Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan's slugfest of a Democratic Senate primary, NBC News projects, clinching the nomination in a close race over Rep. Haley Stevens and establishing a Midwest beachhead for a progressive left on the march this midterm cycle.

El-Sayed overcame a nearly $65 million onslaught of outside money and an establishment that had rallied around Stevens. Popular Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Stevens late last month — a move seen as a last-ditch effort to stop a rising El-Sayed.

El-Sayed, a former public health official, goes on to face former Rep. Mike Rogers, who claimed the Republican nomination without opposition Tuesday. Their race in November is expected to be one of the most competitive in the country, and it could determine which party controls the Senate.

Whoever wins will succeed Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat who decided against seeking a third term and endorsed Stevens in the primary.

Stevens conceded the race on Wednesday morning and said in a post on X that she had called El-Sayed to "offer him my full support."

In a separate statement, she congratulated El-Sayed and pushed for party unity.

"We need to win this Senate seat, because Elissa Slotkin deserves a partner like Abdul in the U.S. Senate," she said.

Stevens added she would "be working my heart out the rest of this election to make sure Democrats up and down the ballot win, to make sure we can stand up to Trump, stop his cuts to health care, solve our affordability crisis, and make sure that our manufacturers are heard in the halls of power."

Republicans have 53 seats in the chamber, and Democrats are going after some red states to flip the four seats they'd need to swing the majority. But Democrats also have to defend seats in several battleground states, including Georgia and Michigan.

El-Sayed said in an interview Wednesday morning on MS NOW that "both Congresswoman Stevens and I had committed to bringing the party back together."

"We understand that she still wants to hold onto a path," he said. "We're focused on trying to figure out how we bring the party together to defeat Mike Rogers in November."

In a separate interview on "CBS Mornings," El-Sayed also focused on unifying his and Stevens' supporters.

"There's a lot of healing to do after a hard fought primary like this, but I have said that this is a big open movement," he said.

President Donald Trump, whose early endorsement of Rogers helped clear the GOP primary for him, won Michigan in 2016 and 2024 and lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump addressed El-Sayed's primary performance during a Tuesday night interview on Fox News, claiming that candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America or its members will "ruin our country."

"You go to these cities that are taken over by the socialists and the communists, they're always filthy, dirty. They're disgusting," Trump claimed in the interview. He added, "Aside from crime, aside from all of the other problems — no jobs, no anything, no money — they're always filthy, disgusting, dirty, and that's what you'll get."

El-Sayed has not been endorsed by the DSA, but democratic socialist lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have campaigned for him. El-Sayed has told The Wall Street Journal that he is "not technically or practically DSA."