Ossoff and El-Sayed: Two Senate races and what they say about the Democratic Party

Top Republicans have had it in for Senator Jon Ossoff and Abdul El-Sayed, both Democratic candidates for the US Senate, for a while now. As the November 3 midterms approach, campaign battles get more stinging, bruising – and at times, amusing.   

Ossoff, the incumbent senator from Georgia running for re-election, has long been in President Donald Trump’s sights. But the 37-year-old Democrat can give as good as he gets. 

Just months after Trump called the Georgia Democrat “Senator Os(jerk!)off” in a Truth Social post, Ossoff hit home with a quip on the president’s zealous aide, Natalie Harp. While accusing Trump of not wanting to “do the job”, Ossoff remarked that the US president simply wants to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace".

Read more‘She’ll never leave me’: Who is Natalie Harp, Trump’s most devoted aide?

The Republican response came swift and hard, with White House communications staff labeling Ossoff a “lightweight”, “Jon Jackoff” and “the biggest cuck loser”, among other epithets.

El-Sayed, who is running in Michigan, has also been the target of virulent attacks. At the Republican midterm convention in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz accused El-Sayed, whose parents are Egyptian immigrants, of seeking to implement Sharia law. Hecklers in the crowd roared back, “He should be shot,” sparking headlines in the US press. Weeks later, Cruz was at it again. In an interview with a conservative radio show, the Texas senator warned of a “green-red alliance of Marxists and Islamists” who are “taking over” the Democratic party.

Two candidates, two states, one goal 

In the 2026 US midterms, Ossoff and El-Sayed are both trying to defend Democratic seats in high-stakes races. The Georgia senator is running for re-election after serving his first term in the US senate. In Michigan, El-Sayed is running for the seat vacated by outgoing Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

The two candidates also happen to be running against two Mikes: Ossoff’s Republican opponent is Mike Collins, who currently holds a seat in the US House of Representatives. El-Sayed is taking on Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent, veteran and staunch Trump ally.

As Senate candidates, Ossoff and El-Sayed have very different profiles.

The Georgia politician is ahead in the polls and is viewed as a rising Democratic star, a potential “hot presidential possibility” for the 2028 White House race. Feisty, media savvy and with choirboy looks, Ossoff is the country’s youngest serving senator and the only Democrat in the chamber to be seeking re-election in a state Trump won in 2024. Within the party, Ossoff is viewed as a moderate Democrat, capable of appealing to a broad base of voters in one of America’s right-leaning southern states.

El-Sayed, on the other hand, has never held elected office. The 41-year-old physician and public health expert is considered a left-wing politician, part of a wave of progressive Democrats focused on affordability and state services.

But in a battleground state that is home to cities with major Muslim communities such as Dearborn, “the capital of Arab America”, his position on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis often overshadows his economic justice messaging – and grabs global headlines. El-Sayed narrowly won his party’s nomination in August after a nasty primary against his pro-Israel rival Haley Stevens that exposed bitter divides within the party. In a state that regularly sends Democrats to the US Senate, the Michigan race is considered a tossup.

Read moreDemocrat El-Sayed narrowly wins Michigan primary

They are two candidates running in different states, but both are critical to the common Democratic goal of attempting to wrest control of the Senate in the November elections. “They're both important states where Democrats have sometimes struggled, perhaps Georgia more than Michigan, but they’re both seen as important wins for Democrats," said Matt Duss from the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, who is a leading progressive in the Democratic party.

"Obviously, Abdullah El-Sayed is an Arab Muslim who is taking a much more progressive populist approach. But Ossoff has been a leader on the issue of anti-corruption, which is a major issue in American politics, and particularly for the progressive left. So they've both been offering what will be really important arguments for the party going forward.” 

Left or right or in-between

The 2026 midterm race has increased attention on a progressive, leftward trend in the Democratic party that has picked up steam since Trump returned to the White House last year.

Democratic Socialism – a largely anodyne political ideology in many parts of the world, but which has long been stigmatised in the private capital-driven USA – is now the subject of polls and headlines across the country. 

In barely two weeks, for instance, a Gallup poll found that Socialism is more popular than ever, with 43 percent of Americans holding a positive view. But The New York Times, citing another poll, informed readers that roughly half of US voters view socialism unfavourably.

For many Democratic strategists, that means a "Socialist" label is not a problem in primary race, but broadening a Socialist candidate's appeal in a general election could remain a challenge.

“In some ways, these are more differences in tone and manner and style rather than in policy,” said Richard Johnson, a US politics and policy expert at Queen Mary University of London.    

While Ossoff is widely viewed as a moderate, Johnson notes that, “what people call moderate Democrat today is not what people called a moderate Democrat 20 or 30 years ago. Twenty or 30 years ago, a moderate Democrat was much more to the right of a moderate Democrat today because the whole party has moved much more consistently to the left.”

‘About three letters’

The party’s leftward move has put the focus on the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a political group founded in 1982 that spent decades in obscurity before the 2016 presidential primary catapulted Sanders to national prominence before his defeat to Hillary Clinton. While Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, the Vermont senator is not formally affiliated with DSA.

The group got a boost in 2018, when DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the New York primary and went on to win a House of Representatives seat. A high-profile breakthrough came in late 2025 with the election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor. 

Since the DSA is a movement that aims to promote progressive issues and not a political party, it can be a source of messaging gymnastics and sometimes panic for Democrats on the campaign trail. In a CBS interview last week, Florida's Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon stressed that "this is not about three letters" amid Republican criticism of her DSA membership. Nixon was one of the big surprises of the 2026 Democratic primaries, when the African-American self-described “former single mama” overcame a vast fundraising disadvantage to defeat former military officer and fellow Florida Democrat Alex Vindman.

While most analysts place El-Sayed on the left of the political spectrum, the Michigan candidate is not a DSA member. “El-Sayed has made it clear that he is not a Socialist. He describes himself as a capitalist who understands capitalism, that’s where his critique of capitalism comes from. But still, he is arguing for many things that DSA argues for. So, however he may identify himself, there is a formation behind him that includes the DSA that sees his message as consistent with their broader agenda,” explained Duss.

US Mideast policy on the ticket

A distinctive feature of the 2026 midterms race is the prominence foreign policy has played on the campaign trail. That’s largely because Trump’s Iran war has seen an overlap of domestic and international issues.  

“The Iran war is raising gas prices, impacting the global economy and the US economy. But it's also feeding into a longstanding sense among many American voters, both Democrat and Republican and Independent, that America has been wasting time, resources and energy on all of these wars, particularly in the Middle East,” said Duss.

“But in the Democratic side, especially, I think Gaza continues to be a very severe tension point between the progressive left and the conservative establishment,” he added, referring to Israel’s military onslaught on the Palestinian enclave after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.   

In Michigan, while El-Sayed’s platform is focused on providing healthcare and cost-of-living issues, the spotlight in the bitter primary race was on the two candidates’ positions on Israel.

His Democratic rival, Stevens, ran on a pro-Israel platform and raised a record $60 million, around half of which came from sources affiliated with pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). El-Sayed criticised Stevens for taking AIPAC donations, calls Israeli military onslaught in Gaza a genocide and opposes unconditional US aid to Israel. Stevens supported continuing US aid to Israel without conditions.

“The Democratic party is changing quite a lot on this issue. The party used to be pretty much as pro-Israel as the Republican Party. Now many Democratic voters are much more sceptical on Israel. There are elements where you can see the grassroots moving the party in a direction that's different from where it has been in the last few decades,” said Johnson.

Following El-Sayed’s primary win, Michigan Democrats – including Stevens and establishment figures such as Senator Elissa Slotkin, who holds the state’s other seat in the chamber – have rallied behind their candidate in the race against Republican Mike Rogers.  

But it’s been a tripwire issue. El-Sayed has had to downplay his relationship with leftwing influencer Hasan Piker, who campaigned with him during the primary. Barely weeks after his primary victory, the Democratic candidate apologised to the state’s Jewish Democratic caucus for comments he made after a synagogue attack in March.

The controversies have sparked debates over whether El-Sayed, who won the primary by just 15,000 votes, can sway undecided voters and an estimated 130,000 Jewish Americans who live in Michigan, 61% of whom identified with or leaned Democrat, according to a 2021 study.

It also fuels Republican attacks as they eye a crucial Senate seat in a battleground state. Shortly after El-Sayed was projected to win the August primary, Trump declared it was “great news” for the Republicans in a Truth Social post. “El-Sayed, a Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel, is the projected winner in this race with the Socialist,” Trump wrote. Rogers, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in the Senate race, released a statement claiming that after spending “years hunting terrorists” he was now “running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11”. 

“There's been so much attention on El-Sayed being an observant Muslim and much of it is, unfortunately, very bigoted and inflammatory,” said Duss. “Going back to 9/11, there has been an unfortunate tendency to see Muslim Americans as a source of threat. I completely reject that. And I think many Americans reject that.” 

‘An almighty battle’ within the party

Ossoff, whose father is Jewish, has managed to negotiate the minefield of the Mideast crisis in US politics relatively unscathed.

On the Senate floor, Ossoff has attempted a balancing act between supporting Israel’s right to defend itself while criticising the humanitarian impact of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Gaza policies.

Last year, for instance, Ossoff voted to block a proposed US arms export to the Israeli police. But he also voted against another resolution that would have blocked the sale of air-to-ground munitions to Israel. “Despite my opposition to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza, I believe the United States must continue to support the Israeli people,” said Ossoff in a press statement. Both resolutions were introduced by Sanders and failed the floor vote.

“Georgia is a more conservative state [than Michigan], Senator Ossoff has a read on his own politics,” said Duss, while noting that Ossoff’s vote to block arms exports to the Israeli police “took some courage”. The former foreign policy adviser to Sanders admitted that, “Personally, I wish he would go farther. I think he can go farther, and I would expect that if he wants to play a role as a leader in the Democratic Party in the future, he is going to need to go farther.”

In terms of policy shifts, Johnson believes the 2026 midterms will have a limited impact even if the Democrats manage to take over Congress. “I think government shutdowns in the US will be more likely to happen. If they win, the Democrats will use bargaining over budgets basically to try to extract some policy concessions over Trump, perhaps on immigration or such issues. But I think these will be fairly modest policy changes,” he explained.   

The real impact of the November elections, Johnson predicts, will be the Democratic bench or the likely party candidates the midterms propel into the 2028 presidential race. 

If El-Sayed and Ossoff win their respective races, the two men could influence their party’s future trajectory, according to experts.

“If El-Sayed wins the Senate, I think he is well very well-positioned to play a major national role, perhaps not running for president right now, but he is a very skilled candidate, a very courageous voice. And the United States is changing,” said Duss.

While Ossoff has dismissed speculation about his presidential ambitions, analysts believe the Democratic “star of the south” could be a strong candidate for the 2028 White House race.

“If Jon Ossoff is going to become the next [presidential] nominee, I think he’ll have a hell of a fight on his hands because I think the left of the party is going to really want someone that they view as a less compromising figure politically,” said Johnson. “The next Democratic primary is likely to see an almighty battle between the moderates and the left of the party.”