Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat who just won Michigan's Senate primary by fewer than 15,000 votes, once used a Substack post to argue that America's most popular sport is governed by "toxic masculinity", a view that could complicate his pitch to general-election voters in a football-mad swing state.
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who would become the nation's first Muslim U.S. senator if elected, wrote the post in 2021 after Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden resigned over racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language discovered in his old emails. But El-Sayed did not stop at Gruden. He used the episode to indict football culture itself, and the millions of men who participate in it.
The candidate's own words frame the sport as a delivery system for bigotry. "The toxic masculinity at the heart of America's most popular sport, and men's sports culture more generally, is way deeper than a few emails or a Jay-Z turnaround," El-Sayed wrote. He added that on sidelines and in locker rooms, "racism, misogyny, and homophobia were lingua franca."
El-Sayed acknowledged playing football in high school and said the field made him feel free. Yet he described the broader culture around the game as poisonous, claiming he endured "the worst kinds of racist taunting" off the field. His proposed alternative model was not a real coach or player but Ted Lasso, the fictional Apple TV+ character who, as El-Sayed put it, "cries," "talks through his problems," and "bakes biscuits (er, cookies) for his boss."
The Substack post resurfaced as El-Sayed narrowly captured the Democratic nomination for Michigan's open Senate seat, edging centrist Rep. Haley Stevens by fewer than 15,000 votes out of more than 1.5 million cast. The Associated Press did not call the race until the Wednesday morning after the primary. The contest became the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in history, with more than $80 million spent.
Much of that spending came from outside El-Sayed's own campaign. The AIPAC-aligned United Democracy Project outspent his operation 11-to-1, pouring roughly $70 million into the race to back Stevens. El-Sayed cast his survival against that spending blitz as proof of grassroots strength.
"We all knew that they were going to spend their money. We didn't know they were going to spend $70 million of their money. We didn't know that they were going to outspend us $11 to $1. And yet we're still standing."
Standing, yes, but bruised. One Republican operative told Fox News that El-Sayed "has emerged from this cycle's Democratic primary more damaged than ever and susceptible to more onslaughts of criticism from within their own party." He now faces former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, in November in a race that could help determine Senate control.
An NBC News analysis of county voting patterns found that El-Sayed's victory was powered by younger, higher-educated voters, a base that may not translate to the broader Michigan electorate in a general election. "Those results also show exactly where El-Sayed has work to do to go from primary winner to general election victor," the analysis stated.
Rogers and Republicans have already framed the matchup as a clear ideological contrast. Rogers cast the choice as one between "common sense" and "complete insanity." President Trump weighed in on Truth Social, calling El-Sayed "a Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel" and describing the primary result as "great news for the Republican Party."
El-Sayed's policy positions give Republicans plenty of material. He supports Medicare for All and abolishing ICE, and he has characterized Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide, positions well to the left of Michigan's median voter.
The football essay is not the only piece of El-Sayed's record drawing scrutiny. The Washington Free Beacon reported that El-Sayed has repeatedly condemned doctors who refuse Medicaid patients, calling such refusals discriminatory against Black and low-income communities. At an April candidate forum, he put it bluntly:
"If you're low income in this country, and because of the nature of structural racism, too many black and brown folks are low income in this country, you're on Medicaid... when you walk in with your Medicaid card, the doctor in the hospital thinks of you as a half citizen."
His wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, operates Mind Work Psychiatry in Ann Arbor. The practice is out-of-network for every insurance company and does not accept Medicaid, Medicare, or any insurance at all. Jukaku formally opted out of Medicare in 2025, meaning she cannot bill the program under any circumstances.
El-Sayed's 2025 tax returns showed $686,069 in total income, placing him in the top one percent of Michigan earners. Of that, $292,000 came from "additional income" partly attributed to his wife's private practice. The candidate who lectures physicians about treating Medicaid patients as "half citizens" benefits financially from a household that declines to see those patients at all.
El-Sayed's 2021 Substack post argued that sports should be built around "positive, inclusive, and empowering values." He held up Ted Lasso, a character who smiles "like, all the time", as the model. "Sport is a metaphor for life," El-Sayed wrote. "For millions of young people, sports can teach life's lessons in a safe and nurturing environment."
Few voters would object to that last sentence in isolation. But El-Sayed did not write it in isolation. He embedded it in an argument that football, the sport roughly 200 million Americans watched during the last Super Bowl, is a vehicle for racism, misogyny, and homophobia. He framed the problem not as a few bad actors but as something baked into the culture of men's athletics.
Michigan is home to the University of Michigan, Michigan State, and the Detroit Lions, institutions whose fans pack stadiums every fall Saturday and winter Sunday. Telling those voters that their sport is a monument to toxic masculinity is a political choice. Whether it is a survivable one in a general election is another question.
El-Sayed won his primary by less than a single percentage point against a centrist opponent, carried by young, college-educated voters in a contest flooded with outside money. Retiring Sen. Gary Peters called Michigan "absolutely critical" to Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate majority.
A candidate who lectures football fans about toxic masculinity, condemns doctors who skip Medicaid while his own household runs a cash-only practice, and campaigns on abolishing ICE may find that Michigan's general electorate is a very different audience than a Democratic primary. Rogers and Republicans are counting on exactly that.
