U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed criticized the Electoral College and gerrymandering while discussing broader concerns over America’s political system. Speaking about the impact of the Electoral College in Michigan, El-Sayed argued that it is “anti-democratic,” while also addressing the filibuster and the Supreme Court. His comments come as the Michigan Senate race takes shape ahead of the midterm elections. El-Sayed’s remarks signal a focus on electoral reform and the structures shaping political representation as candidates campaign across the state.
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#AbdulElSayed #Michigan #SenateRace #Midterms #Election2026 #ElectoralCollege #Gerrymandering #Filibuster #SCOTUS #USPolitics #MichiganPolitics #ElectionReform #Democrats #Senate #Politics
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NewsTranscript
00:00I remember walking into Herman Kiefer in my first week as health director because the state told me that there
00:06was some files in the tunnels of Herman Kiefer.
00:09I've got to tell you, it was the scariest day of my life.
00:12On the tunnels of Herman Kiefer.
00:14I was hired to rebuild the health department after the state rolled in through emergency management and forced it to
00:19shut down.
00:20Rebuilt the 185-year-old health department to do things like put glasses on kids for free.
00:25Take on big corporate polluters.
00:28Eliminate medical debt in Wayne County.
00:30Put Narcan in vending machines for free.
00:32Build programs, revives free health insurance, and new small businesses.
00:35After Flint, we had every school, daycare, and Head Start tested for lead in the water.
00:39First 68 schools we tested, 19 tested positive for lead.
00:42Wow. Wow.
00:45My public service has been about leading health departments, whether in Detroit or Wayne County,
00:52in America's poorest, largest majority black cities and communities.
00:58Working alongside Detroiters and Michiganders.
01:01You talk about the woman difference.
01:02That's public health.
01:04You've probably seen some attack ads about me saying I'm disrespectful to women.
01:08You probably saw those, right?
01:09You know what they were pointing to?
01:11I wrote an op-ed 15 years ago critiquing the Let's Move campaign.
01:15Great campaign.
01:16I said so in the op-ed.
01:18But I also said there were some parts of the campaign that was going to be ineffectual.
01:22And they used it to call me disrespectful to women.
01:26My mother trained as a doctor in Egypt.
01:30My stepmother who raised me was a professor.
01:32My wife is a doctor.
01:34And I'm raising two daughters to be stronger than any man.
01:37If I were disrespectful to women, we would not have been able to operate in public health
01:42in Detroit.
01:42That's right.
01:43Ms. Pam, remember?
01:44You were there.
01:46And had you heard, if I was really disrespectful to women, y'all probably would have heard about
01:50it.
01:51Detroit's the biggest small town in America.
01:53Yes, it is.
01:54It truly is.
01:55But you're never going to hear anybody say that I was anything but respectful in the
02:01workplace, outside the workplace.
02:04Because, you know, I've been married for 20 years to the same woman.
02:08I got married at 21.
02:12My wife wouldn't beat me upside down.
02:14If not her, my grandmother would come back from the broken and beat me upside down.
02:20I'm running because it just shouldn't be this hard in the richest, most powerful country
02:25in the world.
02:26It shouldn't be this hard to pay your mortgage.
02:28It shouldn't be this hard to see a doctor.
02:30It shouldn't be this hard to pay your tax dollars and know that that money is going to
02:33be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids.
02:37It shouldn't be this hard.
02:38That's what it's been this hard.
02:40But we kicked off a campaign to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, pass
02:44Medicare for all, for my troubles.
02:46They set a record amount of money spent against me.
02:48$70 million of outside spending.
02:50$32 million alone from AIPAC.
02:52More interested in sending your money to a foreign government than keeping it here to
02:56invest in schools in your own neighborhood.
02:58$32 million they spent.
03:00It is a record.
03:02No one has ever had more spent against them in a democratic primary in history.
03:06That's who paid for all of that.
03:09And so I'm really excited to be here to have a conversation with you about what it looks
03:14like to continue the service that I sought to begin when I moved to the city in 2015 and
03:22started to build a health department.
03:24I want to just speak to a particular moment because I know it has been an issue in the
03:28crawl and I want to speak to them.
03:36When that race opened up, that Senate race, and I was sitting in my office trying to get
03:40another round of weight checks out, trying to make sure our FQHCs stay open for just a
03:44few more weeks.
03:46It was the same day that Senator Peters announced his retirement.
03:49And I just asked myself, where's the fight for the public's health now?
03:53Now, I've been a doctor my whole career advocating for programs for Glass-On Kids, Tech-On-Corps,
03:59Luterism.
04:00These programs cost money.
04:02And when you propose programs like this, very serious people, they ask you, well, doctor,
04:07how are you going to pay for that?
04:09And for 18 months at that point, we had watched our tax dollars get spent in billions of dollars
04:19to do a genocide in Gaza.
04:22Billions of dollars.
04:23Dollars that could have been spent to put glasses on babies, to rebuild schools, spent
04:29to destroy schools and destroy babies somewhere else.
04:32Now, I remember, and I know I'm going a little bit long, but I want to really speak to this.
04:39We are on September 12th of 2026.
04:43I remember this day 25 years ago because a teacher in my high school pulled me aside and
04:49said, Abdul, you need to learn your history.
04:52I was dealing with trying to figure out what it meant for me that day to go from being a
04:58darkly complexioned kid with a funny name to being a very particular kind of darkly complexioned
05:02kid with a very particular kind of funny name.
05:04And he was one of the only black teachers in my school.
05:06He said, you've got to learn your history and not the history you're going to learn in
05:09the classroom.
05:10Took me to the public library.
05:12We checked out a whole bunch of books.
05:14W.E.B.
05:14The Boys.
05:16Alex Haley.
05:18The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
05:20The Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King.
05:22The Speeches of Frederick Douglass.
05:27Sojourner Truth.
05:28And Fannie Lou Haber.
05:30And I read my history.
05:35And you look at the struggle that created the Civil Rights Movement.
05:40We talk about the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
05:42There was another act right around that period, the Immigration Act.
05:46That made it so that there wasn't a quota from people from Egypt to come here.
05:51Eight years later, my dad immigrates from Egypt to here.
05:55Six years later, I get born here.
05:57Accident in history.
05:58Because of the work of black communities advocating for peace and justice.
06:02That's right.
06:02We saw that again in the 1980s.
06:05The black community stepping up to apartheid in South Africa.
06:09Saying enough is enough.
06:11Fast forward to 2023, 2024.
06:14Arab and Muslim communities watching as literally their cousins die.
06:19I got a friend of mine.
06:20Lost 25 family members in Gaza.
06:2325 family members to missiles paid and bought by our country.
06:29His tax dollars.
06:30Imagine watching your own tax dollars get used to annihilate your own cousins.
06:35And you know what folks said?
06:37They said, you know what?
06:39We've got to stand up and fight for justice.
06:41A democratic party that says that it's for human rights.
06:44It's got to be for human rights.
06:45Right.
06:46And so when Vice President Biden was running in his campaign, we said, look, there's an
06:55opportunity in the primary to make an argument that you cannot ask this community to come
07:01out and vote for you if you are going to continue to use our tax dollars to kill people
07:06who look like us.
07:07And we're going to be able to take a shot across the bow before it's too late to send
07:12a message.
07:12That's what Uncommitted was about.
07:14I endorse Uncommitted.
07:16I endorse Uncommitted because I learned from our history that you've got to show people
07:20that sometimes they are on the wrong side of history and you've got to get them on the
07:23right side of history.
07:25That's what Uncommitted was about.
07:28Now, when President Biden dropped out of that race and Vice President Harris became the
07:34nominee, the next day I endorsed her.
07:36Now, you've got to imagine, when I endorsed Uncommitted, so many of the Democratic Party
07:41called me up and said, what are you doing?
07:42Sit down.
07:43Just be quiet.
07:44I said, no, this is the right thing and y'all got to pay attention.
07:48We cannot continue to subsidize the murder of other children.
07:52And the day that I endorsed Vice President Harris, you've got to imagine, a lot of folks
07:56in the Arab and Muslim community called me up and be like, what are you doing?
07:58Sit just one out.
07:59I said, no, because I was the health director in Wayne County.
08:03And whether you saw this race from the eyes of a child in Detroit, who I was responsible
08:08for, or the eyes of a child in Gaza, Donald Trump was going to be worse.
08:10That's right.
08:12That's why he is.
08:13And so I endorsed the Vice President.
08:16Now, I don't do things just the same.
08:19That's not the whole point.
08:20I do things because I want them to be effective.
08:22And the most effective thing at that time was rather than step up, because people would
08:26have said, oh, well, you know, he's just trying to set up and get right with the Democratic
08:28Party Party.
08:29I said, no, do you not remember what Donald Trump did the first day he was elected the
08:33Muslim man?
08:34You think he's not going to do the worst this time?
08:37So I had meeting after meeting with folks in the community, quietly having that conversation.
08:42Hey, listen, a vote is not about the past.
08:45It's about the future.
08:47The Vice President is not the President.
08:49And the President is not running.
08:52We have an opportunity here to engage with this potential future President who is
08:58who we know is not going to be nearly as bad as Donald Trump.
09:01But here's the challenge.
09:03I was on the phone with the Vice President's campaign being like, hey, we got to get a
09:07pivot on these policies.
09:08This is nuts.
09:09And then on the phone with leaders in the Arab and Muslim community being like, hey,
09:13this is nuts.
09:18And we got no movement on either side.
09:21The thing you'll always get with me is that I am going to defend what I believe to be true.
09:27I am not unwilling to stand up to people who tell me this is not politically palatable.
09:31You should shut up and sit down.
09:32It's why they spent $70 million to beat me in the primary.
09:34Because when I tell you I want money out of politics and I'm not going to take over
09:37money, that means I take a lot of over money in my face.
09:40But you know what?
09:40I don't back down.
09:42The President, the Vice President, Mike Rogers are starting to realize this much right
09:45now.
09:46They can't keep my name out of their mouth.
09:49And you know what?
09:50The reason they keep saying this is because they're like, if we don't truck him, he's
09:54proven out that we could be stood up to.
09:56That's right.
09:57So the thing you'll get with me is I try to do what I believe to be right every time,
10:01even if it has political costs.
10:03I believe I was right to support and commit.
10:05I believe our handling of the genocide in Gaza was God awful.
10:08I believe it's going to be a mark on our country's history.
10:11I believe there's going to come a point in time when people look back at that and say,
10:14I can't believe we backstopped that and I believe that we were right to stand up to
10:19them and I believe we were also right to stand up against Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
10:25So if you ask me about my principles, I believe I executed on my principles every time.
10:30Now, I wasn't, I wasn't effective.
10:32And when this race opened up, the question I asked was, how do we get a policy and a politics
10:38that is crystal clear about the idea that every dollar that we send over there to subsidize
10:44the worst things there, to make more there, is a dollar we're not spending on schools
10:47here and spending on opportunity here and spending on healthcare here.
10:52And we built that campaign.
10:53And guess what?
10:54We took on all of the folks who said that you cannot beat their money.
10:59It turns out that when you have a message and when you're consistent on that message,
11:03you can win.
11:04The thing you'll get with me is I don't say different things to different people.
11:07I say the same things everywhere.
11:09Put me in a room with billionaires, tell them about tax billionaires.
11:12Put me in a room with working people, I'm going to tax billionaires.
11:15I'm falling asleep at night when I'm going to tax this billionaires.
11:19But I don't say different things to different people.
11:21I try to say what I believe to be true, to say it consistently, to say it against power,
11:27and to be willing to stand for that thing in office.
11:30And I think we need a senator in Michigan who's willing to do those things.
11:33Absolutely.
11:39It is 3.30, so I think he should give us a little more time, pass forward.
11:47But thank you for that very full introduction of yourself.
11:51I did mention you addressing the elephant of the room and the noncommittal.
11:56I think he answered the question for us.
12:01I'm going to go first because Bishop is a preacher.
12:05And now if she might just ask the question, I'm going to ask the question.
12:09She might set the question up and tell you why she got to be there.
12:13Put an amen in there.
12:16So question one simply says, can you all hear us?
12:21Do we need to be mic'd?
12:25What do you plan to do to energize and motivate the large percentage of Democratic voters who
12:31did not vote for you in the recent primary election?
12:35Wow.
12:37Show up.
12:38Have conversations.
12:40Engage.
12:41Tell folks about what I've done and what I intend to do.
12:46You know, one of the things they'll never say about our campaign is that it lacks energy.
12:50That's right.
12:51We go everywhere.
12:52We talk to everybody.
12:53I've been to 110 different cities now.
12:56550 public events I think we're at.
12:59So my job is just to keep coming and to keep having the conversation, keep answering the
13:02questions.
13:03You know, before the barrage of attack ads, we were up about 20 points among black voters
13:11in Michigan.
13:12And then you saw the ads.
13:15You saw the ads.
13:17Everybody saw the ads.
13:18You saw the ads a dozen, 15, 25 times.
13:22Yeah.
13:22That's right.
13:22In one hour.
13:23In one hour.
13:25That's right.
13:25And the ads were filled with lies.
13:28But the only thing I got against the lies is the truth.
13:31Now, the hard part about that is sometimes you just can't speak the truth loud enough
13:34in as many places as you need to.
13:37But that's the job.
13:39And so my job is to just go and remind people that I didn't just show up in a lot
13:44of these
13:44communities to ask for a vote.
13:46I showed up back in 2015 when the health department was shut down.
13:50Nobody knew who I was.
13:52I wasn't, I had no plans to run for office.
13:54I promise you that.
13:55You don't do an MD and a PhD to run for office.
13:57It's an insane waste of time.
13:59I did it because I care about health.
14:02And many folks in this room are people I worked with.
14:07City of Detroit.
14:08You knew me back when.
14:09Ms. Pam, have I changed at all?
14:12Still talking about the same things, right?
14:14Yes, sir.
14:17So my job is just to keep showing up and talking about the same things.
14:21And, you know, there's no magic bullet.
14:23There's no, hey, I can, no, listen, I've thought a lot about the challenges.
14:27I have read my history.
14:29When it comes to black communities in Michigan, when it comes to black communities in America,
14:34there are unpaid debts that have long since come due that we are unwilling to acknowledge,
14:41let alone pay down.
14:43And I understand that we need leaders who are going to understand those debts and address them.
14:50But the question for me is, within my power, have I done my best?
14:56And I would challenge people to look at my history and say, yeah, that man hasn't done everything he could
15:01around the problems he says he cares about.
15:02Whether it's infant mortality or maternal mortality or asthma or lead, which happened to be my specialty.
15:09But also when it comes to economic development, the idea that they promise us 500 jobs and give a check
15:14to a big corporation and those jobs never show up.
15:16I want to see loan access, capital access, so people can build businesses that build wealth, that keep the wealth
15:22in our communities.
15:22I want to see investment in housing.
15:26I want to see investment in schools.
15:28And just on the school's point, look, it's a crazy thing.
15:31We call schools the engine of social mobility.
15:33But ask yourself this.
15:35Detroit Public Schools just made a $700 million investment in their school infrastructure.
15:39They're still $1.7 billion down.
15:44We fund public school infrastructure based on property taxes.
15:49Property tax is a function of property values.
15:52Property values are a function of historical redlining that have made it so that some communities have less valuable property.
16:00And then we use that to fund our buildings and we wonder why we never catch up.
16:03That's right.
16:04I think we need to address that.
16:06You know, this guy wants to defund the Department of Education.
16:08I want to tie Department of Education funds to Department of Defense funds.
16:12You want to raise the defense budget, you're going to raise the education budget too.
16:15You want to build bombs and tanks, you're going to build schools too.
16:18And I think we need people who are willing to stand up and say that.
16:20I'm going to finish here.
16:23I never intended to be the main character of the midterms.
16:27That's a decision they made for me.
16:29Every time they say my name, you know what they do?
16:31They build my platform.
16:34Politics, in some way, is the alchemy of turning attention into power.
16:38They're giving me a lot of attention.
16:40You know, at some point, Donald Trump's going to learn how to say my name.
16:43He's going to have to say the word senator in front of you.
16:49And when he does, when he does, the thing they're afraid about me is I don't shut up.
16:55I say the thing.
16:56I call out the emperor has no clothes.
16:59And so the thing about it is they're about to give me a huge platform to show that too often
17:04the emperor doesn't have any clothes.
17:06And I'm just going to say this.
17:07Do you remember who tried to beat me before the republicans tried to beat me?
17:11My own party tried to beat me.
17:13And that's because I'm willing to say too often our own party is on the wrong side of it too.
17:17You're taking money from the same corporations.
17:19DTE bought both of you off.
17:20What are we going to get?
17:21We're going to get DTE governance.
17:23Blue Cross buys both of you off.
17:24Yeah, Blue Cross governance.
17:25Don't be surprised.
17:27So I don't take their money.
17:28I don't think that's how politics should be done.
17:31Me either.
17:31And so when I show up, I'm just going to say the thing.
17:35And what that means then is that we can maybe start to move the public discussion around a lot of
17:40the things that we have not been able to move the discussion on.
17:43So maybe they're going to mess around and give me the best platform in the U.S. Senate.
17:47And I'm going to use that platform to tell the truth.
17:49Right?
17:50We know the sometimes you need a Jeremiah.
17:54So let's leave that there.
17:56All right.
17:56Amen.
17:59Wow.
18:01That was great.
18:02Come on, y'all can laugh better than that.
18:04Yeah.
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