Michigan Senate Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed has built his 2026 campaign on the assertion that he never called for defunding the police. But a review of public records, video archives and contemporaneous interviews reveals a more complicated record that raises questions about the distance between his past statements and present claims.
Five years ago, El-Sayed participated in a University of Michigan video panel titled "Systemic Racism as a Public Health Issue." In that forum, available online and preserved in multiple archives, he asked rhetorical questions about police funding: "Why are we investing so much in people with guns and less in people with the means of being able to invest in young folks? Do police really need to use guns? Do we need as much of a police force?"
He then pivoted to budgetary arguments: "If we ask ourselves about how we spend money in the public, where that money goes, where it comes from, we need to make a lot better decisions about investing in the things that root out poverty, rather than investing in policing poverty." The framing maps directly onto the central argument of the "defund the police" movement.
In June 2020, at the height of national protests following George Floyd's death, El-Sayed sat for an interview with Detroit Public Radio and created distance from his earlier statements. "I didn't say 'defund the police,' I just described what needed to be done," he said. But the description he provided was unambiguous: "Defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets and investing more in the means of educating and empowering and engaging communities."
He offered a rebranding: "refunding" instead of "defunding," with the goal of redirecting money away from what he called "war materiel" used "to wage war in our streets."
By the time El-Sayed entered the 2026 Senate race, the political landscape had shifted. The "defund the police" movement, which generated significant Democratic energy in 2020, had become a liability in general elections. El-Sayed, now the front-runner in a primary for a seat Democrats are defending in a state that has trended toward Republicans, adjusted his positioning accordingly.
His campaign has characterized his earlier statements as misunderstood or poorly contextualized. Campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner told reporters that "as hands-on experience always allows, his perspective has become more nuanced" following El-Sayed's work as director of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for Wayne County. She emphasized his current support for improved police recruitment and retention funding, rejection of militarized policing and investment in community violence intervention.
When pressed on the matter by CNN's Kasie Hunt last week, El-Sayed said he had "deleted all the tweets, because I didn't want them to be taken out of context like this." He then dismissed the line of questioning as "clickbait in D.C."
But deletion does not erase a record. Video remains archived. Interviews are preserved in news databases and podcast feeds.
El-Sayed's insistence that he "never" called for defunding the police is difficult to square with his own documented statements, particularly the 2020 interview in which he explicitly defined what "defunding the police" means and argued for that outcome.
El-Sayed is competing against Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary, with endorsements from progressive figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The winner will face significant pressure in the general election.
