Abdul Muhammed El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat whose Senate campaign has been marketed as a fresh-face progressive insurgency, is having a very bad October. As American Thinker’s J.R. Dunn argues in a biting commentary, the past week has peeled back the carefully curated image of a moderate Muslim candidate and exposed a campaign that looks increasingly chaotic heading into the final stretch.
The Domingue Departure
The week’s first blow came when Jordan Domingue, a veteran staffer who had worked on both El-Sayed’s gubernatorial and senatorial runs, publicly resigned. In a post on X, Domingue described himself as a former Marine and a “Lockheed Liberal” who had protected El-Sayed for two years, served as his personal assistant and executive protection lead, and made serious personal sacrifices for the job—departing two overseas posts early, moving to Michigan twice, and absorbing pay cuts averaging $50,000.
But the real sting was his explanation. Domingue said the break came when he realized El-Sayed “didn’t actually care about civilians and peace,” and that everything he had previously ignored or excused suddenly became clear. He also accused the candidate of misrepresenting his rĂ©sumĂ©, noting that El-Sayed routinely claims “10 years of public service experience” on the trail—a line Domingue says he knew was false while working for him.
If El-Sayed responded directly, Dunn writes, there’s no sign of it. What did appear was a predictable pile-on from what Dunn calls the “Usual Suspects,” who accused Domingue of betraying the campaign for money or for undisclosed interests—a familiar playbook when a disgruntled insider goes public.
Firefighters Union: We Never Endorsed Him
Scarcely had that story broken when the next shoe dropped. The Michigan Professional Firefighters Union, which had appeared to endorse El-Sayed, moved quickly to distance itself—not by withdrawing the endorsement, but by claiming it had never really been issued in the first place. The union’s official story is that El-Sayed’s name was placed on its list of endorsed candidates “by a clerical error” and then released by accident.
Dunn is openly skeptical of the clerical error explanation. In his telling, the name likely ended up on the list because El-Sayed is a Democrat—and only later did union officials realize this was the same candidate calling for the abolition of police and prisons. Rank-and-file members, meanwhile, have said the name was pulled only after the membership spoke up. Either way, a key labor endorsement that the campaign had been touting has evaporated in the most awkward way possible.
The DSA Problem
Then came the receipts. Social media posts surfaced documenting El-Sayed’s connections to the Democratic Socialists of America, and the timing could hardly have been worse. Only days earlier, El-Sayed had told the New York Times that he was “kind-of a capitalist”—an apparent attempt to sand down his edges for a general electorate.
The DSA’s Detroit branch, according to the resurfaced posts, greeted him far more warmly: “Welcome to the team comrade,” the branch wrote, praising El-Sayed for endorsing Bernie Sanders and calling him a “friend and ally” while declaring their movement “unstoppable.” That’s not the kind of welcome a candidate trying to pass as a kind-of capitalist usually wants circulating in the closing weeks.
From Piker to Now
As Dunn recounts, the El-Sayed campaign’s troubles didn’t begin this week. From the outset, the candidate attempted to cozy up to Hasan Piker, a progressive streamer whose anti-Semitic and anti-American commentary Dunn describes harshly. Those remarks soon became entangled with similar rhetoric from El-Sayed himself, forcing the candidate to spend weeks of valuable campaign time extricating himself from direct association with Piker—without alienating Piker’s followers, a group Dunn characterizes as “four million” in the candidate’s imagination but low five digits in reality. For a while, Dunn concedes, it seemed to be working. That reprieve now looks to be over.
A Campaign in Disarray?
Dunn’s conclusion is that these episodes may not amount to a knockout blow on their own, but taken together they reveal a campaign in serious disarray and unable to seal the deal in the critical final weeks. He also points to what he calls accumulating evidence that El-Sayed is starting to lose support among black voters—which, in Dunn’s assessment, would mark the end of the road for the candidate.
It’s worth being clear about what this is: a conservative commentator’s argument, not a neutral news account. The Domingue resignation is a matter of public record, as is the firefighter union’s statement about a clerical error and the DSA posts. But the interpretation—that these add up to a candidacy in freefall, and that El-Sayed is bleeding black support—is Dunn’s, and readers should weigh it accordingly.
Still, for a candidate whose entire appeal rested on a polished, broadly acceptable progressive brand, this is the worst possible moment for questions about authenticity, staff loyalty, and ideological honesty to converge. If El-Sayed’s wheels aren’t fully off yet, Dunn’s piece argues they’re wobbling hard—and November is coming fast.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/are-el-sayed-s-wheels-coming-off/