By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
IndyPolitics.org
November 13, 2026
I’ll admit it. Going into Election Night, my faith in humanity was running about as low as a Statehouse approval rating.
Then Michigan and Mississippi happened.
Let’s start up north. Michigan voters elected Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate, making him the first Muslim ever elected to that chamber. He beat former Congressman Mike Rogers with roughly 52% of the vote, in a state Donald Trump carried two years ago.
Now, I’m not here to tell you how to feel about Dr. El-Sayed’s politics. He’s a Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive, and I suspect the two of us could find plenty to argue about over dinner.
What got my attention was how he won. For months, his opponents tried to tie him to the Muslim Brotherhood, claims he denied and nobody backed up with evidence. The playbook was simple: say the name, show the face, and let voters’ worst instincts do the rest.
Michigan didn’t take the bait. Voters looked at a doctor talking about health care and the cost of living and decided that mattered more than where he prays on Friday.
As a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking, bacon-eating Muslim, I can tell you that’s not nothing. A guy named Abdul won a statewide race. In America. In 2026. I’m still checking the returns to make sure it wasn’t a typo.
Then there’s Mississippi.
Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney from the state’s Golden Triangle, defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by about half a percentage point after more than a week of counting. He’ll be Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction, and the first Democrat the state has sent to the Senate since 1982, when voters reelected John Stennis, a segregationist. This in a state Trump carried by 23 points.
And here’s the part a screenwriter would get laughed out of the room for: three years ago, Hyde-Smith blocked Colom’s nomination to the federal bench. So he ran for her job instead. There’s a lesson in there about burning bridges, but I’ll let you find it on your own.
This one is personal for me. Both of my parents grew up in Mississippi under open segregation, back when a Black man winning statewide office there wasn’t a long shot. It was unthinkable. Neither of them lived to see this. I’d like to think they would have had a few things to say about it, starting with “took long enough.”
And credit where it’s due. Hyde-Smith conceded the night the race was called, congratulated Colom and said she respected the decision of Mississippi voters. In this day and age, a gracious concession qualifies as a minor act of civic heroism.
Now, before my Republican friends start drafting angry emails and my Democratic friends start drafting smug ones, let me be clear. This is not a column about which party won. Democrats had a big night nationally, and there will be plenty of time to argue about why.
This is a column about voters. In two very different states, people were handed a candidate with a name, a faith or a skin color that somebody assumed would be disqualifying. And in both places, enough of them said, “Let’s hear what the man has to say.”
That’s what restored my faith. Not that one side won, but that the cheap shots didn’t.
Hoosiers, take note. We’ve got a mayor’s race in Indianapolis next year and a governor’s race the year after. The next time someone tells you a candidate can’t win here because of who they are rather than what they’d do, remember Michigan and Mississippi.
Stranger things have happened. Two of them just did.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.org and an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois. He finished second in the 2023 Indianapolis Republican mayoral primary, so he knows a little something about a guy named Abdul on a ballot.
