Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers and Democratic rival Abdul El-Sayed faced off for the first time Thursday in a Michigan Senate debate that turned heated over whether El-Sayed can fairly call himself a doctor.
Rogers accused El-Sayed, who holds a medical degree but no medical license, of misleading voters by presenting himself as a practicing physician.
“Well, he’s not really a doctor. He says he’s a physician,” Rogers said. “[As a] matter of fact, if somebody came into his office and he tried to treat that patient, he’d go to jail.”
Rogers went further, calling El-Sayed’s self-description “the best con I think I’ve ever seen” and urged voters to look closely at his background.
El-Sayed, who has deep ties to Wayne County through his past work leading the county’s Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services, defended his credentials. He earned a medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and also attended the University of Michigan Medical School. According to Politico, his only hands-on patient experience came during a four-week internship at a Manhattan hospital.
Despite that, El-Sayed opened his debate remarks by introducing himself as a doctor. “Look, I’m a doctor and I’m a dad,” he said, before pivoting to complain about rising gas prices.
Before his Senate run, El-Sayed served as executive director of the Detroit Health Department and director of the Wayne County Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services, along with a stint as a professor of epidemiology at Columbia. He currently lists himself as a “physician” and “epidemiologist” on LinkedIn, though it remains unclear how he justifies the physician title without holding a medical license.
Questions about his medical claims first surfaced during his Democratic primary. On a past podcast episode, El-Sayed told listeners, “I’ve been a doctor my whole career,” and at one point this year said he had “been in enough codes to watch who really does the work.”
Pressed again at Thursday’s debate, El-Sayed did not back down.
“Look, I have a medical degree from Columbia University,” El-Sayed said. “He can take it up with them. But it’s not really about me. It’s about whether or not you can see your doctor. It’s about whether or not you trust your next US senator to stand up to Trump and Trumpism.”
El-Sayed has made his medical training central to his campaign, using it to bolster his push for a “Medicare for All” single-payer health system. Rogers criticized the plan as costly and warned it would strip Michiganders of their private insurance, a claim El-Sayed rejected.
The debate marked the candidates’ first on-stage matchup and quickly turned combative, with both men working insults into nearly every answer. The race remains close heading into the fall, with the latest RealClearPolitics polling average showing El-Sayed ahead of Rogers by 3.2 percentage points.
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