If a candidate was late to declare their wealth and then reported having hundreds of thousands of dollars from obtuse overseas properties, would there be questions raised about outside money?
If that candidate was taking it from unpopular places, sure. But, if you were Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, not only would you imply that such concerns were racist, you would say that the real issue was where your opponent was taking money from.
Thankfully, the far-left candidate for the Democratic primary in Michigan’s open Senate seat isn’t getting away with it, since his last remaining opponent for the nomination — U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens — torched him for the fact that “nobody knows who’s putting their money in your own pocket.”
El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health official, has been one of the progressive left’s surprise candidates thus far this cycle, knocking out the rest of the lefties in the race to replace Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
This has concerned at least some on the left, since El-Sayed is lefty enough and has enough character issues — campaigning with violent socialist podcaster Hasan Piker, saying he wanted Medicare-for-all despite the fact his wife’s psychiatry practice doesn’t take Medicare, incorrectly calling himself a doctor on the campaign trail — due to the fact that it would cause the Democrats to defend a seat they could ordinarily rest easy about in midterms that would historically favor them.
The latest headache involving El-Sayed came on Monday when he released his latest financial disclosure forms ahead of the final debate before the primary on Tuesday. According to CBS News, it showed that he and his wife owned rental properties in India and the United Arab Emirates that each could be worth up to $250,000. Both properties are in his wife’s name.
.@AbdulElSayed filed his long-awaited 2026 financial disclosure this afternoon.
The most interesting difference between this year’s and last year’s: a rental property in Dubai owned by his wife, worth between $100,000 and $250,000. pic.twitter.com/L8yA87qmOs
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) July 27, 2026
This wouldn’t have made such an impression if it weren’t for the fact that El-Sayed has been braying about the amount of money allegedly coming into the race from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
And, as Stevens noted, El-Sayed’s father-in-law has poured in $300,000 from a “Fighting for Michigan PAC” that supports his son-in-law, out of a total of $2.3 million the group has spent.
“It also is about transparency, and you have not released your full tax returns,” Stevens said during the debate. “Three-hundred thousand dollars in other income while you sat in a podcast chair.”
“You talk about getting money out of politics and putting money in people’s pockets, but still, nobody knows who’s putting the money in your pockets.”
Abdul El-Sayed smiles as Haley Stevens calls him out for not releasing his tax returns:
“It also is about transparency, and you have not released your full tax returns…you sat in the podcast chair and you hawked junk healthcare cures.” pic.twitter.com/wbOiXXdZmt
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 28, 2026
He seemed to imply after the debate that this was a bit racist, telling a reporter, “I wonder why they’re so focused on ‘foreign properties’ with somebody with a name like mine.”
Abdul El-Sayed insinuates that it’s racist to call him out for owning foreign propertie(s) https://t.co/y6NCyuLcOt pic.twitter.com/jKMwp89N0D
— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) July 28, 2026
Probably because someone with a past like yours is so focused on “AIPAC money,” Abdul El-Sayed.
Foreign money has become a leitmotif of this campaign specifically because of El-Sayed’s none-too-subtle anti-Semitic innuendos, suggesting that his opponents were tools of Israel and that evil Zionists committing “genocide” would do anything to make him lose.
He combined this with an almost-socialist economic progressivism, railing against the wealthiest while claiming that he was one of them. He even campaigned with Hasan Piker, a man who’s ranted on camera about wanting the streets to run red with the blood of capitalist landlords.
So when it turns out that the guy has a ton of money coming in from amorphous sources, and that he’s one of those rich landlords he wants to hoist by their own petard, yes, that becomes a factor. It doubly becomes a factor when you blow the same hoary dog-whistles about foreign Jewish money pulling the strings in an election.
It would be tempting to hope, as a Republican, that we get to face the man Sen. John Fetterman has taken to calling “Pontiac Platner” in the general election. The problem is that, in the year of the Marxist insurgency, it’s impossible to say that El-Sayed will lose, even in a swing state.
Yes, I’d love to see a GOP flip, and yes, Haley Stevens is still politically obnoxious. But at least she’s willing to broach some very real concerns every American should have about the fact that this man is this close to being a member of the U.S. Senate.
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