# Why El-Sayed says attack ads reshaped his primary Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/why-el-sayed-says-attack-ads-reshaped-his-primary/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Abdul El-Sayed](https://realalpha.app/people/abdul-el-sayed/) · Abdul El-Sayed is a Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. · Rebuilt Detroit’s Health Department, restructured Wayne County’s health agency, and authored Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide. - Host: [Jon Stewart](https://realalpha.app/people/jon-stewart/) · The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - Show: The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - Episode: [Abdul El-Sayed’s Progressive Policy Prescription | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/), Oct 21, 2026 - Moment: 28:14 to 32:36 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/why-el-sayed-says-attack-ads-reshaped-his-primary/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1694 ## Quote > “They **spend that money because it's effective**. And if you look at the ads that they ran, it was an ad arguing that President Obama had endorsed against me” > — [Abdul El-Sayed](https://realalpha.app/people/abdul-el-sayed/) at [29:49](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1789) · The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart ## Takeaways 1. He says $70 million was spent against him in the primary. 2. He says the ads attacked him using a 15-year-old op-ed. 3. He says some Detroit business owners had not built respectful ties with the community. ## About this segment Abdul El-Sayed says he was outspent 11 to 1 in the primary and that attack ads made his views harder for voters to hear. He also describes tensions he says his public-service work tried to address. From “Abdul El-Sayed’s Progressive Policy Prescription | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart”, Oct 21, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [28:26](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1706) So when this, you know, these are the types of messages that I would imagine would resonate, you know, and as I'm reading up on it, they're saying, well, I'll say it is struggling a bit in Detroit and he lost Detroit to Haley Stevens when he was doing it. That seems like the kind of message that would resonate completely and totally in communities that have been suffering. So is your message resonating there? Are you surprised that there's still this conversation about, well, geez, Mike Rogers is going to do great. Mike Rogers is the opponent that you're running against, is going to do better in Detroit than people thought he would. What's going on there that makes this message maybe not resonating in the same way? [29:13](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1753) Let me say three things about that. First, it's easy to manufacture a narrative online if you want to. There you go. And that's the easy to manufacture narrative for somebody like Mike Rogers. He opened up, what, 16 days left in the election, opens up a Detroit office, invites a whole bunch of suburbanites to come and open it for him. Okay. Are you suggesting, sir, that the narrative I've been reading about in the papers may not be accurate? [29:32](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1772) I am intimating that it may, in fact, not be accurate. What? Well, that is it. The second thing is, you know, in my primary, we got outspent 11 to 1. $70 million spent against us. That is a record spent. In the primary. In a primary. This is two Democrat. This is Democrat on Democrat violence. $70 million spent against another Democrat. $70 million. Holy shit. So why do they spend that money? It's not just like, you know, shits and giggles. [30:00](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1800) It's not like they're just having fun spending that money. They spend that money because it's effective. And if you look at the ads that they ran, it was an ad arguing that President Obama had endorsed against me and took an op-ed that I wrote 15 years ago about the let's move campaign from the first lady intimating that somehow I'm disrespectful to women because I wrote an op-ed with a few critiques about that program saying it's a good program, but here's some limits on the program. So it was, it was $70 million spent specifically to break my relationship with the community. And I was up 20 points in, on July 4th, headed into a month before the primary. And then they spent that much money and I still took 40% of the black vote. Now here's the thing about it. If you look at dollars per vote spent, right? And if you take the argument [30:41](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1841) that advertising works, well, I think our narrative is pretty good. The problem is, is that far fewer people heard that than they heard the missing disinformation about me in attack ads. Let me ask you a question though, because I hear this sometimes a lot. Is there anything though that you did or that you said that you thought actually that was a mistake and it did, it did cause some conflict or friction between the black community? [31:11](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1871) Because there are real issues there between the Arab community and the black community, things that you might've said that might've rubbed them the wrong way. The spends in those things, I understand it can be tough, but what are some of the things that you think could've gone better that you had done? Look, I've been leading with black folk in the city of Detroit almost my whole public service career. [31:33](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1893) City of Detroit, rebuilt the health department there. Wayne County served in the county. And my work, I hope, speaks to what my intentions and my work is about. That being said, right, there are a lot of sources of tension. Too often, if you're in the city of Detroit and you interact with somebody who looks like me, it's not a good experience. It's behind bulletproof glass in a gas station or a party store. [31:56](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1916) You're being catcalled. You're being denied a bathroom. You're being sold goods that nobody should be eating. You're saying in terms of like small business owners that, I mean, there's always tension in communities between small business owners that don't look like the community and the community that is going there. And it's even bigger. Like I would argue that, you know, a lot of these business owners have not done what they needed to do to build relationships and have been deeply disrespectful, if not racist in these communities. [32:24](https://realalpha.app/v/fmodf-lNGEE/?t=1944) And I've tried to be on the right side of those issues.