical education through the NIH. I love America, but I love America enough to ask her to be America for all her kids.

See, America is not just a flag, not just our red, white and blue. It's not a few patriotic songs that we sing, or even a landmass we call home. America is about these truths that we hold: that all people are created equal, and the inalienable rights we still struggle to guarantee. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

The best of America lives in the audacity of daring a contradiction: a more perfect union. That, despite the fact that you can't be more than perfect, we embrace the work of perfecting.

America's greatness lives in the moments when free people come together to expand that field of freedom. America's greatness is the fight to erase the long-standing consequences of slavery and Jim Crow and segregation. America's greatness is the fight to embrace all of her people, regardless of how they pray or if they pray, who they love or how they identify. America's greatness is in the union struggle on a shop floor to push off the yoke of greed.

America's greatness is the fight to guarantee all of us the health care we need if we get sick. Our greatness is the fight for clean air, clean water and a good home. Our greatness is the fight for equal pay for equal work, and full freedom over our bodies.

America's greatness is in the belief a new American still has, in the hope that America has always represented. America's greatness isn't about ignoring our flaws. It's the courage that we have to correct them.

Michigan, it just shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be this hard to buy a second bag of groceries or fill your tank. It shouldn't be this hard to afford a home. It shouldn't be this hard to see a doctor in the richest, most powerful country in the world. It shouldn't be this hard to pay your taxes and know that money is going to be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids. It shouldn't be this hard.

We don't need to be great again. We need to embrace that thing about us that has always made us great: the will to be more perfect. And right now, that means taking on the corporations and the billionaires, the special interests who've rigged the system against us for far too long.

Now, before I close, I've got some thank-yous I've got to get through.

Sarah, thank you. Thank you for everything. There is no doing this without you, and I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else. I love you, and I'm so grateful for you.

[Emmalee] and [Serene], you've been my inspiration the entire time. I hope someday that they get to read about this in the history books, to understand just how big a part of it they really were.

To my parents and my in-laws, my grandparents, my siblings, my extended family: I can never really repay all that you've poured into me. Thank you always for having my back, even if you'd rather I was a surgeon.

To my incredible campaign team, y'all, we did it. I asked you to lift me up and hold me down, and you did both with grace, humility, kindness and efficiency. No one else I'd rather ride with. Best team in American politics.

To all the incredible endorsers who entrusted me with your name, who took time out of your schedule to come campaign with us. To the Michigan Dems who threw this amazing event for us tonight, our chair, Curtis Hertel, who's had our back through thick and thin. To all the council people and mayors, all the commissioners and county leaders, state reps and state senators, congresspeople and U.S. senators: thank you for standing with us.

And a special thank you to our sisters and brothers in labor. Your support, as a second-generation union member, has meant more than you can imagine. I cannot wait to stand with you in the fight for Michigan's working people.

To all the community outreach organizations that came through for us in the final stretch, I cannot imagine doing this without you. Thank you so much.

And to all of us here: this fight is not yet over. The day I jumped into this race, I promised you that I'd put in the work and fight the fights on your behalf. I asked you for your time, your energy, your support over the last 19 months. Now I'm asking you to support us for the next six years.

This work is bigger than one senator. It's about changing the face of our politics. So please, do not send me to D.C. all by myself. All right? I need you all to come with me.

Winning a single U.S. Senate seat was never the goal. The goal is to use that seat to transform our politics. Because it's high past time that we get money out of politics. Put money in your pocket. Pass Medicare for All.

The beauty and soul of America is that we, the people, are what America is all about. We deserve an America for all her kids. So, Michigan, let's go build it. Thank you so much.