El-Sayed Enters Senate After AIPAC Super PAC Spent Nearly $40 Million Against Him

Abdul El-Sayed will be sworn into the U.S. Senate having survived nearly $40 million in outside spending from AIPAC's super PAC, deployed against a candidate who built his campaign around cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel.

El-Sayed defeated Mike Rogers by 7 percentage points in Michigan, according to the 2026 election results. AIPAC's spending, documented by The Intercept, included what the outlet describes as anti-Arab and Islamophobic attacks and accusations of antisemitism aimed at keeping a vocal critic of Israel out of the chamber. It did not work.

Jewish Voice for Peace Action backed his campaign, the first time the anti-Zionist group has supported a Senate race. Beth Miller, the group's political advocacy director, said the fight now shifts to the Democratic caucus itself.

"The Democratic establishment, when it's in control, has not taken measures in support of Palestine in the past. And so this is about making sure that now they finally start listening to what the overwhelming majority of their bases say."

The mechanics of what El-Sayed can actually do are narrow. As a freshman senator, he holds no committee seniority. But the Senate carries a tool the House lacks: Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, which can block specific foreign weapons sales. Bernie Sanders has forced these votes repeatedly during the Gaza war to try to stop transfers of bombs and firearms to Israel. His resolutions failed under Republican control, but the most recent ones drew support from wide majorities of Senate Democrats, according to the public record, the same bloc that will soon hold the gavel.

That majority will be run by Chuck Schumer, the likely majority leader, who has maintained the backing of the pro-Israel lobby for decades. Hamid Bendaas of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, which also backed El-Sayed, framed the choice bluntly: whether El-Sayed becomes someone willing to break with leadership, the way Sanders has, or falls in line as freshmen often do.

In the House, the closest analog to a Senate-wide push is the Block the Bombs Act, introduced by Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., and co-authored with JVP Action input. It has 82 co-sponsors and has become something of a primary litmus test among Democrats, but building equivalent consensus in the Senate is a heavier lift even with stronger procedural tools available there.

El-Sayed's own framing, on Bloomberg TV in September, tied the aid question directly to kitchen-table economics: money spent arming Israel, he argued, is money not spent on schools, health care, and child care at home. Pundits urging him to soften that message point to the bigger margin posted by Texas's James Talarico, who beat Ken Paxton by 12 points while avoiding the Palestine issue. Whether El-Sayed treats his narrower win as a mandate or a warning will determine what, if anything, changes.