Fighting pain with policy: Abdul El-Sayed makes his case for the US Senate

In an exclusive interview, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed opens up about Trump’s chaotic tariff policies, looming Medicaid cuts, and how his upbringing shaped his campaign for the US Senate.

LANSING—The race for Michigan’s open US Senate seat is already drawing some big names. But Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is betting on something a bit deeper than political branding: Trust.

In wide-ranging, 30-minute interview with The ‘Gander, the former public health official and 2018 gubernatorial candidate opened up about his decision to run for the US Senate, the personal pain that’s driving his campaign, the fight to protect Medicaid, and why he believes Michiganders are ready for a different sort of leadership fighting for them in Washington DC.

The following Q&A has been edited and condensed for grammar, style, and brevity. 

You’ve said life in Michigan shouldn’t be this difficult. Was there a particular moment that made you feel that most deeply?

I can take you back 10 years. I started public service in Michigan back in 2015, rebuilding a health department in the poorest, largest majority-Black city in America. We were in a situation where people were just coming back from the worst of austerity. Kids were going to crumbling schools in Detroit. A kid would go into school, not be able to see the blackboard, we’d bring our vision team to screen them—and then they’d test positive, meaning they needed glasses. 

Then, more than 30% would test positive again the next time they got tested. These are situations that should not exist in the richest, most powerful country in the world.

Over the course of the 2018 election, I went all over the state and found that it didn’t matter where you were—people were making the same complaints. And it’s just gotten worse. 

We talk about inequality in this country like it’s a statistical aberration. But what that means is that most people feel stuck or like they’re falling behind, while a few at the top get richer.

People are being priced out of rent or a mortgage. They’re being priced out of healthcare. They worry about whether or not they’re gonna be able to afford a home. And that just shouldn’t be the case. And it tells you that there’s something fundamentally broken about our society.

With Donald Trump and Elon Musk, you’ve got two billionaires who are rigging the government to work for them. This massive, disastrous, ham-handed, chaotic, self-serving tariff policy—and then when they pull it back because it’s tanking the economy, they pass the stock tip to their billionaire buddies who make $300 billion off the top of it. That’s the perfect encapsulation.

We could do so much better, but it means naming the disease. Trump is the worst symptom—but he’s not the disease. He exploited a level of pain that had been there before and made it worse. Right now, we have to stand up to him and stop him from tearing up the Constitution and rebuild something that truly is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

You weren’t planning to run for US Senate. What changed?

I was never supposed to run for office in the first place. I went to medical school, did a PhD—you don’t do that to run for office. But in medical school, you’re taught to ask and answer two very simple questions: What’s wrong? And how can I help? As I was training, I came to realize that what was wrong had more to do with society than with people’s bodies.

That’s what led me into a career in public service and ultimately to run for governor in 2018. But I had no intention of running for office again. I’ve got two kids, ages two and seven. I really cherish those years and I want to be able to spend time with them being the best day I can be.

But I was serving in Wayne County’s health department and watched as the Trump administration froze federal funding for basic healthcare—funding for federally qualified health centers, funding to provide food for mothers and their children. And that all happened on the same day Sen. Gary Peters decided he wasn’t going to run in this next election.

At that point, I had to ask myself: Where is the fight on all the things I’ve dedicated my career to? With Trump playing the government for his personal gain, I had to ask myself: What does it mean to fight for those ideals and to protect the country where my little girls are growing up? 

That’s when I started thinking this might be the right next position to serve the public. I’m here because I believe that this is where the fight needs to be. And it’s not just to fight against Trump. It’s the fight for the future that my kids—all of our kids—deserve. That’s why I’m running.

What keeps you in the fight when the odds seem stacked?

I spent a lot of childhood summers [in Egypt] with my grandmother—the wisest, most intelligent person I’ve ever met. She never got to go to school and she lost two babies before the age of one. She’d always remind me I wasn’t even close to the most capable of my cousins—but I had something they didn’t: I got to leave and go back to the US at the end of the summer.

That meant public schools, a public university, and publicly funded higher education. It enabled me to have a career and to work to serve my fellow humans. It makes me sad that my cousins never had that. But it’s not just my cousins who live in Egypt. It’s folks living 15 minutes away from where I grew up. Their opportunities look more like my cousins’ in Egypt than mine.

That, to me, is fundamentally unfair. We’ve got to solve it. And I know pain—I saw it in my grandmother, in my dad, in my patients, and in the people I served in Detroit and Wayne County. That pain doesn’t have to exist. But when you go through it too long, it turns into either cynicism or hope. Working in a clinic, you always try to get people to see past the pain, to hope that someday it can change. And so, to me, running right now? This work? It’s an act of hope. 

Many Michiganders are tired of the chaos of politics. What do you say to folks who have lost faith that the government can work for them?

You and me, both. A lot of people are talking about fighting back, and I understand why. 

But I don’t think people want to fight. I don’t think people want this never-ending war between red and blue. That seems to only benefit the people who use it to get the power. We want to build. We want to love each other. We want to live in peace and harmony with each other.

What Trump is doing is absolutely wrong. You can’t accommodate Trump and expect that he’s not going to acquire power or shred our Constitution or destroy our way of life. He has to be stood up to. But the purpose of standing up to him isn’t to perpetuate politics-as-usual. 

Our politics should be about something bigger—and that’s about delivering a government by the people and for the people. And that’s what I’m hoping to be able to do in the US Senate.

Trump and his supporters would say they’re actively delivering a government for the people. What makes your approach different?

Trump and I might be polar opposites. He’s a guy who inherited a lot of money, squandered most of it, lived a playboy lifestyle, never really had to work for anything in his life, and thinks he alone can solve everything. I am not that. My parents scratched and clawed.

My dad was the child of a vegetable salesman who studied his way to the United States. He built a life and taught us to do the same. My stepmom, who raised me, is from Gratiot County. Her family were farmers. I learned how to work from the son of a vegetable salesman and the daughter of a farmer. My whole life I’ve understood I have to show up and I have to work as hard as I can for myself and the people around me, and I don’t take opportunities for granted.

I also think Trump is dumb and I’m not. 

Why should voters trust you to serve their best interests?

I’ve got the receipts. I’m somebody who’s worked in government, literally resurrected a health department and led another one—the biggest in the state—to do some really big things. 

We are in the process of erasing $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 people in Wayne County. We put Narcan across the county to save lives. We put together a state-of-the-art air quality monitoring system, tested every daycare and Head Start program for lead, and put glasses on tens of thousands of kids. I’m somebody who’s made government work for folks.

With me, you are getting somebody who can stand on principle and stand up to anybody. You’re getting somebody who knows how to bring people together to build from what is left over. And I think that’s what Michiganders are looking for right now in the US Senate.

You’ve taken some consistently progressive stances. What do you say to Democrats who worry that kind of hardline approach can’t win?

I don’t know when the Democratic Party stopped being about guaranteeing healthcare and being the party of the working people. I don’t know when this party decided it was OK for oil and gas companies to destroy our air and water or when it stopped standing up against war. 

I’m a Democrat in the old-fashioned sense of the word. I just want people to have nice things in life—and I think the reason they don’t have nice things in life is because very, very powerful people don’t want them to make too much money. They want to keep it the way it is.

Those are my positions. The real question for other Democrats is: When did you become a corporatist? When did you start erring on the side of big corporations? Oh, I remember. It was when you started to take all these corporate PAC checks, and that’s something I’ll never do.

I’m not selling my mouth to a publicly traded corporation so they can have my political opinions. I’m not doing that. And I hope we can get back to a time when Democrats don’t do it either.  

It really doesn’t have to be this hard to get by in the richest, most powerful country in the world. And if we’re serious about taking back our politics, we actually can have nice things. 

About the Candidate

Here’s what to know about the candidate, his platform, and the road ahead:

Born and raised in southeast Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a former public health director for Detroit and Wayne County. He ran for governor in 2018, placing second in the Democratic primary. On his campaign website, El-Sayed outlines several priorities—like universal healthcare, affordable housing, clean air and water, and an economy that helps workers.

To win the open US Senate seat in 2026, El-Sayed must first emerge from a competitive Democratic primary that includes state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and US Rep. Haley Stevens. 

If he advances, he’ll likely face Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman who recently announced his second Senate campaign after narrowly losing his campaign in 2024.

The general election isn’t until November 2026—so there’s still plenty of time for Michiganders to get registered to vote and learn more about the candidates ahead of Election Day. 

READ MORE: Former Michigan health officer enters Democratic US Senate race

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