Michigan Democratic Senate candidate and self-described “capitalist” Abdul El-Sayed has deep socialist ties that run straight through New York City’s radical elite, The Post can reveal.
A newly surfaced, now viral 2019 photo tied him this week to notorious Israel-hating socialist Linda Sarsour, who at the time proudly called him DSA’s “newest member.”
The bombshell photo ties El-Sayed to powerful Democratic Socialists of America activists like Sarsour, exploding his debate-night claims that he’s not part of the far-left group.
The scandal erupted just after a fiery televised showdown Thursday against GOP rival Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who trails El-Sayed by a razor-thin 3 points in the RealClearPolitics average.
But the connection is no one-off encounter — a Post review has found Sarsour has backed “Uncle Abdul” for nearly a decade — and it’s now part of the secret to his surprising success.
Sarsour, 46, is a figure of national reputation whose efforts helped give rise to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani — the nation’s first socialist mayor.
She helped deliver the lefty “Squad” in Congress after serving as executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and co-founding online mobilizing group MPower Change – while facing repeated accusations of antisemitism along the way.
“Linda Sarsour has spent years building a political network to elect far-left candidates who share her anti-American worldview, and Abdul El-Sayed has hardly concealed his own hardline ideological commitments,” said Jesse Arm, vice president of the Manhattan Institute.
“The ascendant far left is not merely a collection of radical candidates, but an organized political movement with the infrastructure and relationships to translate its Islamist-sympathetic, anti-Western agenda into political power.”
Sarsour’s support for El-Sayed dates back to his failed 2018 bid for governor against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.), when she drove with Muslim activists from New York to Michigan to back him, gushing that she was “transformed” by meeting him and that God had “sent me the Abdul El-Sayed for Governor campaign.”
“It led me to my beloved communities in Michigan to build, strategize, inspire and expand an electorate,” she wrote, adding that she had coached another socialist — future “squad” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — by telling her “you were made for this” before her own successful run.
She appeared with him onstage in Ann Arbor, Michigan at a town hall in December 2017 she told the crowd, “I have the audacity to believe we can make history and put the first Muslim governor in office” and said she wasn’t beholden to any political party but is drawn to El-Sayed because he is a progressive.
Then she boasted of raising an eye-popping $27 million for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign in a month. “Every one of us has something to give,” she said.
Eight years later, her support is unwavering.
“It’s very CLEAR to me and has been. @AbdulElSayed is THE CHOICE for U.S. Senate race in Michigan!” Sarsour posted on Instagram in May, urging people to knock on doors for him. “So proud of Dr. Abdul and his incredible movement.”
Sarsour, who didn’t respond to a call seeking comment, donated $1,000 to El-Sayed’s Senate campaign a week before the Aug. 4 primary, the same amount she gave to socialist New York House candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, who wrote an incendiary post about using the American flag as a napkin.
Sarsour’s allies and political associates regard her as a power broker and mentor in the growing socialist movement.
She has played a controversial role in progressive politics since emerging as an organizer of the 2017 Women’s March, only to step down under pressure two years later. She has helped mentor Mamdani’s political circle, backed the boycott movement against Israel, faced accusations of antisemitism and argued that feminism is incompatible with Zionism.
She also built a long trail of incendiary statements about Israel and occasionally the US, which she accused of being built on “genocide & slavery.”
The Michigan-born El-Sayed has an NYC connection. He lived in the Big Apple from 2015-2018 while attending medical school at Columbia University. That stint caused him residency issues in his gubernatorial campaign when he needed to demonstrate residency in the Wolverine State.
El-Sayed is backed by Gustavo Gordillo, 38, co-chair of the DSA’s NYC chapter.
Gordillo, 38 — who The Post in August revealed is living in his parent’s $1.5 million Brooklyn home after faking working-class credentials — snapped a picture of fellow socialists aboard an August flight to Detroit to campaign for El-Sayed in his primary fight against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).
“At LaGuardia going to Detroit and everyone on the flight is going to canvass,” he hyped on X.
It was El-Sayed’s apparent connection to the Detroit branch of the DSA and Sanders that came together in the 2019 photo which threatens to close the purposeful distance he keeps from the socialist party.
In the photo, Katherine Brezler, who works for the Queens borough president, smiled for a selfie with El-Sayed, tagging Sarsour and writing that she was pictured with “the newest member of @detroitdsa.”
The Detroit DSA chimed in: “Welcome to the team comrade @AbdulElSayed!” The group added: “@OrganizerJess36 — you did it!”
That appears to be a reference to Jessica Newman, a Detroit DSA member who helps run the Michigan Education Justice Coalition, and who once posted about getting “cuddles” from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s French bulldog.
AOC herself gushed at a fundraiser Monday that an El-Sayed victory would prove lefties can win “anywhere.” She plans to join him on the campaign trail for a three-stop bus tour in Michigan, she announced in an Instagram post Friday night.
Brezler, speaking as a private citizen and not for her city employer, told The Post her comment about El-Sayed being in the DSA was just “a little jokey joke on the Internet.”
The Detroit DSA also touted El-Sayed as a “longtime friend” and highlighted his appearance at its 2019 Douglass-Debs dinner, named in part for socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs.
The group saluted El-Sayed that February after he “signed onto our bold demand to seize abandoned GM plants & convert them to green, public use,” in a reply to the future candidate’s since-deleted X post.
Critics wonder what El-Sayed really stands for.
“There’s a real fear that these DSA candidates or DSA-adjacent candidates are beholden to a hardcore activist class,” said Jake Altman, a former Boston DSA member who says he left the group in disgust. “He’s brought this mob into the Democratic Party and he’s going to turn them loose again.
“What is the agenda he’s pushing? Clearly he can’t say the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is a danger to the United States and he can’t say that Hezbollah, a terror group, is a danger to the United States. He’s going to be doing the bidding of the IRGC and Hezbollah in Washington, DC.”
El-Sayed’s campaign rejects the suggestion that he is a socialist or a DSA member.
“Abdul has said he is not a socialist. He is a capitalist and he has never been a member of the DSA,” campaign spokeswoman Roxy Richner told The Post.
Not everyone is convinced.
“It’s a charade,” Stu Smith of the Manhattan Institute said of El-Sayed’s insistence that he is not a socialist — a posture that he says is politically advantageous in a statewide election.
“It’s just bizarre how they really do go out of their way to kind not say they are a member of DSA. Anyone would see if it quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, and floats like a duck, it’s a duck. It just defies imagination on some fronts.”
Additional reporting by David Spector and Gabrielle Fahmy
