Editor's Note: This story was reported by Braylon Youker. In its fifth year, the Voices of Youth program is a collaboration between Southwest Michigan Second Wave and KYD Network in partnership with the YMCA of Greater Kalamazoo, funded by the Stryker Johnston Foundation.

Introducing Abdul

“My name is Abdul, and I’m running for Senate because I was told my name would look perfect on a ballot,” Dr. Abdul El-Sayed jokes as roughly 200 people listen. 

Bill More´eAbdul El-Sayed is running as a democrat for U.S. Senate in 2026.
On July 9, with a little over a year away from pivotal congressional midterms, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed held a town hall in downtown Kalamazoo. He invited residents into a conversation not just about policy, but about purpose. 

“I don’t want to just talk about what’s broken. I want to show what’s possible, and then make it real for people,” El-Sayed says.



From medicine to public service

Born and raised in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills and attended the University of Michigan, majoring in biology and political science. An outstanding scholar, El-Sayed was selected to deliver the 2007 commencement address alongside former President Bill Clinton. 

While at the University of Michigan, El-Sayed captained the men’s lacrosse team. “I learned more about leadership playing sports than anywhere else … you have to learn how to talk to different kinds of people, to get them to see the same vision, and help to generate a culture that is bigger than the conversations they have with each other.” 

Braylon YoukerOver 200 people attended a recent Town Hall in Kalamazoo with U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.After two years at Michigan’s medical school and leading a medical mission to Peru, El-Sayed earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he completed a doctorate in public health. He later completed his medical degree at Columbia University and has contributed to 100 scholarly articles on health policy, disparities, and epidemiology. 

It wasn’t until he saw a patient slip through the cracks of a broken healthcare system that he realized medicine alone wasn’t his path. 

“I realized that a lot of the things I wanted to do, I didn't know if I could accomplish through the healthcare system,” he says. “So I decided instead to pull my residency application and dedicate my career to public health.”

As Detroit’s Health Director and Wayne County’s Director of Health, Human, and Veteran Services, El-Sayed expanded Narcan access, removed lead from school water systems, and launched citywide vision care for children, earning Public Official of the Year for the City of Detroit.

“Public health is about leveraging government and our institutions to keep people healthy in the first place, whether it's protecting housing, or air quality, or water quality, or providing access to things like vaccinations, or making sure that people have insurance.”

Health as a Human Right

El-Sayed’s healthcare platform centers on Medicare for All, not as a radical idea, but as a necessary measure to protect Americans, he says. “I’d much rather have an army of healthcare providers providing care than an army of billers denying it,” says El-Sayed.

Braylon YokerOver 200 people attended a recent Town Hall in Kalamazoo with U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.When Bernie Sanders appointed him to former President Biden’s 2020 Unity Task Force for Healthcare, El-Sayed shaped federal policy on prescription drug prices and authored Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide, a book outlining how to fund and build a healthcare system that protects healthcare as a right, rather than a privilege. 

He says that Medicare for All would act as a floor, not a ceiling, envisioning a system that would avoid disruptions to union-negotiated plans while allowing for additional coverage. 

A fight for the environment

Public health doesn’t just start at the hospital door. For El-Sayed, clean air and water are political issues that demand justice. 

El-Sayed explains, “What's in that air you breathe is downstream of a whole bunch of political decisions. Every sip of water you take, downstream of a whole bunch of political decisions.” 

El-Sayed calls for making fossil fuels obsolete. As Health Director, he saw firsthand who was most affected by pollution, and it wasn’t the wealthy. 

“I believe in a pathway that gets us [to 100% renewable energy] while we respect union jobs and while we bring down the price of electricity,” he says. “We're just told we can't because of the power of oil and gas, who want to continue pumping stuff from the ground so they can make a cheap dollar, and that's not working for us.”

Unrationed opportunity

With experience at elite institutions, El-Sayed says that access, not privilege, should drive educational opportunity. 

From universal pre-k to debt-free and tuition-free university or vocational training, El-Sayed says hie is hopeful for the future of education. “This country prides itself on doing big things. So why not debt-free education?”

As a prolific published scholar, El Sayed sees the importance of research in problem-solving, breaking barriers, and serving the people.  

Bill More´eAbdul El-Sayed, a democrat, is running for U.S. Senate.He believes investment in university research and vocational innovation will serve both individuals and society by creating pathways into the workforce. 

However, when it comes to government institutions, El-Sayed argues for reform. For example,“[the CDC has] become an overly academic institution. [The] CDC doesn't exist to publish papers. That's what universities do.” 

Building an economy for the working people

El-Sayed’s economic platform centers on fairness: strong unions, anti-monopoly enforcement, and worker-first innovation. 

He campaigns for public investment in technology and clean energy, but with more democratic control. “We need to make sure this new energy sector is actually beholden to the public,” he says.

He also denounces Wall Street speculation and corporate tax evasion as forms of inequality. 

A commitment to civil rights and social justice

Civil rights and social justice for El-Sayed are non-negotiable, even when uncomfortable. “It’s easy to stand up for the civil rights of folks who are popular. It’s a lot harder to stand up for civil rights for people who are using their rights in ways that most people would disagree with.”

This means defending marginalized communities, protecting personal freedoms, and fighting efforts to restrict rights, he says. 

El-Sayed supports full federal protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals through codifying rights into law. “Nobody in this society should be told what they can and can't do as a function of who they love or how they identify,” he says. 

He also expresses a commitment to broader issues, including healthcare access, housing, and reproductive rights, especially through codifying the protections once secured by Roe v. Wade.

To prevent erosion of rights, El-Sayed supports high standards for judicial appointments. 

“If they don't believe in equal rights for everybody, if they don't believe in the right to choose, if they don't believe in the notion that a person is a person, that a corporation [is not] a person, and that money is not speech, then they're not getting my vote,” he adds.

Fixing home first

El-Sayed tells the story of his summer visits to his grandparents in Egypt. Over a 15-hour flight, he would travel a life expectancy gap of 10 years. But he didn’t have to go across continents. “I could go 15 minutes into Detroit and travel the same life expectancy gap as I did going 15 hours to Egypt.”

From Detroit to Kalamazoo, El Sayed’s policies target Michigan’s housing crisis, education inequities, and health disparities. “My job is to make sure folks here in Kalamazoo can climb the ladder.” 

To help, El-Sayed advocates zoning reform and investment in affordable housing to curb speculation. 

Against the current

El-Sayed is not the type to ignore the challenges: political polarization, big-money opposition, and voter disillusionment. His 2018 run for Michigan governor makes him no stranger to political obstacles. He knows trust in politics is low and the barriers to progress are large. 

El-Sayed acknowledges voter disillusionment, especially among youth. “I don’t blame young people for not showing up. I blame older people for not giving them something to vote for.”

CourtesyU.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed with Voices of Youth Braylon Youker during El-Sayed's recent visit to Kalamazoo.He interprets disengagement not as apathy, but as frustration with a system that often feels unfair. Part of his mission is to reconnect people with that system by giving them reasons to believe in it, he says. 

“This is not about one person. This is not about one race. This is about us. This is about the future we want to be,” he tells a captivated audience at the Kalamazoo Town Hall, which took place at Shakespeare's Pub. “Don't allow [politicians] to make decisions about your future that you don't have a say in. That means showing up for the issues you believe in and demanding that your politicians talk about them.” 

El-Sayed says that the consistent domination of the government by the ultra-wealthy is disconnecting voters and politicians. 

“I think the government has to get ahead of it … We need robust regulation to make sure we're protecting communities from the potential unintended consequences of this.”

From reducing access to healthcare to watering down climate policy, El-Sayed says he has seen how "disease-like" billionaire influence can be. That’s why he refuses corporate PAC money and supports legislation reducing corporate influence. 

A cure worth fighting for

At the heart of El-Sayed’s campaign, he says, is the belief that empathy, connection, and courage can heal a broken system. 

So far, four Michigan democrats and one republican have announced they are running in 2026 for the U.S. Senate. As El-Sayed campaigns across Michigan, he says he looks forward to “a lot of really good ice cream.” But most of all, he looks forward to “being a chiropractor for our civics,” he says. “It's like that relief (after a good spine alignment) that people are like, damn, that's exactly what it was.”

Braylon Youker

Braylon Youker is a sophomore at Kalamazoo Central High School and the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center, both in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In his free time, Braylon enjoys working out, reading political fiction, playing guitar, and hanging out with his pets.