Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat running for U.S. Senate, has built his campaign identity around being a doctor. There is just one problem: public records examined by Politico indicate he has never held a medical license in Michigan or New York, the two states where he has lived and worked.
The gap between the biography El-Sayed projects and the credentials he actually holds has now become a live issue in one of the most closely watched Senate primaries in the country. Democratic rivals, Republican operatives, and even fellow Michigan Democratic strategists are questioning whether the candidate misled voters about who he is.
El-Sayed has repeatedly identified himself as "a physician and epidemiologist." He used those exact words during an April debate hosted by the Council of Baptist Pastors. As of this week, the same phrase still sat in his LinkedIn biography. In June, he attached a photo of himself wearing a white doctor's coat to a fundraising appeal. And when Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., referred to him as a "physician" in 2025, El-Sayed did not correct him.
What does El-Sayed's actual clinical experience look like? By his own account, it amounts to a four-week clinical rotation completed after finishing medical school. He never did a residency. He never passed his boards. He never practiced medicine independently.
In a 2022 podcast interview, El-Sayed described even that brief stint in blunt terms. He called it "cosplaying [as] a doctor." He also called himself "the worst doctor on the team," as the Washington Examiner reported.
Those are his words, not an opponent's attack line. And yet, years later, he kept calling himself a physician on the campaign trail, in fundraising materials, and in his public biography.
The credential question is not merely a matter of political optics. Fox News Digital reported that New York state law prohibits individuals who lack medical licenses from identifying themselves as "physicians." Michigan law bars individuals from working "to induce the belief" that they are licensed to practice medicine.
El-Sayed claimed on at least two occasions while in New York to be a "physician," according to the reporting. Whether those claims triggered any legal scrutiny remains unclear, but the statutory language is not ambiguous.
None of this is new, either. Crain's Detroit Business raised the same question back in 2018, holding El-Sayed's claim of being a physician against his lack of a medical license. That was during his unsuccessful run for governor. The issue resurfaced, and El-Sayed kept using the title anyway.
El-Sayed's spokesperson, Roxie Richner, told Fox News Digital that the scrutiny amounts to an old story repackaged as an attack:
"Rather than this being a gotcha attack, this is Dr. El-Sayed's origin story, one that Michiganders are familiar with."
Richner added that El-Sayed "has spoken extensively about his experiences in medical school that led him first to [public health] and then to public service." She pointed to his record running public health programs, including what she described as "the elimination of up to $700 million in medical debt, increased access to Narcan, and built a state-of-the-art air quality monitoring network."
El-Sayed himself has offered a philosophical defense of the title. He told Crain's Detroit Business in 2018 that he considers himself a physician because of the work he has dedicated his career to, not just because he holds an MD.
"I think there's a lot of ways that one serves as a physician. And I think the work that I have done and I continue to do is true to the core and the ethos of medicine. And when I took my Hippocratic Oath, that is still an oath that I use to guide my work today. I'm a physician because I have an MD, but I'm also a physician because of the work that I've dedicated my career to."
That is an interesting argument. It is also one that most patients, and most state licensing boards, would not recognize. Having an MD and being a licensed, practicing physician are different things. El-Sayed blurred that line, and he did it in contexts where voters would reasonably assume "physician" meant someone who had actually treated patients.
The sharpest criticism is not coming from Republicans. It is coming from El-Sayed's own primary rival, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. Her campaign spokesperson, Jackson Boaz, did not mince words with Fox News Digital:
"Abdul El-Sayed has made his supposed medical credentials a centerpiece of his campaign, but the truth is he never held a medical license, never did his residency, never passed his boards, and never practiced medicine independently."
Boaz pressed further: "If Michigan voters can't trust El-Sayed to be honest about something that is so central to his entire rationale for running, how can they trust him to be honest about what he'd do as a United States Senator?"
McMorrow has faced her own rounds of scrutiny. She voted in California years after claiming she had permanently moved to Michigan, raising separate questions about her own biographical claims.
Michigan Democratic strategist Chris Dewitt told Politico the damage could be significant. "The perception in Michigan is that he is, at least at one point in his life, a licensed physician," Dewitt said. "That apparently is not the case, and it blows up a big part of his campaign."
Another Michigan Democratic consultant, Adrian Hemond, offered a more measured but still pointed assessment. He told Politico it was "a weird thing to hang your hat on in terms of a biographical detail if you never actually practiced medicine." Hemond noted that El-Sayed had genuine public health accomplishments, running programs for Wayne County and the city of Detroit, and suggested he should have leaned into those instead of "giving people the impression that you may have practiced medicine before."
That distinction matters. Nobody disputes that El-Sayed earned an MD or that he did real public health work. The issue is that he chose, again and again, to present himself as a "physician", a word with a specific, commonly understood meaning, rather than as a public health official or epidemiologist, which is what he actually was.
The Michigan Democratic Senate primary has become a rolling exercise in biographical cleanup. McMorrow purged roughly 6,000 social media posts after old tweets mocking the state surfaced publicly.
El-Sayed, for his part, has said he chose politics over medicine because he believes poverty is the root cause of many of the health problems in the United States. That is a legitimate policy conviction. But it does not explain why he kept calling himself a physician instead of saying what actually happened: he got a medical degree, decided not to practice, and went into public health and politics.
Meanwhile, Republicans are watching the primary with unconcealed satisfaction. Samantha Cantrell, the NRSC's regional press secretary, told the Washington Examiner: "Michigan's Democrat Senate primary is such a mess that the guy cosplaying as an Egyptian citizen and licensed physician is still beating [Chuck Schumer]'s handpicked candidate."
Sanders, who endorsed El-Sayed and stood with him at Mumford High School in Detroit on May 3, 2026, has not publicly addressed the licensure question. The Vermont senator participated in a coronavirus public health roundtable with El-Sayed as far back as March 2020 in Detroit.
Other Michigan Democrats have also drawn scrutiny for how they manage their public images. A leaked audio recording caught one Michigan Democrat privately dodging a sensitive topic to protect voters' feelings, the kind of gap between public posture and private calculation that voters in the state are increasingly noticing.
El-Sayed holds an MD. He completed medical school. He took the Hippocratic Oath. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute is whether calling yourself a "physician", on the debate stage, on LinkedIn, in fundraising emails, in a white coat, when you never held a license, never completed a residency, and never independently treated a single patient is honest.
The word "physician" carries weight. It implies board certification, clinical training, and the legal authority to practice medicine. El-Sayed had none of those things. He had four weeks on a hospital floor that he himself described as cosplay.
Voters can decide whether that matters. But they deserve to make that decision with accurate information, not with a carefully curated impression that falls apart the moment someone checks the licensing records. Michigan Democrats have been scrubbing inconvenient records at a remarkable pace this cycle.
When a candidate's first instinct is to inflate rather than inform, the question is never just about one title. It is about what else gets dressed up for the campaign trail.
