Former Wayne County and Detroit health director Abdul El-Sayed hadn’t run for office since his loss to Gretchen Whitmer in the 2018 Democratic nomination for governor but you wouldn’t notice any rust on his game.
Entrenching himself as the most progressive candidate, the 41-year-old El-Sayed, a Muslim and child of Egyptian immigrants who studied to be a doctor but entered public health instead, owns, for now at least, a slight polling lead on U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow for the party’s nomination this year for an open U.S. Senate seat. That has come as El-Sayed has surged, though a plurality of likely primary voters still appear undecided.
There are plenty who question whether El-Sayed, if he wins the nomination on Aug. 4, can win statewide. Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake is the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination and two years ago lost a close battle against Democratic former Rep. (and now Sen.) Elissa Slotkin. The argument against El-Sayed, of Ann Arbor, is that he’s too far left −in the mold of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, both of whom have endorsed him − to win in a general election statewide in purplish Michigan. Some polls appear to bear out the trouble he could have beating Rogers; others suggest he’s gaining.
We sat down with El-Sayed (who predicts if nominated he’ll beat Rogers by 7 percentage points) on May 15 to ask him to make his case for how he can beat Rogers. Here’s what he said:
Detroit Free Press: OK, what’s your elevator pitch for how you can beat Mike Rogers?
El-Sayed: No. 1, most people say this (I can’t win) because of my name. I’ve been Abdul in Michigan my whole life and I know that Michiganders are big-hearted. They’re open-minded people. They care less about what your name is, they care that you care to know their name. They care less about how you pray, they want to know what you pray for. And I know that Michiganders are going to look past my name to ask, who out here is actually going to fight for me? I want to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, pass Medicare for All.
Second, I’m running against an actual guy. This guy voted 60 times to raise prescription drug prices. He helped to architect the legislation that kicked off the opioid epidemic. … And I’m the guy who rebuilt Detroit’s Health Department, eliminated $700 million in medical debt, and put Narcan in 100 different locations. Who better to prosecute the case against him than me?
Finally, think about who we can win back. We lost voters. Arab and Muslim voters, we lost young men, and I feel well-placed to have a conversation with those voters about what it looks like to actually be consistent with our values, and we’re going to need that if we’re going to be able to pull folks back… Imagine what happens when you inspire young people to actually come out for a politics they believe in, and think about how you can change the electorate.
And then the last thing I’ll just tell you is that this man has tied himself to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is about as popular as rotten eggs right now, and he’s getting less popular every single day. And so, imagine what can happen when we’re actually taking the case to Mike Rogers. He’s a beta character at a comedy based in a country club that nobody likes to watch. He’s like the guy who laughs extra hard at the dumb joke that the alpha guy told. And nobody wants that guy as their next U.S. senator… (I’m) looking forward to wiping the floor with him.
DFP: Why are some Democrats so scared that you’re going to win?
El-Sayed: I’m a threat to the system that they have assumed our politics ought to continue to be beholden to. I don’t take corporate money. I never have, I never will. I am coming to indict that system, and I am going to upset the apple cart, because I don’t want to continue to watch Michiganders struggle for things like healthcare and gas, while the oil and gas industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, and the health insurance industry, make money hand over fist. If you take money from those corporations, I’m a threat to your system of politics. I think that’s good. I think we need more of that. I think that’s what Michiganders want.
Look at the most recent poll. I am the most competitive Democrat in this race. I’m up 10 in the primary, and that’s not because of me. That’s because Michiganders are sick and tired of being told what they cannot have and should not fight for, and I will tell them what we can have if we have the courage to fight for it.
DFP: Is antisemitism and Islamophobia − and bad behavior generally − a problem in the Democratic Party?
El-Sayed: That’s a problem everywhere… And I think all of us have to unite together to take them out. But I do want to say this. I think it’s important to recognize that Islamophobia cannot be used as an excuse to bar people from criticizing Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or any other country that is Arabic-speaking, or where the majority of people are Muslim. In the same way, antisemitism cannot be used as an excuse to shield Israel or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel group). I believe that you can both criticize Israel and AIPAC, and also stand hand-in-glove with the Jewish people and Judaism, and I intend to do both.
I grew up in Bloomfield Hills. It’s a community with a large Jewish community. I’m so grateful for that upbringing. I’m so grateful for what I’ve learned about Jewish culture, Jewish history, and the Jewish faith. And I, as someone who knows what it’s like to be discriminated against for how I pray and my ethnicity, I do not want to live in an America where that happens to anybody. I will fight for that kind of America, where whether you’re Muslim, or you’re Jewish, or you’re Christian, or you have no faith at all, or you’re Buddhist, or you’re Sikh, or you’re Hindu, that you know that our government and our people will stand up for you and protect you. But that is not the same as watching our tax dollars go elsewhere to uphold apartheid and genocide and wars we don’t need to be fighting. We can do both, and we must.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on X @tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Q&A: El-Sayed and how he says he can win the U.S. Senate race
Reporting by Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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