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Senate candidate El-Sayed questions assumption Michigan voters are moderates

▶ Watch Video: Full Interview: Abdul El-Sayed makes progressive case as Democrats weigh race against Haley Stevens

In his race to be the next Democratic senator from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive populist, is challenging perceptions about who Michigan’s voters are and what they really want. In an interview with CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe, El-Sayed questioned the characterization of the state’s voters as moderates.

“It’s always funny to me that people want to say that this state votes for moderates when it voted for Donald Trump twice,” he told O’Keefe in Detroit Monday, on the eve of the Michigan primaries. “It may just be that the better explanation is not that the state wants moderates: It’s that it’s so sick and tired of the establishment bought off by corporations on both sides of the political aisle that it was willing to hold its nose and vote for Donald Trump twice.”

El-Sayed’s main opponent in the Democratic primary Tuesday is Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate who represents a district outside Detroit and was recruited for the race by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Stevens has the support of most establishment Democrats, while progressives like independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are in El-Sayed’s corner. 

Later Monday, O’Keefe also spoke with Stevens, who said she has a record of winning tough primaries. In polls since mid-July, though, she’s been trailing El-Sayed by double digits. Stevens accused El-Sayed of following a “path of anger,” and she suggested he’s using the Michigan Senate race as a stepping stone to the presidency.

“Abdul has also, you know, chosen … a path of anger,” Stevens said, adding, “He is really frustrated, which a lot of Michiganders are. But we also need plans. You know, it is not just slogans and bullhorns and big rallies. This is six years of hard, unglamorous work that I’m signing up for. I’m Michigan’s workhorse. That’s what I want to be. My opponent, he’s already got his website for president. I just want to help Michigan. I just want to fight for Michigan and make sure we’re heard.”

El-Sayed, a doctor who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, is relying solely on grassroots donations and is not accepting PAC money, while Stevens has received tens of millions of dollars from several PACs, including AIPAC, which lobbies for U.S. support for Israel.

El-Sayed told O’Keefe he wants to build a “broad coalition,” including “anybody who wants to take on fascism, anybody who wants to get money out of politics, anybody who wants to fight for union rights, anybody who wants to make sure that people can live free with clean air and drink clean water, anybody who wants to guarantee healthcare.” 

He suggested that the Democratic Party has been losing some support because it’s been focusing on a narrow band of interests rather than coming up with ways to address the needs of most Americans.

“Sometimes, when the Democratic Party talks about a big tent, we push everybody into the corner and then go talk and pander to the corner,” he told O’Keefe. “I’m just trying to bring everybody to the tent pole in the middle to talk about what we really need. We need good housing. We need good schools. We need healthcare.” 

Pressed on whether there are views he doesn’t want to see in the party, El-Sayed responded, “We’re trying to define a viewpoint that’s built on money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.” 

The Democratic Socialists of America have not endorsed El-Sayed, but Sanders and other democratic socialists have been campaigning for him across Michigan. 

El-Sayed says he doesn’t care about party labels — “I don’t do ideology” — and while he’s not part of DSA, he thinks its supporters should be welcomed into the Democratic Party.

“You want a coalition of all people,” he said. “You know who else are going to be part of my coalition? Three-time Trump voters who want health care, who want to keep our money here at home.”

He acknowledged that there are some who “really want to label me a socialist.” 

El-Sayed says, “I’d rather think of myself as a capitalist who’s actually read about capitalism, in the sense that the biggest risk to capitalism was always going to be corporate consolidation and monopoly rather than government regulation. In fact, you need some government regulation to make sure that capitalism runs well.” 

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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