Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official from Ann Arbor, joined the Michigan Senate race on Thursday, casting himself as a populist fighter eager to mount a muscular opposition to the Trump administration.
Dr. El-Sayed, a former health director in Wayne County, Mich., who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, is the latest entrant into a Democratic primary field that is likely to be crowded and competitive. Democrats are hoping to retain the seat, now held by Senator Gary Peters, who is retiring.
“We need to break the chokehold that billionaires and oligarchs like Donald Trump and Elon Musk have on our politics and economy,” he said in a statement as he announced his candidacy. “It’s not just about what we’re fighting against. It’s about what we fight for.”
Yet even as he name-checked his policy goals around the economy, the environment and guaranteed health care, Dr. El-Sayed, 40, also made clear this week that he hoped to tap into the fury of Democrats who are horrified by President Trump’s actions and frustrated with their party’s inability to curb his powers.
“They want somebody who can take the fight openly, honestly and clearly and directly to Trump and Musk, but also somebody who can build from the wreckage that they leave behind,” he said in an interview, alluding in part to Mr. Musk’s efforts to gut the federal government.
Of course, Republicans control the House and the Senate, and Democrats in Washington are severely limited in their ability to rein in the majority party, much less advance their own agenda.
“Right now is the ‘fight’ part,” Dr. El-Sayed said when asked about those constraints. “When we retake the majority, that’s going to be the ‘build’ part.”
In the meantime, he suggested, Democrats across the board should be speaking up far more forcefully. Dr. El-Sayed pointed to a few Trump critics who, he said, were doing that effectively, including Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont who is holding rallies across the country and is expected to endorse Dr. El-Sayed. He also mentioned Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who delivered a 25-hour tirade against the president and his administration.
“Senators have an incredible platform,” Dr. El-Sayed said, adding that Michigan residents were asking of their elected officials: “When are you going to step up and represent me? When are you going to speak out? When are you going to engage?”
“Sometimes,” he said, “people get into positions of power, and then mistake procedure for fighting.”
If he were in office today, Dr. El-Sayed said, he would hold town halls across the state and seek out tactics in the Senate “to lay the mayhem that Trump and Musk are causing at their feet.”
Dr. El-Sayed, who has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Sanders, finished second in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, losing to Gretchen Whitmer, the eventual general-election winner, who had staked out more centrist territory.
This time around, he will face opponents including State Senator Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat from the Detroit suburbs. Representative Haley Stevens, another Democrat from outside Detroit, could also enter the race.
On the Republican side, former Representative Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost Michigan’s Senate race last fall to Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, announced this week that he was running again.
Some Democrats have argued that the biggest battles in the party’s primaries will not be over ideology, as recent races have been, but rather over how, and how hard, to push back against the Trump administration.
But in Michigan, there will certainly be room for policy clashes over issues including the Middle East, a particularly sensitive subject in a state that is home to significant Arab American, Muslim and Jewish communities.
During the presidential primary last year, Dr. El-Sayed protested the Biden administration’s support of Israel in the Gaza war by voting “uncommitted.” But, he was quick to note, he backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the general election.
