Maya Georgi
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Salwan Georges/Getty Images; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Abdul El-Sayed won the heated race for Michigan’s open Senate seat on Tuesday. Some people think his Swiftie status didn’t hurt as he made his way to victory.
This summer, El-Sayed posted one of his most-viewed TikTok videos. In the warm-hued clip, the U.S. Senate hopeful from Michigan danced on a balcony wearing an American-flag printed cowboy hat, jeans, and his trademark tight black V-neck shirt. But it was the song choice that boosted the clip: El-Sayed and his team opted for Taylor Swift‘s “You Belong With Me (Taylor’s Version).” The El-Sayed campaign team changed the lyrics of the song to reflect jabs at his opponent, Mike Rogers, and captioned the video to read: “Happy Taylor wedding …err, July 4th weekend” in a nod to Swift’s big day. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the video racked up 5.7 million views.
Underneath the clip, several TikTok users claiming to be Swift’s fans left comments like, “Michigan Swifties unite!!!! Proudly voting for you sir 🫶☺️❤️,” “LMAO NOT MILLENNIAL SWIFTIE IN MY POLITICS SIGN ME UP,” and “This swiftie will be voting for you. 🫶” El-Sayed clinched the Democratic nomination for the Senate race in August, just a month after posting the clip. While the physician’s policies, like affordability, increased access to healthcare and AI regulation are what mainly brought Michigan voters to the ballot in support of Al-Sayed, his Swiftie status surely didn’t hurt.
Swift may not have endorsed El-Sayed, but the superstar also didn’t try to remove her song from his viral video either. When a constituent asked about Swift’s response to the clip, the Senator-elect pointed out, “Here’s the interesting thing, they never forced us to take it down.” That is interesting considering the fact that the superstar’s music was notably muted when Donald Trump and the White House social media teams tried to use the songs to soundtrack several videos in an attempt to bait a response from Swift.
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El-Sayed’s Swiftie status runs a bit deeper than just one viral clip. A few days before election night, the politician went on Liz Plank’s Boy Problems podcast, where he explained that his daughter is “a huge Swiftie.” When Plank asked El-Sayed’s opinion on Swift’s recent release, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, which received a mixed response amongst critics and fans, he defended the project. “She is one of the most self-understanding artists of our time,” he said, adding, “You got to imagine right like when you’re making music for as long as she’s made music. You want to push the boundaries of your own genre and I think what she tried to do with Life of a Showgirl is push the boundaries out of her comfort zone. So, it’s kind of like saying, is it as good relative to Taylor doing what Taylor does the most naturally? Of course not. But is it an artist reflecting a different or flexing a different muscle and taking a risk? Yes. And I think we need to empower artists when they do that because they’re pushing the frame of themselves in their own art.”
