Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D.), in a podcast interview with a sex offender convicted of soliciting an underage girl for sex, urged ex-cons to run for political office, saying their "voice" is needed in politics.
The left-wing Democrat made the plea in an April 2020 episode of the Decarceration Nation podcast, hosted by Joshua Hoe, a former University of Michigan debate coach who pleaded guilty in 2010 to soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex in an online chatroom. Hoe, now 58, served four years in prison and is now a registered sex offender.
Hoe, whose podcast is aimed at "radically re-imagining America’s criminal justice system," asked El-Sayed his advice to former prisoners seeking to run for political office.
"Please do," said El-Sayed, a University of Michigan graduate. "We need your voice, folks who are affected by the experiences that you've had uniquely need your voice."
"I hope that you'll run, and I hope that when you do, you'll find me out and let me have the opportunity to support," added El-Sayed, who has surged to the lead in a heated three-way primary to replace outgoing Sen. Gary Peters (D.).
El-Sayed, who ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2018, has embraced progressive views of criminal justice involving "decarceration," an aspirational term for the dismantling of what he and Hoe both referred to disapprovingly as "the criminal punishment system."
"Folks who've had an experience with a deeply broken system, you have something deep to offer," El-Sayed told Hoe. "For folks who've had experiences with the criminal punishment system, I just think it's so important for you to get out there to share your voice and your experiences."
El-Sayed’s commiseration with a registered sex offender could prove a political liability in the Senate race, which Democrats view as a must-win in November for the party to take control of the Senate. El-Sayed’s dalliance with Hoe could also undermine his campaign trail emphasis on denunciations of the network of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, who registered as a sex offender in 2008 after pleading guilty to attempting to solicit a minor for sex.
El-Sayed has accused the Trump administration of slowing the release of the so-called Epstein files to protect President Trump, a longtime Palm Beach, Fla., acquaintance of Epstein’s who cut ties with him years before he was accused of sex crimes.
El-Sayed also said in a private campaign strategy call that he planned to use the Epstein issue to distract from questions about the February 2026 killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which he said was upsetting to voters in Dearborn, a majority-Muslim city considered a key voting bloc for Democrats.
"I'm just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly," El-Sayed said, in remarks first revealed by the Washington Free Beacon. "I'll just be like, 'Pedophile president decides that he doesn't like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.'"
El-Sayed has made opposition to Israel the centerpiece of his campaign. El-Sayed, who has hammered primary opponent Rep. Haley Stevens (D., Mich.) for receiving support from AIPAC, has campaigned with Hasan Piker, the left-wing influencer who said, "America deserved 9/11," and that Israel is "worse than Hamas." He campaigned with Amir Makled, a candidate for University of Michigan Board of Regents who called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a "martyr" after his assassination by the Israeli military.
El-Sayed’s rhetoric may be attracting unsavory figures to his campaign. Earlier this month, the DOJ indicted Mariam Odeh, a former El-Sayed campaign aide, as part of a conspiracy to terrorize Jewish officials, businesses, and groups at the University of Michigan.
Hoe’s criminal history and his anti-prison advocacy work were well-known when he interviewed El-Sayed, who appeared on the podcast to promote his book, Healing Politics. Hoe, who noted in the podcast that he organized a festival at the University of Michigan where El-Sayed met his future wife, referred to himself as "formerly incarcerated" and discussed his lobbying efforts to reform Michigan’s sex offender registration system. In May 2020, as a lobbyist at the advocacy group Safe & Just Michigan, Hoe testified before the Michigan legislature to oppose a public sex offender registry system, asserting that they make Michigan less safe. He called to make registries available solely to law enforcement agencies, and to "end distance requirements" that prohibit sex offenders from living near schools.
El-Sayed has not publicly weighed in on the sex offender registry issue, but he has embraced a number of other soft-on-crime positions throughout his career.
El-Sayed has called to "abolish" ICE, and endorsed the movement to "defund" police departments in a series of deleted tweets from 2020. El-Sayed was a director of Michigan United, an anti-police group that organized a May 2020 protest in Detroit that turned deadly after a gunman opened fire during the event, the Free Beacon reported. El-Sayed, a former CNN commentator, served on the board of Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that has called to "abolish" police departments, and referred to police officers as "fascist pigs."
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
