- Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is touting his background in public health as he runs for US Senate
- Republican contend that record is thin, with little follow-through in jobs he held for less than three years
- El-Sayed also hosted a public health podcast, opining on various topics that critics have used against him in the campaign
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has touted his public health background as he runs for US Senate, promising to take up the fight for a Medicare for All healthcare system and lower costs of living if elected.
Republican opponent Mike Rogers and other critics have argued El-Sayed made big promises with little follow-through, referencing less flattering aspects of his record in political attacks.
A graduate of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, El-Sayed served as a public health director in both Detroit and Wayne County, posts he served in for about two years each before leaving to run for public office.
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As a local government appointee, El-Sayed worked with a nonprofit to provide free glasses for thousands of local kids and started a free Narcan distribution system to prevent overdose deaths, programs that continue today.
One of El-Sayed’s signature initiatives, a medical debt payoff program for Wayne County residents, has cleared more than $95 million in bills for more than 100,000 county residents since 2024, but the totals have so far fallen well short of his ambitious $700 million goal.
Outside his public health roles, El-Sayed has also coauthored a book on Medicare for All, hosted a podcast and offered political commentary via columns, speaking engagements and in advisory roles.
El-Sayed has never held elected office, but the 41-year-old has been on the statewide ballot before: In 2017, he resigned as Detroit’s health director to join the 2018 gubernatorial race, losing in the primary to current Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by more than 20 points.
Last year, El-Sayed resigned as Wayne County Health director to run for the US Senate after Democrat Gary Peters announced he would not seek reelection.
On the campaign trail, El-Sayed frequently recalls learning of Peters’ retirement from his county office in Detroit as he was dealing with the fallout of the Trump administration freezing federal funds.
“I’m still trying to figure out how to make sure WIC checks go out next week, trying to make sure that vaccines go into arms and our federally-qualified health centers don’t shut down when I get a notification on my phone,” he said this fall.
“And I ask myself, where is the fight for the public’s health now?”
El-Sayed’s progressive politics and calls for money out of politics won over a majority of Democratic primary voters, who backed him over US Rep. Haley Stevens despite her substantial spending advantage.
Now, he’s up against Rogers, who narrowly lost to now-US Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024. This year, Rogers is arguing that El-Sayed is the more extreme candidate, playing up tensions among Democrats who supported Stevens and pointing to El-Sayed’s past comments in attack ads.
Observers say the race could ultimately come down to the national mood of voters, but say El-Sayed has work to do to combat those narratives.
“There are some things that he’s trying to clean up, not just from the primary, but the broader perceptions that he wants to try to go against — that he’s more extreme, or that he is not supporting all residents of the state,” said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University. “He’s trying to counteract those messages that came out in the primary, with mixed success.”
What was El-Sayed’s record as a public health official and commentator, and did he deliver on his top goals? Here’s what you need to know as he competes to be Michigan’s next US Senator.
Public health priorities
In 2014, El-Sayed joined the faculty at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health as an assistant professor in the epidemiology department.
The following August, former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan appointed El-Sayed as health officer and executive director of the Detroit Health Department. He stayed in the role until 2017, when he resigned to run for governor.
El-Sayed later returned to work in the area as the director of Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services. He served in the role from December 2022 until April 2025, when he again resigned to run for public office, this time for US Senate.
If elected, he’s said he would seek to join the Senate’s Health, Education Labor and Pensions committee. He’s also expressed interest in foreign relations and budget committee roles.
El-Sayed frequently cites public health directives among his proudest accomplishments, including a partnership with the group Undue Medical Debt to buy low-income residents’ medical debt from health providers at a bulk discount and erase it.
His campaign at one point claimed the program erased $700 million in medical debt, but as noted in a Bridge fact check, county data shows the program is still far short of that goal.
The effort remains ongoing as the nonprofit continues to negotiate with local medical providers, though some county commissioners have questioned the program’s transparency as there’s no way to publicly track whose debts are being erased.
Other initiatives El-Sayed focused on in his public health roles include:
- Free glasses: In his capacity as health director in both Detroit and Wayne County, El-Sayed partnered with the nonprofit Vision to Learn to connect city and county children with free glasses. Vision to Learn’s website states more than 5,000 glasses were distributed to Detroit students, the city’s original goal, and county officials in February reported 10,000 glasses had been distributed so far.
- Narcan access: While El-Sayed led the Wayne County health department, the county entered a partnership with the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice at Wayne State’s School of Social Work to expand public access to free naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, and testing kits for fentanyl and xylazine. The Well Wayne Stations initiative, launched in 2024 under El-Sayed, remains active, with the county dashboard showing 96 total stations in 92 locations. More than 36,000 Narcan kits have been distributed.
- Lead abatement: In the wake of the Flint water crisis, El-Sayed, then Detroit’s health director, pushed to have all schools and early childhood centers in the city tested for lead in the water. He also increased lead testing among Detroit children and created the city’s Lead Safe Coalition to coordinate childhood lead prevention and lead abatement efforts. In 2016, his department reported a decrease in elevated lead levels among children under 6.
Conflicts, controversies
El-Sayed’s time in public health wasn’t always smooth sailing. At times, he clashed with local government officials.
In 2018, when he was running for governor, El-Sayed publicly sparred with his former boss, then-Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
After Duggan endorsed Whitmer in the gubernatorial primary, El-Sayed claimed in a radio interview that Duggan ignored his warnings to mitigate the health risks of city housing demolitions and water shutoffs. He also said clashes with Duggan over the city’s demolition program helped prompt him to resign in February 2017 after 18 months on the job to run for governor.
“I challenged him so much I got kicked out of meetings,” El-Sayed said during a candidate forum in Detroit, adding that he was the only candidate who “actively stood up against Mike Duggan.”
At the time, a spokesperson for Duggan countered that El-Sayed was engaging in revisionist history and misrepresenting his 18-month tenure in City Hall.
El-Sayed appeared to exit his Wayne County position on better terms, calling the decision to leave “bittersweet” at the time. County Executive Warren Evans endorsed his candidacy for US Senate in spring 2025.
During the 2026 campaign, Rogers and other conservatives have jumped on other aspects of El-Sayed’s public health work in public attacks.
One notable example: El-Sayed oversaw Detroit’s animal control operation from late 2015 to early 2017, and Republicans have claimed thousands of dogs and cats were euthanized under his watch.
El-Sayed’s campaign has defended his work, noting he reduced animal euthanasia and improved the city’s animal shelter save rate. A Bridge Michigan fact check confirmed Detroit’s euthanasia rates fell under El-Sayed.
Critics have also raised concerns that El-Sayed’s 2023 public health emergency order to address safety concerns at the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Facility didn’t resolve poor conditions at the facility.
Medical degree
There’s been some controversy about El-Sayed’s medical degree, including during the Democratic primary. While he’s referred to himself as a “physician” — including currently on his LinkedIn page, and at various campaign events — he doesn’t have a license to practice medicine.
Michigan Public health code defines the title of physician as “an individual who is licensed or authorized” under state law “to engage in the practice of medicine.”
El-Sayed has previously explained his choice not to practice medicine. After treating a patient in medical school, he decided he wanted to address systemic issues rather than individual patients, he said.
El-Sayed also later clarified on a podcast that he took his “medical education in a different direction,” but he has dismissed accusations he is inflating his credentials for political gain.
“I did graduate from a school that’s literally called Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons,” El-Sayed said in July. “So, you know, you can go have that argument with Columbia University if you’d like.”
Podcaster, author, commentator
El-Sayed hasn’t been shy about sharing his views, be it in opinion columns, books, speaking engagements, social media or on “America Dissected,” the Crooked Media podcast he hosted from 2019-2024.
His public commentary helped keep him in the progressive zeitgeist well after his 2018 gubernatorial campaign ended. But El-Sayed’s wide digital footprint has frequently become attack fodder for Rogers and other critics.
His podcast covered a wide variety of topics, including reproductive health, food safety, vaccines and several aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. El-Sayed frequently hosted public health experts and other guests.
One podcast episode, in particular, has gotten renewed scrutiny: A February 2023 in which he and a sports radio host discussed the long-term consequences of football, including brain damage like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and other severe injuries.
Noting he was a former high school player himself, El-Sayed began the episode with a caveat: “I love football, but I hate having to admit that.” He said football taught him “wholesome lessons” but argued that “there’s something rotten at the heart of the sport” in its brutality.
Rogers has used the comments to paint a broader narrative that El-Sayed hates things most Michigan residents enjoy. El-Sayed, who played at Andover High School in the Bloomfield Hills district, responded by challenging Rogers to a game of tackle football without pads.
El-Sayed also frequently wrote columns for various media outlets on public health and political issues, some of which have resurfaced in the primary and general elections.
Conservatives frequently reference a 2011 opinion column El-Sayed wrote for HuffPost about a political revolution in Egypt as proof of allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood, though Bridge Michigan found no evidence of a connection between El-Sayed and the group.
Disputes with fellow Democrats
El-Sayed’s progressive views have at times put him at odds with more moderate Democrats, most notably during his statewide primary campaigns but also as a local figure.
In his 2018 gubernatorial run, El-Sayed suggested Whitmer was “bought and sold” because executives with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan were fundraising for her.
This year, he clashed with Stevens over her support for Israel and backing by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which spent heavily to support her in the primary.
Whitmer endorsed Stevens in the primary, as did many other current and past elected Democrats, but she congratulated him on his win and endorsed him for the general election along with the full Democratic slate.
Then and now, El-Sayed’s stances on issues like Medicare for All, money in politics and taxing the wealthy have closely aligned with progressives like Vermont US Sen. Bernie Sanders and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, both of whom campaigned for El-Sayed in the primary.
El-Sayed was among more than more than 100,000 Michiganders who joined the “uncommitted” movement in which participants vowed to vote uncommitted in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
He made clear at the time that this protest vote applied specifically to the primary, and he endorsed Kamala Harris one day after then-President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, but Stevens and others later criticized his participation in the movement and questioned his commitment to the party.
El-Sayed last week met with a group of Senate Democrats in Washington, and members of the caucus by several accounts rallied around his candidacy. Harris also came to Detroit to campaign with El-Sayed, joining him for a roundtable discussion on Black maternal health.
“I’m here to support Dr. El-Sayed because on this subject, I know he will be a champion,” Harris said of El-Sayed.
In a testy exchange with a reporter ahead of that visit, El-Sayed rejected the premise that he “flip-flopped” on his opinion of Harris, suggesting the question was based on “false premises.”
Regardless, the seat is a must-win for Democrats if the party wants to secure majority control and put a check on the Trump administration, he said in a recent Morning Joe interview.
“There have been disagreements … [but] the party wants me to win,” he said. “They understand that there is no pathway to the Senate majority without my winning, and they’re invested in this race.”
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