Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed did an interview with Ross Douthat for 60 Minutes, and delivered a sentence Mike Rogers couldn't have scripted better himself: "The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable and that that is going to be because of school is so profoundly outdated."
Translation: Your kids already see men's genitalia on the internet. So stop worrying about what happens at school.
El-Sayed, a former Detroit health director, is running for Michigan's open Senate seat after Gary Peters' retirement. He wasn't ambushed into this answer. He chose to do this last minute interview with 60 Minutes mere days before Election Day, to tell American parents that concerns about what happens in their children's schools are "manufactured." His exact word. "I think we manufacture these social issues," he told Douthat.
When Douthat asked specifically about transgender athletes competing in women's sports — the issue that has filled school board meetings across the country to standing-room-only capacity — El-Sayed's answer was revealing for what it didn't contain. "I'm not running to govern sports, right?" he said. Then the pivot: "A lot of the cultural war issues that get fought right now are about trying to distract us from the fact that we can't afford our gas, can't afford our groceries, can't see a doctor."
Not "I understand why parents are concerned." Not "here's where I stand." Just: you're being distracted. Move along.
Mike Rogers, the Trump-endorsed former House Intelligence Committee chairman and El-Sayed's Republican opponent, posted the clip. It hit 3.7 million views. Inga Thompson's foundation called El-Sayed's performance "a slick, silver tongued way of saying women's rights don't matter." That assessment didn't come from a Republican opposition research shop. It came from a women's sports advocate watching a Senate candidate explain, on national television, that the question of who competes in women's athletics isn't really his department.
The interview kept going. It didn't get better. Douthat asked El-Sayed whether Palestine has a right to exist. "Yes." No hesitation. No caveats. When the same question came about Israel, the one-word clarity evaporated. "So, uh, yes, if there is a shared understanding —" El-Sayed started, before eventually settling on: "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike."
One question got a syllable. The other got a diplomatic communiqué.
This is the same candidate who refused to condemn an antisemitic campaign ad targeting Rogers — a refusal so radioactive that Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democrat who lost the primary to El-Sayed, revoked her endorsement and backed Rogers instead. A sitting Democratic congresswoman endorsing the Republican in her own state's marquee Senate race. Michigan Democratic Party staffer Abdoul Beckwith went further, suggesting El-Sayed avoids condemning Islamic terrorist groups to protect his voter base.
El-Sayed's framing — that parents exercised about school policies are really just distracted from gas prices — assumes voters can only hold one concern at a time. It's the same dodge Democrats have deployed since 2021 to avoid a straightforward question: should biological males compete in women's sports? The question hasn't evolved. The non-answer hasn't either. What has changed is the number of voters who recognize the pivot when they see it.
The NYT/Siena poll has El-Sayed leading Rogers 53% to 42%.
