U.S. Senate Candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed once signed a letter in support of “purging the media and police” in Egypt. The letter, written in Arabic, was issued on November 25, 2012, when he was a professor at Columbia University in New York City and was scrubbed sometime during his 2018 gubernatorial campaign. But it turns out, the internet is forever.
The letter, written in Arabic and translated by Google, supports then Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s sudden rise to power and says “revolutionary decisions were necessary, decisions that we long called for, and for which the president delayed in taking for reasons unknown to us.” It says “we call on him to purge the media and police as soon as possible.”
Signatory No. 33 is listed as Dr. Abdul Rahaman El-Sayed, NYC. a dual citizen of Egypt and the United States. A CV confirms Abdul’s residency at Columbia University during that time in the Department of Epidemiology as well as his background as a student at the University of Michigan.
El-Sayed earned a public health degree from Oxford University and went on to study medicine at Columbia University, where he served as a professor before becoming the public health director for the City of Detroit and eventually Wayne County. He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018 against Shri Thanedar and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan’s Democrat Primary before launching his current bid for U.S. Senate. He is closely linked to progressive Bernie Sanders and received his endorsement in 2018.
El-Sayed is consistently anti-police. During his 2018 campaign for governor, El-Sayed campaigned in an Abolish ICE T-shirt. CNN recently published his now-deleted tweets in support of defunding the police and described them as “standing armies.”
The similarities don’t stop there. Campaign finance records show he has hired and paid progressive consultants “Middle Seat” just under $260,000 for his 2026 U.S. Senate campaign, a “full service firm for progressive causes and candidates.”
The first client listed on their website? Zohran Mamdani.
Michigan doesn’t need a Mamdani. Anyone who has supported violence and revolutionary bloodshed should be disqualified from running a state.
Anna Hoffman is a hockey mom of three living in Ann Arbor. Follow her on X @shoesonplease.
