“This race needs to be a referendum on Donald Trump, and it needs to be a referendum on Mike Rogers,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think that it will naturally lend itself to that. But if Abdul allows the race to become a referendum on him, it becomes problematic for him.”

For his part, el Sayed wasted little time taking aim at Trump and Rogers on Wednesday after being declared the winner, as well as making overtures to those whose vote he failed to earn.

“As bitter and as divisive and as cynical as the campaign against us might have been, I want us to realize there is so much more that unites us now, because the campaign that Mike Rogers and Donald Trump and their GOP MAGA allies are launching are already more bitter,” el Sayed said during his victory speech. “Whether you voted for me or voted for my opponent or didn’t vote at all, we’re inviting you to that movement to get money out of politics.”

On paper, Democratic leaders are so far checking all the boxes to rally around el Sayed.

Endorsements rolled in Wednesday from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the head of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm; both Democratic Michigan Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin; and both former primary opponents Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. Schumer and Peters previously supported Stevens.

Fundraising pitches for el Sayed from top Democrats to donors also went out in the hours after the race was called, including from Harris’s email contributor list and a group tied to the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC.

“The party has to all come together right now. We don’t have a lot of time,” said Peters, a former chairman of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm. “Everybody has to come together and understand that as Democrats, whatever differences we have between us as Democrats are minor compared to the differences between our Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate.”

The battleground race is to replace Peters, who is retiring from Congress after two terms in the Senate and three terms in the House. He declined to say if el Sayed, who champions progressive policies like “Medicare for all,” halting U.S. aid to Israel, taxing wealthy individuals and corporations, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, may need to now pivot toward the center.

“He has to make those kinds of decisions as to how he approaches his campaign in the general,” Peters added. “It’s going to be up to him.”

The primary was the latest in a string of contests for Democrats this summer, mostly for House seats or lower-level offices, where socialist or far-left insurgents triumphed over establishment incumbents in left-leaning states like New York, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. Putting aside el Sayed’s narrow victory of roughly 1 point, he and his platform of once-toxic policies for Democrats managed to topple a sitting member of Congress in a Midwest battleground state who, with the help of outside groups, outspent him at times by more than 10-to-1.

“What Abdul did last night is pull off, in a sense, the biggest upset in the history of modern politics,” Sanders said.

GOP MOVES TO MAKE ABDUL EL SAYED THE FACE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), another endorser of el Sayed, placed the onus on the party to now “mobilize all its people and all its resources to support him.”

Democrats may get their first real glimpse into their state of unity, and how much potential progress is yet to be made, when the Michigan Democratic Party hosts a rally Friday to promote its newly crowned nominees for the general election, including el Sayed. Among the headliners is potential 2028 presidential hopeful and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.