Abdul El-Sayed just won the Michigan Democrat Senate primary — and the skeletons are already falling out of his closet.
His supporters sold him as a public health visionary. Turns out his record running a city agency tells a very different story.
And now that Chuck Schumer has locked arms with him, every Michigan voter deserves to know what El-Sayed left behind in Detroit.
Nearly 4,700 Animals Dead While El-Sayed Called It a Success
From 2015 to 2017, El-Sayed served as executive director and health officer of the Detroit Health Department, a powerful post that put him over the city’s Animal Control operation during some of its darkest days.
In a 2017 ABC News profile of his bid for governor, El-Sayed pointed to his record as Detroit’s health director, boasting that his team had “rebuilt the animal control system.” But according to records obtained by the Daily Mail, nearly 4,680 dogs and cats were euthanized by Detroit Animal Care and Control during the period when El-Sayed was in his post at the Detroit Health Department.
The 2015 numbers were particularly stark. That year, DACC euthanized 1,988 dogs and 272 cats — a total of 2,260 animals.
The figure represented 26.4 percent of all dogs euthanized in the county, according to Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Animal Shelter data.
And the killing didn’t stop there.
The agency did not publicly release its 2016 euthanasia totals, but records obtained by the outlet showed 1,056 dogs and 29 cats were put down during the first full calendar year the operation was controlled by El-Sayed’s Health Department.
The man who wants Michigan voters to hand him a US Senate seat was simultaneously telling the press his team had turned things around.
A Whistleblower Called It a Slaughterhouse — and Got Fired for Saying So
The scrutiny stems in part from an October 2015 whistleblower lawsuit filed by former Detroit Animal Control officer Brittany Roberts, who alleged animals died from inadequate food and medical care, were kept in filthy conditions and were subjected to other mistreatment, according to the Daily Mail.
“I was almost embarrassed with myself to be part of a team that played a role of the death of so many dogs in their cages,” Roberts told the Daily Mail regarding the neglect.
“Every morning, we’d just walk around and see who was alive before we could even feed,” Roberts said in 2015.
Roberts also reportedly alleged she was demeaned, harassed and ultimately fired after reporting the problems.
In July 2016, Detroit agreed to pay $63,000 to settle Roberts’ lawsuit. The city did not admit wrongdoing. But cities don’t write $63,000 checks for claims they think are baseless.
In February 2016, a federal judge temporarily blocked Detroit Animal Control from seizing dogs from homes without a warrant, consent or emergency circumstances amid a lawsuit brought by residents, some of whom alleged their dogs died at the city shelter or shortly after leaving.
One dog named Coco was mistakenly killed while it was only supposed to be quarantined for a mandatory rabies observation after biting another animal.
So: a whistleblower fired, a federal court stepping in, a $63,000 settlement, and thousands of animals dead. That’s the public health record El-Sayed is running on.
The animal-control protests caused a confrontation between El-Sayed and local media. A FOX 2 reporter, Hannah Saunders, publicly discussed El-Sayed’s efforts to discourage coverage of protests at Detroit Animal Control.
El-Sayed acknowledged “systematic failure” at a protest but clashed with local media, reportedly asking a reporter to stop covering the protests because cameras were “killing the team’s morale.”
Bad press was the problem. Not the dead dogs.
Schumer Falls in Line, and the Broader Picture Gets Worse
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed progressive Abdul El-Sayed after he won the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had supported Stevens, praised El-Sayed’s “very, very strong campaign” and said, “I’m not looking back, I’m looking forward.”
That pivot took about twelve hours.
Schumer had believed El-Sayed’s poll numbers had fallen from recent heights, suggesting there was a chance to beat the former Wayne County health director. He didn’t want El-Sayed, who is running hard from the Bernie Sanders and anti-Israel wings of the party, as the Democratic nominee both for ideological reasons and fears he would lose the November election to former Representative Mike Rogers.
But El-Sayed won anyway, and Schumer snapped to attention. That’s how the Democrat machine works — fight the progressive until the primary is over, then pretend the concerns never existed.
Compare that to what happened in Texas, where Ken Paxton defeated incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have withheld the kind of television spending typically devoted to defending a seat — a posture widely viewed as institutional payback for President Trump’s decision to endorse Paxton. Cornyn, who supported amnesty measures and championed Joe Biden’s gun control legislation, has declined to raise money for Paxton. The Republican establishment appears more comfortable with a Democrat holding the seat than with a strong MAGA senator winning it. Schumer, by contrast, moved to embrace his party’s left-wing primary winner within hours. The contrast between how the two parties treat their respective primary winners is not subtle.
And El-Sayed’s record goes well beyond the animal shelter. El-Sayed is one of several candidates making Medicare for All a centerpiece of their midterm campaigns, defending the policy even as he acknowledged that it would require Americans to pay more in taxes in exchange for coverage untethered from employment.
El-Sayed appeared to admit on NBC’s *Meet the Press* that everyone, regardless of income, would have to pay “a little bit more in taxes” for universal healthcare.
Policy experts warn that a nationwide government-run single-payer system would substantially change how healthcare is financed, what providers are paid, and the role of private insurance. Some Medicare for All proposals discourage or appear to prohibit private insurance coverage, which could affect physicians’ ability or willingness to provide access to all patients. Maintaining such broad access to care while keeping provider payments near current Medicare rates could cause hospitals to reduce participation. Countries with government-run systems — Canada and the United Kingdom among them — have documented records of rationing, wait times, and denial of care that El-Sayed’s campaign literature doesn’t mention.
El-Sayed supports abolishing ICE. He supports Medicare for All. He ran against the Democrat establishment and beat them — and now that same establishment is writing him checks and calling it unity.
Republican nominee Mike Rogers put it plainly. “This is sickening,” Rogers wrote. “Abdul El-Sayed wants Michiganders to trust him with their families. Meanwhile, Detroiters couldn’t even trust him with their pets.”
That’s not just a campaign line. It’s a fair reading of the public record.
El-Sayed spent years building a brand around government competence and public health expertise. The Detroit Animal Control story doesn’t fit that brand, which is probably why he told reporters to stop covering the protests. But voters in Michigan are going to hear about it between now and November, and the question of whether a man who presided over nearly 4,700 animal deaths while boasting about his turnaround deserves a US Senate seat is one they’ll have to answer themselves.
Chuck Schumer already made his choice. Michigan gets to make its own.
Sources: Daily Mail, Fox News, American Almanac, Gateway Pundit, Fox News (Medicare for All), NBC News (primary results), Just The News, New Republic, NPR, Washington Times