Born and raised in southeast Michigan, El-Sayed graduated from the University of Michigan and was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in public health. He then earned his medical degree from Columbia University and became an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He was the executive director of the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017, and from 2023 to 2025 he served as director of the Wayne County Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services.
A progressive Democrat, El-Sayed supports Medicare for All, ending US military funding to Israel, and abolishing ICE. In the 2026 Michigan Democratic Senate primary, El-Sayed defeated U.S. representative Haley Stevens. He faces Republican nominee Mike Rogers in the general election. If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
Early life, family, and education
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was born on October 31, 1984, in Rochester Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, to Egyptian immigrant parents. His father, Mohamed El-Sayed, was raised in Alexandria, Egypt, and immigrated to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Wayne State University. His mother, Fatten El-Komy, is a nurse practitioner in Missouri. His parents divorced when he was three years old. He was subsequently raised in the Detroit area by his father and stepmother, Jacqueline El-Sayed (née Johnson), a native of Gratiot County, Michigan. Both his father and stepmother are mechanical engineers, and his father is also an imam.
In 2003, El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a three-sport athlete and captain of the wrestling, football, and lacrosse teams. He then attended the University of Michigan, majoring in biology and political science and playing on the men's club lacrosse team. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest distinction in 2007 with a bachelor's degree and gave that year's student commencement speech. According to El-Sayed, after the ceremony, former U.S. president Bill Clinton (who gave the keynote speech) encouraged him to consider public service.
El-Sayed received a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed the first two years of a combined M.D./Ph.D. program and initially 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 later wrote in his Rhodes Scholarship application, "My religion teaches that if one saves a life, she has saved all of humanity", recounting a childhood conversation with his father about the importance of saving lives while teaching others to do the same.
As a second-year medical student, El-Sayed received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a Doctor of Philosophy 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 degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, supported by a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans and the Medical Scientist Training Program. He later worked as an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia but did not pursue residency training, and therefore did not become licensed to practice medicine. He has described himself as a physician, including on his LinkedIn profile. During the 2026 campaign, Mike Rogers and other critics said the description was misleading, since Michigan and federal law tie the term to licensure; El-Sayed's campaign has pointed to the American Medical Association's definition, which includes anyone with a medical degree.
Career in public health
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 created and taught the Mailman School's first course on systems science and population health. El-Sayed 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 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 when the city went bankrupt in 2013.
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 and to increase funding for the city's 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". In 2017, the University of Michigan awarded him a Bicentennial Alumni Award.
Since 2019, El-Sayed has hosted America Dissected with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a podcast about politics and public health produced by Crooked Media.
Health director of Wayne County
In December 2022, El-Sayed was named director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services, assuming the role in March 2023.
During his tenure, El-Sayed oversaw the installation of air quality monitors across Wayne County to identify pollution hotspots and launched a program to buy and erase up to $700 million in medical debt for about 300,000 county residents. As of September 2026, the program had erased about $95 million in debt for more than 100,000 residents. A Bridge Michigan fact-check found that El-Sayed's Senate campaign had overstated the program's results by saying he had erased $700 million, the program's stated goal. He helped the county restructure the Juvenile Youth Services and relocate the Criminal Justice Complex, and started a program for the county to provide eyeglasses to children in lower-income schools.
In April 2025, El-Sayed resigned to run for the U.S. Senate.
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, saying he was inspired to run for governor after the Flint water crisis.
El-Sayed pledged to accept no campaign donations from corporations, and raised over $5 million from individual donations.
In early 2018, El-Sayed's eligibility to run was questioned because he had been registered to vote in New York as recently as 2015; the Michigan Constitution requires a candidate for governor to have been a qualified elector of the state for four years before the election. At the request of the Michigan Democratic Party, he asked a court to rule on the question. In May 2018, the Michigan Bureau of Elections rejected the challenges to his candidacy, noting that he had been registered to vote in Michigan for 15 consecutive years.
During the campaign, El-Sayed said that Detroit's housing demolition program had been "poisoning kids with lead" and that Duggan had ignored his warnings while he was health director. Duggan's office responded, "Dr. El-Sayed's story about his time at the city has changed, and irresponsibly so", and released emails that it said showed El-Sayed praising the city's demolition team. El-Sayed's campaign disputed the mayor's account.
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 received 340,560 votes, or about 30% of the vote, losing to Gretchen Whitmer.
In September 2018, El-Sayed founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee, to help elect progressive candidates and support ballot initiatives in Michigan. In 2020, he served on the Joe Biden–Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force on healthcare.
In the 2024 Michigan Democratic presidential primary, El-Sayed was among the more than 100,000 voters who cast "uncommitted" ballots in protest of President Joe Biden's handling of the Gaza war; he said at the time that the protest applied only to the primary. During the 2026 Senate primary, Haley Stevens's campaign accused him of leading the uncommitted movement, which Bridge Michigan found he had not done, and questioned his commitment to the Democratic Party.
2026 U.S. Senate campaign
In April 2025, after incumbent Gary Peters announced he would not run for reelection, El-Sayed launched his campaign in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan.
In April 2026, left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker appeared with El-Sayed at two campus rallies and a primary-night party in Detroit. Centrist Democrats and El-Sayed's primary opponents criticized Piker's participation over his past comments about the September 11 attacks, Hamas, and Israel. El-Sayed defended his appearances with Piker as an effort to engage with his audience and said he does not agree with everything Piker has said.
After Michigan state Senator 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. Outside spending became a significant feature of the contest, with about $62 million spent by outside groups in support of Stevens, of which the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its United Democracy Project affiliate spent $33 million.
On August 4, the day of the primary, as polling showed El-Sayed roughly two points ahead of Stevens, McMorrow endorsed El-Sayed. On August 5, the Associated Press called the race for El-Sayed, who finished with 48.4% to Stevens's 47.6%. He will face Republican nominee Mike Rogers in the general election on November 3, 2026. If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim and first Egyptian-American elected to the US Senate.
After El-Sayed won the primary, AIPAC initially planned to spend millions more in favor of Rogers in the general election, but Rogers's team asked it not to advertise openly, fearing that its public support could be a liability. In October, AIPAC started spending money on the race with a $95,000 purchase of mailers.
In August 2026, El-Sayed apologized for remarks he made after the 2026 Temple Israel attack in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. After that attack, El-Sayed released a video statement that included the phrase "Hurt people hurt people", a reference to the perpetrator's relatives having been killed in an Israeli airstrike. In his apology, El-Sayed said, "I should have just issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it should have been the full stop."
Also in August 2026, El-Sayed said he had no plans to campaign with Piker again. This came after Piker said during a Twitch stream that if pro-Israel Jewish leaders continue to conflate Judaism and Jewish identity with support for the state of Israel, that could fuel antisemitism and endanger American Jews due to declining public support for and anger toward Israel. In a statement El-Sayed said: "Antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms. And I stand against any rhetoric that puts the community at risk. [...] While politicians and pundits try to make this race about a Twitch streamer, we're going to be talking about gas, groceries, good schools, and healthcare."
Kamala Harris endorsed and campaigned with El-Sayed in September.
El-Sayed's primary victory yielded a wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric. In September, without evidence, Mike Rogers said El-Sayed had "pledged support" to the Muslim Brotherhood and his campaign was funded by Muslim "terrorist groups". Fact-checkers found no evidence for either claim, and Rogers has not retracted them. Vice-President JD Vance falsely claimed that El-Sayed supports "sharia law". Senator John Kennedy said El-Sayed "sleep[s] in a bin Laden jersey". While campaigning for Rogers, President Donald Trump has repeatedly called El-Sayed "Mohammed"; a "jihadist"; and a "terrorist sympathizer". In response, El-Sayed said Trump "thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us", and asked "Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries?"
During his midterm rally campaign, Trump has continued to attack El-Sayed as a Muslim. On October 12, Trump said "to me, he's Mohammed, and he's a radical jihadist". On October 14, Trump attacked El-Sayed and Ilhan Omar, saying: "Somalia bandits, Third World gangsters, jihadist sympathizers do not belong in Ohio. They don't belong in America. Better get them the hell out of here." The audience chanted "Deport, deport, deport!" On October 17, in an Oval Office video, Trump said "Mohammed Abdul El-Sayed" is "absolutely Muslim Brotherhood" and "hates our country". In a CNN interview, Dana Bash played video of Trump calling El-Sayed a "jihadist" and "terrorist sympathizer" to Rogers, who did not reject the rhetoric, and again linked El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed has repeatedly denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood and condemned any attempt to impose religion as state policy. He said: "No amount of hate, fear, or bigotry can stop our movement to get money out of politics, put money in pockets, and pass Medicare for All".
On October 24, 2026, former United States President Barack Obama supported El-Sayed at a rally in Detroit. Obama praised El-Sayed's proposals to reduce the influence of money in politics and expand access to health care, and criticized Trump, saying: "Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family." He also condemned efforts to portray candidates as un-American because of their religion or background.
Political positions
El-Sayed is a progressive economic populist. He supports Medicare for All and co-authored 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.
Healthcare
Medicare for All is one of the main parts of El-Sayed's political platform. The goal is to create a government-run health insurance system that gives all Americans health insurance. El-Sayed also supports replacing private insurance with government-funded health coverage. Mike Rogers, El-Sayed's Republican opponent, opposes the plan, emphasizing the multi-trillion dollar cost of implementing it. He also claimed that millions of Michigan residents with private insurance would lose their current coverage.
First Amendment
El-Sayed has expressed support for constitutional protections for religious freedom under the First Amendment. During an In October 2026 town hall exchange, he responded affirmatively when asked whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood before challenging the implications of the question and defending freedom of religion for all Americans under the Constitution.
Artificial intelligence
In June 2026, El-Sayed released a plan calling for more regulation of artificial intelligence. In August 2026, he 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." He has called for guarantees that the operation of data centers will not result in rate increases passed on to customers.
Economy
El-Sayed has described himself as a capitalist, 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 has said that regulating billionaires to fund public infrastructure is "not that radical", while advocating for stronger enforcement of anti-monopoly laws and the elimination of corporate tax breaks.
Environment
El-Sayed has called for tougher enforcement of environmental laws and for merging Michigan's Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Quality into a single "Department of the Environment", and achieving "100% renewable energy" in Michigan by 2030.
Foreign policy
El-Sayed generally opposes United States military aid to foreign countries, but has cited US actions during Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in Serbia during the 1990s as examples of beneficial US intervention.
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.
Israel
In 2026, El-Sayed was widely described as "a fierce critic of Israel". He has criticized US military funding to Israel, AIPAC, and Israeli influence in US politics. El-Sayed has said that his criticism of Israel should not be conflated with hostility toward Judaism or the Jewish people, whom he "love[s] and revere[s]" based on his experience with Jews in Michigan.
On a January 2024 podcast, El-Sayed called the war in the Gaza Strip a genocide and called for a ceasefire. He asked: "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."
El-Sayed has said he recognizes Israel's right to exist, but not explicitly as a Jewish state. But he has called Israel an ethnostate, saying, "I don't believe in ethnostates, and I certainly don't believe that our country is responsible to sustain ethnostates." El-Sayed supports "self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike".
Iran war
El-Sayed has attributed the 2026 Iran war to AIPAC's influence in US politics. He called Israel a "rogue state" and said the U.S. should "stop funding the Israeli military unilateral blank checks".
In October 2026, El-Sayed discussed the war in interviews with Fox News and NBC News. He called the war illegal and said it did not increase American security and had prevented the U.S. from transporting oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz. El-Sayed also said that Israel had dragged the U.S. into a war aimed at expanding Israel's borders. He said the U.S. had paid $2.8 billion to buy 2,000-pound bombs for a foreign government in September and that he would prefer to spend the money on American schools and infrastructure.
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".
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. 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".
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.
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".
Policing
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, El-Sayed said in a radio interview: "I believe that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is 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." He later told The Detroit News that his words were taken out of context and "I actually never, never called for defunding", and his Senate campaign has said he does not support defunding the police; his 2026 platform calls for funding police recruitment, retention, and retirement. FactCheck.org found that some Republican ads exaggerated his record on criminal justice, including a claim that he had called for abolishing prisons.
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.
Personal life
El-Sayed was born and raised in southeast Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Sarah Jukaku, whom he married in 2006, and their two daughters. He is Muslim. His father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, is a nephrologist, and is tied for the top individual donor to the main PAC supporting El-Sayed's Senate campaign, having given $300,000; according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Tayeb Jukaku served as president of Michigan's chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) and he remains on its board of directors as of 2026.
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.
External links
Official website
Appearances on C-SPAN
Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
Profile at Vote Smart
