But is it too much in a so-called purple state, where some Democrats worry that boldly leftist programs (some, though not El-Sayed, would call them socialist) won’t bring out enough voters to win the state back from Republican governor Rick Snyder? Another question El-Sayed has had to contend with is whether he himself is too much—he said to Vice News Tonight on HBO recently that some “very powerful people” in the Democratic party told him that they liked him but the fact is that his religion and name make him a problematic choice, despite Michigan being home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States. (GOP candidate Patrick Colbeck has claimed, unfoundedly, that El-Sayed’s family has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and implied that he is part of a conspiracy by Muslims to implement Sharia law in America.) But El-Sayed recently tweeted, “I used to think I could never run for office because my full name was Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (it’s a doozy),” until “in 2008, I watched a man named Barack Hussein Obama be elected president.” He likes to remind naysayers that Michigan, despite its purple reputation, went for Sanders in the Democratic primary. When Ocasio-Cortez came to stump for him in July, the crowds swelled far beyond what they had anticipated.

And soon after, his campaign announced that not only would Sanders be joining El-Sayed for two rallies this weekend, but they had also conducted their own polling after a Detroit Free Press tally placed Whitmer in the lead. The new numbers, offered by Change Research and gathered before Ocasio-Cortez had brought her road show to Michigan and Sanders’s endorsement, had El-Sayed in second place, trailing Whitmer only by 5.8 points at 27.4 percent among likely Democratic primary voters in Michigan.

El-Sayed spoke with Vogue about what it means to be progressive, intervening in Democratic politics as usual, how his experience as a doctor translates to his politics, and his belief that, yes, Michigan might just elect a Muslim governor.

You describe yourself as part of a movement—how would you describe it?

Our country is founded on the idea that we should have a government for the people and by the people. And I think folks are frustrated by how far away we’ve gotten from that. Our movement is about bringing our government back to that. But it means that we the people have to stand up and take it back. And so you’re seeing that happen all over the country. Whether it’s Alexandria’s race and the folks in New York’s 14th [congressional district], or here in Michigan all over the state, people are starting to stand up and say, “We are done with this kind of politics that allows these corporations to buy and sell politicians, and then they make decisions that put those corporations first.” That’s what this movement means to me; it’s people coming back to correct our government that went astray. Folks from all walks of life are coming together around that ideal, connecting to their democracy again, and doing it in some really grassroots and bottom-up ways.