DETROIT – If you’re not yet familiar with Abdul El-Sayed, you will be soon.
The 33-year-old former executive director of the Detroit Health Department is running for governor. Naturally, much of the coverage of El-Sayed’s campaign has focused on his unique personal story as the academically and athletically accomplished son of Egyptian immigrants. But even that is not as interesting as the bold proposals he has for Michigan.
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Looking at the “issues” section of his campaign website, you’ll first find 20 statements that summarize El-Sayed’s platform, followed by specific policy plans for how he will achieve these goals should he be elected. The 20-point platform includes raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, implementing single-payer healthcare at the state level, making college tuition free for families earning less than $150,000/year and getting corporate money out of politics.
When it comes to money in politics, El-Sayed has practiced what he preaches. He has not accepted support from any corporate political action committees (PACs) or 527 organizations, instead relying on small donors to fund his campaign. El-Sayed speaks on the issue of political corruption with a candor matched by few politicians:
I’m trying to remind people why the system is built the way it is, and that it has been corrupted by a very small, very powerful, very rich group of people, who have fundamentally bought out our politicians… I don’t think our forefathers were imagining huge corporate behemoths that were not aligned to anything but a quarterly bottom line of some amorphous group of stockholders, who would then be ruled as having the rights of people, and then be able to either, up front of behind closed doors, buy out our politicians to create a system of politics that was not beholden to anything but corporate bottom lines.
El-Sayed’s platform also includes an infrastructure plan, auto insurance reform, ending right-to-work and reinstating prevailing wage law, new clean water policies and a comprehensive plan for tackling the opioid crisis. His education proposals extend beyond tuition-free college, with a commitment to end the profit motive in public education and implement universal pre-Kindergarten.
Many of these ideas are reminiscent of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid, and El-Sayed is unapologetic about the sweeping changes he wants to bring to Michigan. But, to a large extent, what makes his candidacy interesting is not just the boldness of his policy prescriptions but his apparent ability to bridge idealism and pragmatism.
El-Sayed has a medical degree and experience as a public health professor and scholar. But his published works, like his gubernatorial platform, offer straightforward analyses of why problems occur and how they can be addressed. He acknowledges that his statewide single-payer health care plan would require tax hikes, but it also aims to eliminate the headache of employers having to provide health care for their employees.
“There’s substantial will for this in the business community,” claims El-Sayed.
In following any political campaign, it can be easy for the story or rhetoric of a candidate to overshadow the details of the policies they propose. This tendency is especially powerful with a candidate like El-Sayed who boasts an impressive resumé outside of politics. But voters would be wise to devote more attention to his specific proposals than his personal backstory. They might learn about the agenda he would try to enact as governor.
Check out where Democratic gubernatorial candidates Gretchen Whitmer and Shri Thanedar stand on the issues. And watch “Decision 2018: Democratic Gubernatorial Debate” Thursday, July 19 at 8 p.m. on WDIV-Local 4 or stream the debate live on ClickOnDetroit.com.