NOVEMBER 5 — Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is an epidemiologist, public health administrator, academic and politician.
No prizes for guessing that he is Muslim.
And American as well — a Democrat better known as Abdul El-Sayed.
On Wednesday, he won a key Senate seat in the battleground state of Michigan.
He defeated his Trump-backed Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, overcoming a campaign of anti-Muslim attacks spearheaded by the President himself.
With the victory, Abdul El-Sayed, 42, is set to become the first Muslim senator in US history. He will be sworn in on January 3.
El-Sayed had won a hard-fought primary in August that saw the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spend more than $30m against him. After that win, El-Sayed, a critic of Israel’s policies, was subjected to an avalanche of unfounded accusations — including that he is a “jihadist” — by Trump and other Republicans.
Trump and the Republicans had sought to cast El-Sayed as a radical candidate sympathetic to Islamic extremism through alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, unsupported by evidence.
Rogers portrayed El-Sayed as a communist, criticising his stance on Israel and his Muslim faith.
Democrats said the attacks on El-Sayed relied on Islamophobic tropes.
El-Sayed, however, remained steadfast in his campaign on lowering costs for working families and reducing corporate influence in politics. His platform included Medicare for All, a government-funded universal healthcare program championed by progressives in his party.
His campaign slogan “Money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all”, resonated with the Michiganders, among whom is the second largest Arab-American population in the US.
Read about El-Sayed here: https://abdulforsenate.com/about/ and his slogan here: https://abdulforsenate.com/priorities/
Candidates for the Melaka state election can be as articulate as El-Sayed.
“Money out of politics, money in your pocket” is a slogan that should equally resonate with “dak-dak Melaka” – the Malaccans.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
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