Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic primary election to contest one of the state’s two Senate seats. He is just the latest progressive upstart to upset the game plan of the Democratic party’s centrist establishment, with a platform that focused on working towards universal health care and getting corporate money out of elections… His criticism of Israel too was a flashpoint in the campaign – representing a growing shift among Democrats against what many see as an apartheid state currently carrying out a genocide while dragging the US into unnecessary wars in the Middle East. His portrait by Bryan Quinn.