Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t make headlines as the Senate candidate who wrote a book on applying systems science to public health, or who worked to rebuild Detroit’s health system, or who researched the ways social circumstances can impact maternal mortality.
With six days left in his bruising, contentious campaign, El-Sayed is known for his comical social media videos, his advocacy of “Medicare for All,” and his controversial stance on U.S. policy toward Israel. As the man Vice President JD Vance called “a little weasel.” As the Egyptian-American who President Trump has said would “open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”
But El-Sayed’s medical and public health background is likely to figure prominently if he is elected as a senator from Michigan. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has pitched El-Sayed as the future standard-bearer for Medicare for All, the policy Sanders popularized in the American consciousness. He would be the first epidemiologist to make it to the upper house, and the first holder of a medical degree to represent the Democratic party in the Senate since 1969. He would also be the first Muslim senator.
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