Midterms: How Abdul El-Sayed used 'humour and hope' to rebuff racism

We can now go across to Jessica LeMessurier, standing by in Detroit for us. Jessica, good morning to you. Abdul El-Sayed making history where you are becoming the first Muslim poised to enter the Senate. On the early this Wednesday morning, to speak to his supporters, he proudly announced his own name, saying, my name is Abdul Rahman Mohammed El-Sayed. And he denounced Donald. ...who repeatedly made these racist attacks on him, who repeatedly insisted on calling him Mohammed. Actually, I was at a rally on the eve of the election where he was cracking jokes about how whenever Trump referred to him as Mohammed, he pronounced it Mohammed. And he was saying it sounded like somebody pulling the chain on a lawnmower. There was a lot of laughter in that. Concert hall where he was giving his last rally as he talked about Donald Trump's racist dog whistles, the racism that he had faced from the. Opposition over the course of this campaign that he did here in Michigan, which has, of course, been successful. Really, this is a victory for inclusivity. He has repeatedly had to rebuff these attacks, but he's always done it with humor and with hope. And that is something that really resonated. With the people here, really inspired them. I'm thinking of the 22-year-old Muslim American student who I interviewed in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan who was campaigning for Abdel El-Sayed, who said that to her, the idea that he could become the first Muslim senator, to her, that was just so exciting. And it gave her hope in times that she saw as very dark, that there might be a positive future. For the United States, a positive future for immigrant families to feel included, to feel part of the system here in the United States. Jessica, you mentioned how this Senate race in Michigan turned quite ugly, particularly towards the end. I'm just curious how much of the war in Iran and the U.S.'s relationship with Israel weigh on this race, considering al-Said himself kept calling out American tax dollars going to fund foreign wars. It was a crucial issue and he did something very clever. He directly connected the wars in the Middle East, the war in Iran and the outrage over those wars to the cost of living in this country, to Americans' pocketbooks, and that worked really well. He had some very simple slogans as well, money out of politics, money in our pockets. These really resonated with voters here who are feeling the economic pinch, especially here. And in this area where we also have some of the highest concentration of Arab American voters who are... directly impacted by the wars in the Middle East. Many of them have families in Lebanon and across the Middle East and they really feel this in a very personal way. They're speaking to their families every day. And so this really motivated them to go out to the polls. But it wasn't only the Arab-American community. Other people are opposed to this war in Iran. They see how it has led to rising gas prices. They see how it's impacting them when they go to the grocery store So a carton of milk can cost as much as... as $7. Wow. Jessica, thank you very much for that. Jessica Alamaziri reporting there from Detroit. From Detroit.