Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Cements Frontrunner Status in First Head-To-Head U.S. Senate Debate

MICHIGAN –  Tonight, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed handily defeated Haley Stevens in the first televised U.S. Senate debate, hosted by WOOD TV. Fielding questions on affordability, foreign policy, ICE, and other topics, Abdul made it clear that his platform – money in your pocket, money out of politics, and Medicare for All – is best equipped to beat Mike Rogers in November, while Stevens’ campaign, drowning in corporate money, is at the whims of DC consultants, oligarchs, and AIPAC.

While Haley Stevens insisted in the debate that “no one owns [her] vote”, constantly touted that she has “the receipts” and claimed to be a transparent candidate, her actions tell a different story. She may attack Elon Musk on the debate stage, but she continues to hold onto SpaceX PAC money she received previously. She claimed to be an opponent of ICE, but has voted to thank them “for protecting the homeland” and voted to expand their powers as recently as this May. She tried to portray herself as unbought, but failed to address luxury gift travel she and her mother received from Center Forward, a shady political organization spending to support her in this race. These inconsistencies are smaller pieces against a backdrop of tens of millions of dollars in outside spending by dark money and AIPAC-affiliated groups to prop up a campaign that is more concerned with serving corporate and special interests than the people of Michigan.

Notable moments from Abdul are transcribed below:

Abdul on tackling affordability:

“There’s a number of things we need to do: Number one, we need to tackle health care by guaranteeing everybody health care without a deductible, a premium, or a copay through Medicare for All. Number two, we need to stand up to the monopolies and oligopolies that are picking our pockets. Number three, we need to stand up to increase wages, and that means standing with unions like the UAW and the nurses who have endorsed us. It means making sure that we are standing with Michiganders in their moments of crisis by making schools somewhere that our kids can go, by addressing the potholes that cause punctured tires every time we try to drive anywhere. But all of this has to happen by way of getting the corruption out of our politics.”

Abdul on AIPAC and outside spending:

“You’ve probably seen ad after ad after ad [supporting Stevens]. Now, not one of those ads was brought to you by the Congresswoman’s campaign. All of them were brought to you by corporate PACs and AIPAC trying to buy a politician who’s going to do their bidding instead of yours. That’s been the story of our politics for far too long. The question is not whether or not you’re a millionaire – the question is whether or not you are bowing down to billionaires….If you want a politics that is different, I’m the only one who’s never taken a dime from a corporation.”

“Ask yourself, why it is that we are paying $5 gas? Why it is we can’t seem to get out of this quagmire? It’s because for too long, our foreign policy has been handed to us by the likes of the state of Israel and AIPAC, who has made sure that Democrats and Republicans are doing their bidding. I don’t take that money. They are spending against me because they’ve called me ‘the most dangerous candidate for the US-Israel relationship’, because maybe I don’t want to waste our money fighting wars we don’t need to spend, and instead I want that spent here to rebuild our schools here, to make sure we have functional infrastructure here in Michigan, to make sure that we have healthcare here in Michigan…”

“AIPAC is perfectly fine with either of my two opponents, because they know that they will have a comfortable, reliable vote in the US Senate. If you want politics to work for you, if you want politics to rebuild your schools, or fix your infrastructure, or to invest in your health care, you have an alternative choice. We’re running to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, past Medicare for All. There’s a reason that both Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump don’t want to see me on the inside of US Senate: because I’m a threat to politics as usual.”

Abdul on bipartisanship:

“There is no left or right. Most people out there aren’t asking, ‘Where do I fit on the left-right spectrum?’ They’re asking, ‘Can I afford my groceries when I go grocery shopping?’ ‘What’s going to happen if I get sick, when my kid gets sick?’ ‘Why does my kid’s school look the same way it did 30 years ago when I went there?’ And the answer to that question is that for too long, politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken the same corporate, corrupting money.”

“I’m the only candidate on this stage – frankly, the only candidate running for US Senate – who’s never taken a dime of that money, which is why the real issue is about the people locking you out of your politics versus the people being locked out, and I will stand always on the side of the folks who are locked out. That is a pathway in our politics that I think all of us can get behind. It’s not red, it’s not blue, it’s not Democrat, it’s not Republican, it’s American: government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That is where our politics needs to go.”

Abdul on the influence of DTE:

“Let’s talk about power outages. People sleeping in dark rooms without electricity for the fourth straight day. My opponent’s taking $37,500 from DTE. Ask yourself what that buys. Our politics have been deeply and profoundly corrupted by corporate money, and I want to get money out.”

Abdul on ICE:

“I went to Minneapolis at the height of Project Metro Surge. I watched as our government laid siege to a city in our own country – it was awful to see. ICE is not about immigration. ICE is not about the Southern border, I was nearly on the Northern border! ICE is about normalizing [a] paramilitary force on our streets. I’ve been clear that you can’t reform ICE, you can’t retrain ICE, you have to abolish ICE…”

“…I mean, my colleague voted to thank ICE and increase their budget, and also took money from people who run ICE contracts. That, to me, seems very different than what we’re hearing now. I’ve been deeply clear: I don’t take money from corporations, I don’t take money from ICE contractors, which is why I can say with a clear voice: we need to abolish ICE.”

Abdul on outside spending:

“I would just love to stop the lies that are being told on TV by organizations like the Center for Democratic Priorities, which, by the way, didn’t exist until it started to run ads for my opponent. Like the United [Democracy Project], which, by the way, is a front for AIPAC. Like Center Forward, which bought airline tickets for my opponent, for her mother and herself to go to Portugal. I don’t know what they talked about, I don’t know what they did. So, if we want to talk about lies, I think it’s really important for us to understand who’s paying for them and what was said on the back end to allow them to be told, because $40 million? It doesn’t come for free.”

Abdul on the national debt:

“Look, as everyday Michiganders know, that a budget sheet is about money in and money out, and for a long time, folks on the conservative side want to tell us that it’s all about money out or spending too much. But then they do two things: they cut taxes for the richest people in society, and then they cut things like health care, and guess what happens? They fight wars that we don’t need to fight…

…we need to run the play in reverse. How about we end stupid wars we shouldn’t be fighting at the hess of foreign governments? How about we start taxing billionaires their wealth, so that we can return trillions of dollars to the economy? And how about we invest our money in the things that people actually need, like good education, child care, good hospitals, and health care?”

Abdul’s closing statement:

“We just celebrated our 250th anniversary. I know what my life would have been without the opportunity to be born here. I saw that firsthand in summers in Egypt. I know what America can do for somebody. I also knew that 15 miles away, there are kids who never got that same opportunity. We have to build an America that can be what it was for me, for all of her kids. And that means we’ve got to take on the ways that corporate greed have gotten in the way. We need to stand with working people, stand with unions. We need to take on oligopolies and billionaires. We need to guarantee health care through Medicare for All. Across my time touring this state, town hall after town hall, you could be in a church in Detroit, you can be in a living room in Lansing, a VFW hall in Escanaba. People say the same things: It just shouldn’t be this hard. Shouldn’t be this hard to afford your groceries, shouldn’t be this hard to pay your rent, shouldn’t be this hard to see a doctor in the richest, most powerful country in the world. And that means we’ve got to build a movement of people to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for All. I hope that you’ll join us in building that movement. It’s the many versus the money.”

Watch the full debate recording here.

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