In Oxford They Named a Sandwich After Him. Now He's a US Senator

Abdul El-Sayed is heading to the US Senate. Michigan voters handed him a win this week, making him the first Muslim senator in American history, with more than 2.5 million people casting ballots alongside him. His old teammates from across the Atlantic are already celebrating.

The man who ran for office was forged in Oxford, where he landed in autumn 2009 as a Rhodes scholar. A year earlier, the University of Michigan threw him a send-off, with then-president Mary Sue Coleman calling him the “epitome of the engaged intellect” and predicting he would accomplish everything he set out to do. She also recalled Bill Clinton's verdict on a 2007 El-Sayed speech: “I wish every person in the world could have heard you speak today.”

On the field, El-Sayed captained Oxford's lacrosse team and student journalists of the day dubbed him a “defensive master”. Elias Rothblatt, a fintech worker who played alongside him, remembers a “very fierce competitor” and a “wonderful” captain who balanced easy friendship with setting the tone. “It was always a pleasure to run into him,” Rothblatt, 36, said.

Then there was lunch. Ricardo Chasebi, who ran a now-closed cafe in Oxford's covered market, recalled El-Sayed's regular order to the Times: a grilled ciabatta stacked with coronation chicken, cheddar, peppers, red onion, lettuce and tomato. Chasebi put it on the menu as “the Abdul”. El-Sayed was so hooked he would ring from the airport, warning he'd be in Oxford in two hours and telling Chasebi not to shut. He later handed over his doctoral thesis, thanking the cafe owner in the acknowledgments for “nourishing my stomach and my soul”. Nando's got his loyalty too, hosting meetings with his Rhodes cohort.

The Oxford chapter didn't open smoothly. He disliked his course at first and flew home to Michigan two weeks before his first term ended. And he recently told a Sky News reporter: “You know how many votes I want to get in the UK? Zero.” But his memoir, Healing Politics, credits his classmates there with teaching him more than any classroom could, and in pieces for the Guardian he praised British democracy, recalling a Tower Hamlets hustings before the 2010 election where every candidate was of Bengali heritage.

Rothblatt is watching closely. “I think he's going to do a fantastic job,” he said, describing his former captain as a talented, ambitious person who always had clear ideas about what he wanted to do in the world. “Now he's continuing to bring those to life.”