Do we like Abdul El-Sayed?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A solid public-service record and a pro-LGBTQ+ stance, dented by overstated claims and campaigning with a streamer who said America deserved 9/11.
El-Sayed was born in 1984 and grew up around Detroit, the son of an Egyptian immigrant engineer. He went from the University of Michigan to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he did a public health PhD, then finished his medical degree at Columbia. He ran Detroit's health department, then Wayne County's health and human services from 2022 until he quit in 2025 to run for the Senate. He came second to Gretchen Whitmer in the 2018 governor's primary and had never held elected office.
The knocks on him are mostly about stretching things. He calls himself a physician but holds no Michigan medical licence, and said “you can go have that argument with Columbia University if you'd like.” He claimed to have “erased” $700 million in medical debt, but Bridge Michigan found the county had paid off about $57.4 million for roughly 83,200 people. On policing, Bridge found he backed defunding in 2020, then told the Detroit News he “never, never called for defunding.”
On the harm test, he defended trans people on 60 Minutes. Rogers and commentators like Riley Gaines attacked a clip of his answer on trans kids and school, but that is criticism of what he said, not a finding of harm. The sharper question is company: he campaigned with streamer Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 that America deserved 9/11. El-Sayed has called that remark a dumb statement but defended appearing with him, calling the pushback cancel culture. On Israel, he told CNN “Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil,” and where you land on that depends on how you read the war.
Then there's the Muslim Brotherhood smear. Trump and Rogers alleged ties; CBS found he was one of 46 Egyptian-Americans who signed a letter urging Egypt's then-president Mohamed Morsi to act against allies of the former authoritarian leader, before the group was designated a terrorist organisation. He denies any membership and says he has disavowed it. Being labelled a “jihadist” by Trump and Cruz is abuse aimed at him, and it does not count against him.
On fact-checks, PolitiFact's page lists five claims of his: none rated True or Mostly True, one Half-True, two Mostly False, one False and one Pants on Fire. Most were about Rogers or Trump's tariffs rather than his own record. 60 Minutes also checked his line that DTE “buys off almost every politician” in Michigan. It found heavy, publicly reported donations but no evidence of improper payments for votes.
The good stuff is real. He wrote a 2021 book on how to build a single-payer system, and his platform includes a billionaire tax and taking big money out of politics. At Wayne County he ran the medical debt relief program that cleared tens of millions of dollars, smaller than he claims but real. In his primary victory speech he spoke directly to Jewish voters, tying their safety to the safety of his own daughters.