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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outlined the stakes of the Michigan Senate race for progressives at a fundraiser for Abdul El-Sayed, arguing that his victory could “break open the entire political calculus of America.”
“If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the Monday night event, according to audio of her remarks obtained by ABC News.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York on September 11, 2026.
Adam Gray/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
El-Sayed is set to face off against Republican candidate Mike Rogers, a former congressman, in Michigan’s high-stakes Senate race, which could determine control of the upper chamber.
El-Sayed and other progressive candidates, Ocasio-Cortez argued, are challenging assumptions of American politics, and the appeal of progressive candidates and their policies outside of liberal areas.
“Can you imagine five years ago, four years ago saying that the Democratic nominee for Senate in a statewide race in Michigan just after Democrats lost to Donald Trump, is a man, a Muslim doctor, by the name of Abdul El-Sayed?”
Trump won Michigan, a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential election, with 50% of the votes. If El-Sayed is elected, he would be the first Muslim senator.
Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed during a campaign stop at the Carpenters & Millwrights Labor Center in Warren, Michigan, October 3, 2026.
Rebecca Cook/Reuters
“We have written a check on the left, saying if you champion these policies that have popular support, we can win. And now it is time to cash in. Now it is time to go out and show what we are capable of,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has traveled across the country as well as New York State as she considers her political future and potential bids for higher office in 2028, said “this project is not about one race, it’s not about one cycle” or “any one person.”
“We are going to be organizing voters in disenfranchised communities across the South. We are going to work to elect people like [congressional candidate] Justin Pearson in Tennessee. We are going to work to elect people like [Senate candidate] Angie Nixon in Florida, and we are going to break the electoral map everywhere. Everywhere, because that is what it is going to take to guarantee health care to every American in the United States,” she said.
Asked earlier this year by ABC News’ Jon Karl, co-anchor of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” about her presidential aspirations, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I haven’t ruled out the possibility.”
