By Kora Locke and Kyle Jackson
A line of over 1,400 people, according to the Public Relations manager, stretched for more than three blocks and halfway around Fountain Street Church on Tuesday, Sep. 22 in anticipation of a speech from Dr. Abdul El Sayed as part of his “It Shouldn’t Be This Hard” tour.
Through the stained-glass eyes of the church, this had all the characteristics of an ordinary night. Families and strangers gathered, hugging and socializing. Attendees murmured eagerly among their neighbors about the speech to come.
But through the eyes of the people, it was a unique and special night. Scripture took the form of campaign signs, and the choir was represented by the IT coordinator, playing songs like ‘Ain’t no mountain high enough.’ The preacher? Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, candidate for the United States Senate.
Before El-Sayed, Democratic House of Representatives candidate Lily Chen, Wyoming City Council candidate Daniel Rivera, and Democratic Senate nominee Abbie Groff-Blaszak took the microphone and expressed their respective pride in both their community and in El-Sayed’s campaign.
When El-Sayed did get up on stage, he first asked for a moment of silence for 35-year-old Mario David Coronado Juarez, who had died in Grand Rapids on Sunday, Sept. 20, in a fatal crash while being chased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
After the tribute, El-Sayed made his message clear.
“…I’m running for U.S. Senate, ’cause it just shouldn’t be this hard. Shouldn’t be this hard to afford our groceries, shouldn’t be this hard to afford a tank of gas, shouldn’t be this hard to pay a rental or a mortgage,” El-Sayed said. “Shouldn’t be this hard to see a doctor in the richest, most powerful country in the whole world, shouldn’t be this hard to pay our taxes knowing that that money’s going to be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids.”
El-Sayed returned to Grand Rapids to bolster support for his bid in the U.S. Senate midterm elections, which have been highly polarized by both the larger Republican and Democratic parties. For many voters this cycle, a candidate’s alignment with President Donald Trump is spearheading decision-making.
“I don’t do things because Donald Trump told me to do it,” El-Sayed reiterated.
El-Sayed continued by reiterating his most pressing goal for his campaign: free Medicaid for all.
“…I don’t think it should matter the color of your skin, I don’t think it should matter what you or your parents do for work, and I don’t think it should matter where you grew up. You deserve a long, healthy life in these United States of America,” El-Sayed stated. “I went off to medical school with the goal of learning how to heal only to realize that our health care system is more interested in billing than healing.”
El-Sayed has expressed his desire for free Medicaid since he ran for governor back in 2018. Back then, the political landscape was much different than what it is now, with the majority of officials focusing on keeping what was there in place.
Currently, El-Sayed doesn’t have a concrete plan in place as to how he would achieve this goal that he spoke of, nor is there one on his official campaign website.
El-Sayed also highlighted his thoughts toward his opponent, Mike Rogers, and how he feels that Rogers can’t properly support Michigan due to his affiliations with President Trump, describing his questionable allegiance to the president as a ‘flip-flop-flip’, arguing that Rogers is not to be trusted for inconsistencies in policy.
“He’s like the MAGA Taylor Swift,” El-Sayed said. “The first era was the Neocon (people who support a strong military and an active foreign policy to spread democracy around the world) era. Never saw a trade deal he didn’t love. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) loved it.”
El-Sayed then described Rogers’s second era as the “never Trump” era and his current one as his “MAGA era.”
“This was the CNN era for Mike Rogers, all right? It was out there on CNN, looking the reasonable part. Donald Trump doesn’t represent me or my values,” El-Sayed said. “Turns out, Donald Trump is you and your values. Because now we have MAGA-era Mike Rogers who is doing anything and everything Donald Trump asks him to do.”
El-Sayed continued criticizing Rogers, pointing to how he is currently advocating for the Iran war.
“So he’s out here, cheerleading the war, talking about a win, win, win. Just one win wasn’t enough! It’s a win, win, win. I don’t even know who all the winners are. It’s not you, not me,” El-Sayed exclaimed.
Rogers has recently condemned the war with Iran, calling for its end, through his own campaign.
“(Battleground state candidates) have to do what their conviction tells them, right?” Rogers said in a statement during a campaign event in Shelby Township. “I’m doing this because my conviction tells me it’s time to start wrapping this thing up.”
After completing his speech, El-Sayed opened the floor to questions from spectators, passing microphones around.
The first question came from a spectator asking El-Sayed about his stance on AI.
El-Sayed explained that the idea of AI keeps him up at night and that he feels that people who use the technology are scared to speak against it.
“And the issue with the technology isn’t the technology itself,” El-Sayed continued. “It’s the incentives driving the technology and the system that we seem to have gotten ourselves into where the people who understand the technology the most seem to be racing into a place that they’re very afraid of.”
El-Sayed also touched on how AI’s impacts span more than just jobs, but also have created a self-sufficient bubble at the top of the stock market that feeds the rest of it. If AI were to go, that bubble would pop and have major ramifications.
Another attendee asked El-Sayed how he planned on protecting the health rights of the LGBTQ+ community, to which he responded by reiterating his prior statements on “free Medicaid for all.”
After the questions, El-Sayed held a short press pool in a separate room.
Establishing a majority in the Senate has been a primary concern for both parties, with Michigan and other swing state campaigns garnering national attention.
When asked how El-Sayed would achieve his goals if a Democratic majority in the Senate is not achieved, the answer started grim before turning to optimism.
“Well, we might not be able to. But I feel pretty strongly about our ability to do that (achieve a Democratic majority), El-Sayed said. “But if we are in the minority, there is a lot we can do to hold the Trump administration accountable even in that setting. But we campaign for 2028 then. We seek to build that majority, but the way things are going and just the disastrous Trump presidency, I think a lot of people are rethinking who they want in control of the USA, and it doesn’t look good for people like Mike Rogers.”
Despite growing misalignment from Trump among Republican figures, little framework has been outlined on how Republicans and Democrats intend to work together after the elections. At least for Democrats, the primary goal remains to ‘take back’ the Senate and House.
El-Sayed was also questioned on his ability to work alongside Republicans at the now-infamous Fox Detroit debate that Rogers did not attend, sparking controversy for both Rogers and El-Sayed.
El-Sayed responded similarly, stating ‘he will always stand on his principles,’ but encouraged conversations with senators who disagree, and pointed to lobbyists and super PACs as the real reason for a lack of cooperation in the Senate.
Additionally, when asked how he would prefer to see the money that Medicare has accumulated distributed differently, El-Sayed simply stated that he would prefer that community members have the benefits rather than just have corporations continue to reap its benefits.
El-Sayed additionally highlighted how the concerns of people don’t really change from place to place, with affordability being at the front of everyone’s mind.
“You could be in a living room in Lansing, you can be in a block club in Detroit, you could be up at a VFW hall in Escanaba,” El-Sayed said. “People are asking them about the same thing, right? If they’re asking about affordability, they’re asking about school, they’re asking about healthcare. They’re asking about AI quite a bit in data centers.”
After the event, the primary takeaway that most people had from listening to El-Sayed speak was hope.
“We heard a lot of things that we wanted to hear tonight, and just the camaraderie here just energizes us, you know, just to see everybody coming together from various walks of life, diversity here, just, it feels like a big warm hug, a big blanket over us…” said Tamara Spears, a resident of Kentwood, after the event.
Kerry Hammel, a resident of Caledonia, also shared the same sentiment, feeling like the event pulled everyone together.
Another spectator, EJ Nelson, along with their friends, Eli Covey and Kaylee, also shared their thoughts on the event.
“All three of us already went in kind of knowing that we wanted to vote for Dr. El-Sayed,” said Nelson. ”He’s already kind of been impressing us with his policies (and what) he’s been doing. It’s nice also seeing him as a human, which is, I think, what I mainly got out of this event was seeing that he’s just another guy.”
All three of the spectators highlighted how having a physical representation of the community collaboration is a stark, yet welcome, contrast to how most information is consumed in the modern day.
El-Sayed’s tour will continue up until the Nov. 3 Michigan elections.
