Abdul El-Sayed
American politician and epidemiologist (born 1984)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed[a][3] (born October 31, 1984), commonly known as Abdul El-Sayed,[b] is an American politician and epidemiologist who is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan.[5] A progressive member of the Democratic Party, El-Sayed was a candidate in the 2018 Michigan gubernatorial election, placing second to Gretchen Whitmer in the Democratic primary.
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October 31, 1984
Abdul El-Sayed | |
|---|---|
El-Sayed in 2025 | |
| Born | Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed October 31, 1984 |
| Education | |
Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse |
Sarah Jukaku (m. 2006) |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | abdulelsayed |
El-Sayed served as the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services of Wayne County from 2023 to 2025. From 2015 to 2017, he was the executive director of the City of Detroit Health Department, where he oversaw public health initiatives during the city's recovery from bankruptcy. A graduate of the University of Michigan and a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, El-Sayed holds a Doctor of Medicine from Columbia University, where he was an assistant professor of epidemiology. He is the author of three books and multiple scholarly articles on public health and political reform.
Early life, family and education
Abdul El-Sayed was born on October 31, 1984, in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills, to Egyptian immigrant parents.[6][7][8] His father, Mohamed, was raised in Alexandria, Egypt, and immigrated to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. at Wayne State University.[9][10] His mother, Fatten Elkomy, is a nurse practitioner in Missouri.[11] Abdul was raised in the Detroit area by his father and stepmother Jacqueline (a native of Gratiot County, Michigan), both of whom are engineers.[12]
El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a team captain for wrestling, football, and lacrosse, in 2003.[10] He then attended the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science and played on the men's club lacrosse team.[13] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest distinction in 2007 with a bachelor's degree and delivered that year's commencement speech.[14]
Former US President Bill Clinton, whose commencement speech followed El-Sayed's, remarked, "I don't want to embarrass your senior speaker, but I wish every person in the world who believes that we are fated to have a clash of civilizations, and cannot reach across the religious divides, could have heard you speak today."[15] According to El-Sayed, Clinton approached him after the ceremony and encouraged him to consider public service.[15]
El-Sayed received a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed two years of medical school[16] and considered becoming a neurosurgeon.[17] There he led a student medical mission to Peru and founded a student organization that raised money and coordinated community service for a local free clinic.[17]
As a second-year medical student, he received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a D.Phil. in public health in 2011.[18][19] At Oxford, he earned a full blue as captain of the men's lacrosse team.[20][21] In 2014, he completed a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, funded by a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and the Medical Scientist Training Program.[22][23] El-Sayed did not pursue a medical license, and instead went into public health epidemiology work.[24]
Career in public health
El-Sayed is the author of over 100 scholarly articles, abstracts, and book chapters on public health policy, social epidemiology, and health disparities.[25]
Public health professor
In 2014, El-Sayed joined the faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health as an assistant professor in the epidemiology department. He served as director of Columbia's Systems Science Program and Global Research Analytics for Population Health.[26] He has received several research awards, including being named one of the Carnegie Council's Policy Innovators.[27] He created and taught the Mailman School's first course on systems science and population health. He and Sandro Galea co-edited a textbook on the topic Systems Science and Population Health, published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.[28]
Health Director of Detroit
In August 2015, Mayor Mike Duggan appointed El-Sayed Health Officer and Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department, making him, at 30 years old, the youngest health officer in a major U.S. city at the time. In that role, he was charged with rebuilding the Detroit Health Department after government public health activities were provided by a nonprofit after the the city went bankrupt in 2012.[26]
In his first year as director he led efforts to oppose increases in sulfur dioxide emissions by Marathon Petroleum's Southwest Refinery, which resulted in reductions in overall emissions.[29] He also led efforts to test Detroit schools for lead in the wake of the Flint water crisis, provide free glasses to children in Detroit city schools, and transform the city's troubled Animal Control department.[30][31][32][33]
El-Sayed was appointed to the governor's statewide Childhood Lead Elimination Board.[34] He also served on the State of Michigan's Public Health Advisory Commission and the Advisory Committee to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services for the Healthy People program.[35][36]
In 2016, El-Sayed was named one of Crain's Detroit's "40 under 40" and the Michigan League of Conservation Voters' "Public Official of the Year".[37][38] In 2017, the University of Michigan awarded him a Bicentennial Alumni Award.[39]
Since 2019, El-Sayed has hosted America Dissected with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a podcast about politics and public health produced by Crooked Media.[40]
Health Director of Wayne County (2023–2025)
In December 2022, El-Sayed was named director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services.[41][42] He assumed the role in March 2023 and resigned in April 2025.[43][44]
Political career
2018 gubernatorial campaign
On February 9, 2017, the Detroit News reported that El-Sayed would resign as health director to run for governor of Michigan in the 2018 Democratic Party primary.[45] He officially announced his candidacy on February 25, 2017.[10] El-Sayed was inspired to run for governor after the Flint water crisis, saying: "I watched as Governor Snyder and his team of accountants were cutting costs and cutting corners. Their inattention to communities ultimately poisoned thousands of children—and those children were the very ones that I was serving at the helm of the health department. ... And that's something I didn't believe in. I believe in government as something we do in this country for the people and by the people".[31]
El-Sayed pledged to accept no campaign donations from corporations, and raised over $5 million from individual donations.[46]
El-Sayed was endorsed by U.S. senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic congressional nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and 2017 Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour.[47][48][49] He was also endorsed by the organization Justice Democrats and The Nation magazine.[50][51] In the August 7 primary, he received 340,560 votes, or about 30% of the vote, losing to Gretchen Whitmer.[52]
In September 2018, El-Sayed founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee, to help elect progressive candidates and support ballot initiatives in Michigan.[53][44] In 2020, he served on the Joe Biden–Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force on healthcare.[54]
2026 Senate campaign
On April 17, 2025, El-Sayed announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan after incumbent Gary Peters announced he would not run for reelection.[55][56][57]
On April 7, 2026, El-Sayed held campaign events on several university campuses in Michigan alongside U.S. Representative Summer Lee and political streamer Hasan Piker.[58][59] Piker's association with the campaign became a point of contention within the Democratic Party over his past comments about the September 11 attacks, Hamas, and Israel.[60] El-Sayed defended campaigning with Piker as an effort to engage with his audience, adding that he doesn't agree with everything Piker has said.[59]
After Mallory McMorrow withdrew from the Democratic primary in July, news outlets called the race a choice between the party's moderate, establishment-backed wing, represented by Haley Stevens, and its progressive wing, represented by El-Sayed.[61][62]
The Associated Press called the race for El-Sayed on the morning of August 5. He is set to face Republican nominee Mike Rogers in the general election.[63][64]
If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim[65] and the first Egyptian-American elected to serve in the US Senate.[66]
AIPAC spent over $10 million in support of El-Sayed's opponent, Haley Stevens. The American Priorities PAC, a pro-Palestinian Super PAC set up to counter AIPAC, said it would support El-Sayed.[67][68][69] El-Sayed's father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, the leader of the Islamic Society of North America contributed $200,000 to another independent committee, the Fighting for Michigan PAC, which was also set up to fund El-Sayed's campaign.[67][70][71]
Political positions
El-Sayed is a progressive Democrat.[72][56] He supports Medicare for All and co-wrote a book on the topic.[73][74] He has vowed not to accept PAC donations, accepting donations from individuals only.[75] He served as a national campaign surrogate for Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, speaking on Sanders's behalf at events and in the media.[76][77][78]
Data centers
In early August 2026, El-Sayed criticized data centers, saying, "I stand with local and state elected officials saying that we cannot approve any more of these until we have federal-level guardrails."[79] He has called for guarantees that the operation of data centers will not result in rate increases passed on to customers.[80]
Economy
El-Sayed supports capitalism, saying, "When it comes to the question of socialism, I'm not a socialist. I'm just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works."[81] He has said that regulating billionaires to fund public infrastructure is "not that radical",[82] while advocating for stronger enforcement of anti-monopoly laws and the elimination of corporate tax breaks.[83] In June 2026, he released a plan calling for more regulation of artificial intelligence.[84]
Environment
In 2025, El-Sayed's campaign website identified clean air and water as a priority, and he called for tougher enforcement of environmental laws, merging the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Quality into a single Department of the Environment, and achieving "100% renewable energy" in the state by 2030.[85][86]
Foreign policy
El-Sayed generally opposes United States military aid to foreign countries, but has cited U.S. actions during Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in Serbia during the 1990s as examples of beneficial U.S. intervention.[87][88]
In 2026, El-Sayed said the US should not fund foreign militaries at all, and in particular he identified Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.[89]
Israel
El-Sayed has criticized Israel over the war and genocide in Gaza. He has also criticized US military funding to Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Israeli influence in US politics.[90][91] El-Sayed said in August 2026, "My commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters."[92]
In a January 2024 podcast, he called the war in the Gaza Strip a public health catastrophe and called for a ceasefire.[93] El-Sayed has called the Gaza genocide a morality test, asking: "If you can't call it what it is, which is a genocide, then how are you going to stand up to Donald Trump? How are you going to stand up to pharma CEOs?"[94]
In April 2026, El-Sayed said in a CNN interview: "Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil. It's not how evil is this one versus that one. Hamas: evil. Israeli government: evil. We can say both."[95] In July, he said, "The question of Israel's existence is not a question. I'm not going to play this gotcha game about whether or not it has a right to exist. The question, ultimately, is about whether or not we want a politics that dignifies equal rights."[96]
El-Sayed believes Israel to be an ethno-state and has said, "I don't believe in ethno-states, and I certainly don't believe that our country is responsible to sustain ethno-states."[97] He has said his rejection of ethno-nationalism has nothing to do with whether a country has a "right to exist", saying he "just [disputes] the idea that you should have an ethno-state" and objects to Egyptian and Saudi Arabian ethno-nationalism in the same way he objects to Zionism.[98]
El-Sayed attributed the 2026 Iran war to AIPAC's influence in US politics. He called Israel a "rogue state" that is committing "human rights abuses, genocide, and apartheid" and said the U.S. should "stop funding the Israeli military unilateral blank checks".[99]
Russia
In March 2022, El-Sayed called the Russo-Ukrainian war "a war between democracy and autocracy, between self-government and fascism", condemning Russian president Vladimir Putin as an "authoritarian dictator".[100]
In April 2025, El-Sayed said that U.S. military aid to Ukraine is different from aid to Israel, as the former is in accordance with several multinational organizations.[87] In September 2025, he said that military aid to Ukraine was about "enforcing the rules of the rules-based international order in accordance with our allies".[101]
Local authority
In 2018, El-Sayed supported repealing Michigan state laws that block local governments from levying a municipal sales tax or enacting rent control laws.[102][103]
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
El-Sayed supports abolishing ICE, arguing that it no longer functions as a legitimate law enforcement agency. While he has expressed support for securing the Mexico–United States border and for "certain kinds" of border law enforcement, he has called ICE "corrupted at its soul".[72][104]
Unionization
El-Sayed supports unionization, having been a member of the SEIU, AFT, UAW, and National Writers Union. He has said union expansion is necessary to protect "worker dignity" in response to the growth of AI. He has expressed support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act alongside unionization efforts among further professions, such as physicians.[105] His campaign was endorsed by the UAW in June 2026, alongside Jocelyn Benson's gubernatorial campaign.[106]
Personal life
El-Sayed was born and raised in Southeast Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Sarah Jukaku, and their two daughters.[107] He is Muslim.[42] He is a member of the National Writers Union, American Federation of Teachers Local 477 and 6244, SEIU Local 500, and the American Association of University Professors.[22]
Bibliography
- El-Sayed, Abdulrahman; Galea, Sandro, eds. (2017). Systems Science and Population Health. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-049241-0.
- El-Sayed, Abdul (2020). Healing Politics: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic. New York: Abrams. ISBN 978-1-4197-4302-3.
- El-Sayed, Abdul; Johnson, Micah (2021). Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-005662-9.
Notes
- Pronounced /əbˈduːl ɛl ˈseɪ.ɪd/.[4]
