Fact checks: Abdul El-Sayed record on misogyny, defund the police, Kamala Harris

Former public health official Abdul El-Sayed is running for Michigan’s open US Senate seat
He faces US Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary
Bridge Michigan has spent months following the race and fact checking each and every claim. Here are the facts.

Abdul El-Sayed, a former Detroit public health official, is running to be Michigan’s next US Senator, and in the state’s hotly contested Democratic primary, much has been said about where he stands on police support, his comments on women and his support for establishment Democrats.

Bridge Michigan has fact-checked the claims to provide voters the information they need ahead of the Aug. 4 Democratic primary.

The progressive El-Sayed faces US Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate from Birmingham. The race is seen nationally as a litmus test about the future of the Democratic Party.

The winner faces former US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, who does not have a primary challenger, in the November election to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat.

Let’s get into it.

Claim #1: Does El-Sayed have a history of disrespecting women?

Stevens and others have taken issue with some of El-Sayed’s comments, including telling the publication Semafor that she needs to be taught “how to string together two coherent sentences.”

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But recent attack ads and mailers claiming El-Sayed has a history of “disrespecting women” leave out crucial context. The ad cites these examples:

A 2010 opinion column El-Sayed wrote for The Guardian that called then-First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity initiative “uninspired.”
Labeling Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s as “bought and sold” by corporations when he ran against her in 2018
A 2022 lawsuit against El-Sayed’s former employer that accused him of saying he didn’t want to work with anyone under 40
An article in the conservative publication Michigan Enjoyer that included several claims from a former campaign staffer, but none that accused him of sexism.

The 2010 and 2018 criticisms of Obama and Whitmer appear to be rooted in policy, not gender, a Bridge Michigan analysis found.

In each instance, the ads and mailers espousing the claims are funded by the United Democracy Project, a political action committee affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

For more, click here.

Claim #2: Did El-Sayed call for defunding the police?

He did.

Following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, El-Sayed repeatedly espoused support for defunding the police in social media posts and interviews.

He told Detroit Public Radio in a 2020 interview that defunding the police in his view meant “disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets, and investing more in the means of educating and empowering, engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty.”

After CNN reported in November that El-Sayed deleted old tweets supporting the concept, El-Sayed told The Detroit News that “I actually never, never called for defunding. My goal in that conversation was to help everybody to understand what we were talking about.”

El-Sayed later said he deleted social media posts on the topic as “I didn’t want them to be taken out of context.”

For more, click here.

Claim #3: Did El-Sayed really erase $700M in medical debt?

No.

El-Sayed is touting his experience as Wayne County health director and has claimed he “erased” $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 residents.

While that is a goal of the program he launched in 2024, the county has paid off the equivalent of $57.4 million in medical debt for 83,291 residents so far.

The county partnered with national nonprofit Undue Medical Debt on the project, signing a two-year, $5 million contract, with an option to add another $2 million if local officials approve. Records show just under $400,000 from the county has been used so far in debt settlement deals.

El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner characterized the program as “active and in progress,” noting the county approved the needed funds to settle $700 million while he headed the department.

For more, click here.

Claims #4 and #5: Did El-Sayed lead the ‘uncommitted’ movement?

And was he the first Muslim-American leader to support Kamala Harris for president?

Not exactly.

Stevens’ campaign accused El-Sayed of leading the “uncommitted” movement to vote for someone other than Joe Biden in Michigan’s primary as a protest of the Israel-Hamas war.

While El-Sayed was among more than more than 100,000 Michiganders who joined the movement during the 2024 primary, he did not lead it.

El-Sayed did not endorse Biden before the president dropped out of the race, but he made clear at the time that this protest vote applied specifically to the primary.

After those claims, El-Sayed aired ads from a supporter saying he was the “first Muslim American” to endorse then-Vice President Kamala Harris when Biden dropped out. Text displayed onscreen while she’s speaking note he was “ONE OF THE FIRST.”

That is more accurate, but also doesn’t tell the whole story.

While it’s true El-Sayed endorsed Harris, he wasn’t the first and virtually all prominent Democrats endorsed her within 36 hours of her becoming top of the ticket.

For more, click here.

Claim #5: Is El-Sayed a millionaire?

He doesn’t dispute the characterization.

Stevens has labeled herself the only non-millionaire in the race. And while it’s clear that the Republican Rogers is well above the threshold, financial statements from El-Sayed are less definitive.

A financial disclosure shows El-Sayed and his wife are likely worth somewhere between $700,000 and $2.1 million. That was up from 2025 and includes his podcast company and a newly disclosed rental property in Dubai and two others in Ann Arbor and Bangalore.

The foreign rental properties were part of his wife’s family inheritance, he told reporters this week.

He and his wife’s 2025 federal tax return – publicly released this month – shows they made $686,069 last year, including $130,749 in wages, $262,299 in capital gains and $292,881 in other income.

“Well, if you take my assets and her, my wife’s assets together, then I guess they add up to something like that,” El-Sayed told journalist Medhi Hassan in late June, when asked if he is a millionaire.

“But my career has never been about trying to maximize on money, otherwise I would have just gone and been a surgeon.”

For more, click here.

Claim #6: Are Republicans propping up El-Sayed’s campaign?

Not exactly.

Stevens has made electability a core tenet of her campaign, and Rogers himself recently said his campaign would be in “good shape” if he faced off El-Sayed.

But Stevens’ campaign is off the mark in its claims that Republicans are buying ads to prop up El-Sayed for an easier go in November.

While it’s true the National Republican Senatorial Committee bought ads about El-Sayed, it was to lambaste him as “too radical for Michigan.”

Federal Election Commission filings checked by Bridge show no Republican-affiliated spending to support El-Sayed.

El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Sophie Pollock has called claims of Republican support as “misleading and not based in fact.”

Polling averages from Real Clear Politics, meanwhile, have both El-Sayed and Stevens in a statistical tie against Rogers. Another poll released this week has Rogers with a double digit lead over El-Sayed in a hypothetical matchup and even with Stevens.

For more, click here.

Bridge Michigan reporters Lauren Gibbons, Simon Schuster and Kelly House contributed to this report.