Does Abdul El-Sayed Want to Put Auto Workers Out of Business?

Despite trying to represent Michigan’s automotive industrial base, U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has a history of criticizing gas-powered cars and supporting policies that threaten Michigan's auto industry.

He even suggested that America be “freed” from “oil and gas dependence entirely.” Now, he's asking auto workers to vote for him, despite pushing policies that many see as direct threats to their jobs.

On his podcast, America Dissected, El-Sayed said, “Cars, they got issues.” While he was making points about cars in general, he specifically called out gas-powered cars.

“All that driving we do contributes to climate change,” El-Sayed said. “Look, I drive a plug-in hybrid, but I know while I'm on the gas side, which is most of my commute, I'm burning fossil fuels into our atmosphere, and it sucks.”

El-Sayed seems to want fewer cars on the road in general. In 2020, for example, he tweeted Bernie Sanders would “build public transit so you don’t even need a car,” and in 2019, he tweeted that one bus could take 22 cars off the road.

El-Sayed’s critique of cars goes beyond his career as a commentator and political surrogate. His affiliation with the radical Sunrise Movement should be concerning for Michiganders who are worried about the auto industry.

El-Sayed served on the Sunrise’s board from 2019 to 2021. In 2021, Sunrise advanced the Clean Cars for America plan, which would ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2030 and eliminate all gas-powered cars by 2040.

Sunrise does not have a good track record of putting workers before its own ideological fixations.

Once an organization focused on the environment, Sunrise joined the campaign against immigration enforcement. The group, which admits its base is “middle or upper class,” launched a blanket boycott of Hilton Hotels because Hilton housed federal law-enforcement officers.

Hilton has over 150 unionized hotels in the United States. That did not matter.

El-Sayed has been a vocal supporter of the Green New Deal, a set of policies that many fear would be profoundly disruptive to the automobile industry and Michigan’s economy. The plan included a rapid shift to electric vehicles and phasing out fossil fuels.

In a blog post, El-Sayed asked readers to “imagine where we might be today if we would have invested [money spent on national security since 9/11] into the research, development, and manufacturing capacity that would have freed us of oil and gas dependence entirely?”

Auto workers might be able to imagine this all too well. In this scenario, they could become part of a “dying industry.”

Autoworkers and the UAW worry that electric vehicles will mean job losses, whereas gas-powered vehicle investments continue to safeguard jobs. Just last month, General Motors announced $830 million in gas vehicle investment.

Speaking of recent investments in gas-powered facilities, UAW-GM vice president Mike Booth said, “These investments mean greater job security for our members and stability for these facilities, which could not be more important to us.”

Americans cannot afford to become the next Germany by abandoning reliable energy sources only to make energy more expensive and the country more dependent on potentially hostile foreign powers.

Lefties like El-Sayed like to make grand promises, but it is the details and implementation that matter. Germany’s transition to renewables has not lived up to the promised hype. And it remains far from clear that the process-obsessed left can manage change well or efficiently.

Continued skepticism is warranted, particularly when so many Michigan jobs could be at risk. And, as the German case suggests, energy inflexibility poses real risks to pocketbooks and energy independence.

Given his position on cars, oil, and gas, and his association with the Sunrise Movement, Michigan autoworkers are right to wonder if El-Sayed views their industry as "dying."

In a February 2019 tweet, he wrote: “There's no way around it, climate change is only going to get more expensive to deal w/ disasters, dying industries, and crumbling infrastructure. And w/o action, we’ll pay in lives, dollars, and broken dreams. Time to get out ahead of it. Time for a #GreenNewDeal.”

In March 2016, Hillary Clinton told an audience in Ohio that "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

For Abdul El-Sayed, this is clearly a Clinton moment.

Michiganders need to decide if they can afford a senator who may prioritize a movement's radical timeline over the economic security and well-being of Michigan families.