Abdul El-Sayed

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is an American politician and epidemiologist who is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan. From 2023 to 2025, he was the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services of Wayne County.

Overview§

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (born October 31, 1984) is an American politician and epidemiologist who is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan. From 2023 to 2025, he was the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services of Wayne County. El-Sayed is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Oriel College, Oxford, attending them on a full-tuition scholarship and a Rhodes Scholarship, respectively. He gained his Doctor of Medicine from Columbia University. El-Sayed was an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University from 2014 to 2015. He was the executive director of the Detroit Health Department and Health Officer for the City of Detroit from 2015 to 2017. His publications in public health include three books and several academic journal articles. A progressive Democrat, El-Sayed supports regulated capitalism, Medicare for All, enforcing an arms embargo on Israel, and abolishing ICE. He ran for governor in 2018, placing second to Gretchen Whitmer in the Democratic primary.

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. His father, Mohamed, was raised in Alexandria, Egypt, and immigrated to the U.S. to pursue a PhD at Wayne State University. His mother, Fatten Elkomy, is a nurse practitioner in Missouri. Abdul was raised in the Detroit area by his father and stepmother Jacqueline (a native of Gratiot County, Michigan), both of whom are engineers.

El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a team captain for wrestling, football, and lacrosse, in 2003. He then attended the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science and played on the men's club lacrosse team. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Highest Distinction in 2007 with a bachelor's degree and delivered that year's commencement speech. His speech was later noted as displaying his skill in public speaking. 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." According to El-Sayed, Clinton approached him after the ceremony and encouraged him to consider public service. El-Sayed gained a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed two years of medical school and considered becoming a neurosurgeon. 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. He then applied for a Rhodes Scholarship, writing in his application:

My religion teaches that if one saves a life, she has saved all of humanity. I remember reading this verse with my father as a boy: "How great," I thought, "would it be then to save a life every day?" Quick to share my thoughts with Baba, I told him that I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. My father, a professor, thought for a moment, and reasoned, "Abdulrahman, wouldn't it be better to learn why people die, and then teach everyone around you to save lives? Wouldn't that save more lives?" His reasoning stuck; but so did mine. As a second-year medical student, he gained a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a D.Phil. in public health in 2011. At Oxford, he earned a full blue as captain of the men's lacrosse team. 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. El-Sayed did not pursue a medical license, and instead went into public health epidemiology work.

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.

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. He has gained several research awards, including being named one of the Carnegie Council's Policy Innovators. He built 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.

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 leading U.S. city at the time. He was charged with rebuilding the Detroit Health Department after government public health activities were provided by a nonprofit in the course of the City of Detroit's municipal bankruptcy in 2012 in that role. 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. 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. El-Sayed was appointed to the governor's statewide Childhood Lead Elimination Board. 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. 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". The University of Michigan awarded him a Bicentennial Alumni Award in 2017. Since 2019, El-Sayed has hosted America Dissected with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a podcast around politics and public health made by Crooked Media.

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. He assumed the role in March 2023 and resigned in April 2025.

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. He officially announced his candidacy on February 25, 2017. 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".

El-Sayed pledged to accept no campaign donations from corporations, and raised over $5 million from individual donations. El-Sayed was endorsed by U.S. senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic congressional nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and 2017 Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour. He was also endorsed by the organization Justice Democrats and The Nation magazine. In the August 7 primary, he gained 340,560 votes, or around 30% of the vote, losing to Gretchen Whitmer. El-Sayed founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee, to help elect progressive candidates and support ballot initiatives in Michigan in September 2018. In 2020, he served on the Joe Biden–Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force on healthcare.

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. 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. Piker's association with the campaign became a point of contention within the Democratic Party over his past comments around the September 11 attacks, Hamas, and Israel. 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. 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. 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. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim American to serve in the US Senate.

Political positions§

El-Sayed is a progressive Democrat. He supports Medicare for All and co-wrote a book on the topic. He has vowed not to accept PAC donations, accepting donations from individuals only. 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. El-Sayed supported repealing Michigan state laws that block local governments from levying a municipal sales tax or enacting rent control laws in 2018.

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." He advocates for stronger enforcement of anti-monopoly laws and the elimination of corporate tax breaks. In June 2026, he released a plan calling for more regulations on artificial intelligence companies.

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.

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. He said he would end U.S. military assistance to Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in 2026.

Israel§

El-Sayed has criticized Israel over its conduct in the Gaza war, calling it a genocide; in a January 2024 podcast, he called the war in the Gaza Strip a public health catastrophe and called for a ceasefire. 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?" 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." In July, he said, "The question of Israel's existence is not a question. I'm not going to play this gotcha game around whether or not it has a right to exist. The question, ultimately, is around whether or not we want a politics that dignifies equal rights." 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." 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. 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".

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". 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 in April 2025. In September 2025, he said that military aid to Ukraine was around "enforcing the rules of the rules-based international order in accordance with our allies".