The Many beats The Money

The Political Integrity Pledge continues to be good electoral politics

Abdul-El Sayed launched his Michigan Senate campaign with the marquee slogan “Money out of Politics.” No one could have predicted just how relevant that mantra would be.

Abdul’s historic victory last night was an upset won in the face of monstrous amounts of money. Once the dust settles, the 2026 Michigan Democratic Senate primary will likely go down as the most expensive in history. This race was the Money in Politics Super Bowl and we just won the title.

No matter what the polls said, we were the underdogs. No candidate no matter how charismatic they are can go up against $60,000,000 in outside spending and be considered a favorite. To pull that off you need to bring real, on-the-ground, people-powered momentum. We brought that up and down the ballot.

We won in the Michigan Senate race against $30,000,000 in AIPAC money and $30,000,000 in dark money. We won in MI-13 against nearly $2,000,000 in crypto money. We won in the Kansas senate race against $2,000,000 in outside dark money. We won in MI-07 against two candidates that had not taken the Political Integrity Pledge. We won in seven other races across the country where we will continue to grow our anti-corruption coalition.

This is just the beginning. As we wrote back in March after Juliana Stratton overcame $10,000,000 in crypto spending to become Illinois’ Democratic Senate nominee, this ungodly amount of money in politics is the new normal. It’s only going to get worse as we race to November.

Lucky for us, money can’t buy a movement.

Welcome to the movement.

Nico + Daniel