Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed said Democrats haven’t yet earned the control of Congress voters gave them this week, and that the party now has to show it deserves it.
“We’ve proven what we can get. Now the question is, can we govern like we deserve it?” El-Sayed said in a Nov. 5 interview with CNN. “That’s the choice that we are going to face.”
He said the party’s wins should be “the floor” for Democrats, not proof that voters have embraced them.
El-Sayed said Democrats won because voters opposed President Donald Trump and his policies, not because they like Democrats. He said the party has to earn the mandate it won against Republicans.
The senator-elect said the biggest thing keeping Democrats from earning that trust is where their money comes from.
He said voters don’t trust the party “because too often we’re funded by the very same people who fund Republicans.” He added that Democrats too often offer a lighter version of Republican policies.
“Can we actually cut the cord that we’ve had to corporate money and start governing like we give a damn about working people and start passing the policies that are actually going to make people’s lives better?” he said. “That’s the choice we got in the next two years.”
He held himself to the same standard.
“For me, I got six years to prove out that I am who I said I was going to be,” he said.
Asked how he would win over Michiganders who voted against Trump rather than for him, El-Sayed said the answer is to govern well.
He said the seat belongs to Michigan, not to him. He also said his job is to earn the trust of everyone in the state, including people who would never vote for him.
“And the way you govern well is to make sure that even people who didn’t vote for you, at the end of your time, will come up and be like, hey, that person, they did what they said they were going to do,” he said.
El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate race on Nov. 3, defeating former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and keeping retiring Sen. Gary Peters’s (D-Mich.) seat in Democratic hands.
His win pushed the party’s Senate majority to 54 seats. He is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.
He ran on a platform he summed up as “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.”
He told CNN he was outspent 11 to 1 in the August primary against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and by another $110 million in the general election.
El-Sayed declined to commit to backing Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for Senate leader. He said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) would be “an amazing Senate majority leader” if he chose to run.
El-Sayed said that otherwise, he would back whoever is best placed to pass legislation, send it to Trump’s desk, and show what Democrats did with their mandate.
Senator-elect Julianna Stratton (D-Ill.) said earlier on CNN that she believed new Democratic Senate leadership was needed when asked whether she would support Schumer.
“We’ll have to see who puts their names forward, but I certainly have made it very clear that it’s time for new leadership in the Senate,” she said.
“The people of Illinois have spoken. I think voters across the nation have said that they’re looking for new energy, new leadership, and I have held firm to that commitment I’ve made.”
When it comes to the president’s nominees, El-Sayed said he would assume he won’t support Trump’s nominees “until proven otherwise,” because he believes the administration picks people for loyalty rather than ability.
Stratton said she “won’t vote for any of Donald Trump’s nominees,” and that she had “made that very clear.”
Jacob Burg contributed to this report.
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