Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat who has surged in a heated Senate primary, appeared on a podcast hosted by a registered sex offender in April 2020 and encouraged former convicts, including his host, to seek political office. The host, Joshua Hoe, had pleaded guilty a decade earlier to soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex in an online chatroom.
El-Sayed's appearance on the Decarceration Nation podcast, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, adds another layer of controversy to a campaign already dogged by leaked audio, extremist associations, and a former aide indicted by the Department of Justice. El-Sayed is running to replace outgoing Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
The episode lands at a moment when the Democratic Party can least afford more self-inflicted trouble in Michigan, a state that could determine Senate control.
Hoe, now 58, hosted El-Sayed on Episode 78 of Decarceration Nation, a show aimed at "radically re-imagining America's criminal justice system." El-Sayed appeared to promote his book Healing Politics. During the conversation, Hoe, who referred to himself as "formerly incarcerated", asked El-Sayed what advice he would give to former prisoners thinking about running for office.
El-Sayed did not hedge. A transcript of the episode captures his response:
"Please do. We need your voice, folks who are affected by the experiences that you've had uniquely need your voice."
He went further, telling Hoe directly that he hoped the podcast host himself would run:
"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."
And in a broader appeal to anyone who had been through the criminal justice system, El-Sayed added:
"Folks who've had an experience with a deeply broken system, you have something deep to offer."
Hoe was not some anonymous ex-con. He was a former University of Michigan debate coach whose criminal history and advocacy work were well known. He pleaded guilty in 2010 to soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex online and served four years in prison. On the podcast, Hoe noted that he had organized a festival at the University of Michigan where El-Sayed met his future wife, suggesting the two men had a prior relationship.
One month after El-Sayed's podcast appearance, Hoe testified before the Michigan legislature as a lobbyist for Safe & Just Michigan. His cause: opposing a public sex offender registry system. Hoe argued that registries make Michigan less safe and should be available solely to law enforcement. He also called to "end distance requirements" that prohibit sex offenders from living near schools.
El-Sayed has not publicly weighed in on sex offender registry policy. But his warm endorsement of Hoe, and his blanket encouragement that people with criminal records seek public office, raises obvious questions about where the candidate draws the line. Not every ex-convict is a sex offender who preyed on a child. El-Sayed's language made no distinction.
The broader pattern of Democratic candidates courting controversy only to face belated scrutiny is by now familiar. What sets El-Sayed apart is the sheer volume of liabilities accumulating around a single campaign.
The podcast episode is not the only problem. A leaked recording from a private El-Sayed campaign strategy call captured the candidate discussing how to handle the February 2026 killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On the call, El-Sayed explained his reluctance to comment on Khamenei's death, citing the sensitivities of Muslim voters in Dearborn, Michigan, a majority-Muslim city considered a key voting bloc for Democrats.
Fox News reported that El-Sayed told staff he did not want to comment on Khamenei "at all" because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today." His campaign called the leaked recording "illegal and unethically obtained" by a disgruntled former employee.
On the same call, El-Sayed laid out his plan for deflecting reporter questions about the Khamenei killing. His proposed pivot was striking in its recklessness:
"I'm just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly. 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.'"
Set aside the inflammatory characterization of the president. The irony is hard to miss: a candidate who personally encouraged a convicted child predator to run for office was simultaneously preparing to weaponize the accusation of pedophilia against a political opponent. That is not a policy disagreement. It is a credibility problem.
El-Sayed's relationship with Hoe fits a broader pattern. The University of Michigan graduate and former CNN commentator, who ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2018, has assembled a roster of allies and affiliations that would give any general-election strategist nightmares.
He campaigned with left-wing influencer Hasan Piker, who has said "America deserved 9/11" and that Israel is "worse than Hamas." He also campaigned with Amir Makled, a candidate for the University of Michigan Board of Regents who called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a "martyr" after his assassination by the Israeli military and reportedly shared since-deleted posts praising Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.
The internal tensions within the Democratic Party over such associations are not limited to Michigan. Sen. John Fetterman has warned that Democrats are drifting toward extremism, and some Democratic senators have begun breaking with their party on key issues, a sign that the progressive wing's gravitational pull is generating real resistance from within.
El-Sayed served as director of Michigan United, described as an anti-police group that organized a May 2020 protest in Detroit that turned deadly after a gunman opened fire during the event. He also served on the board of the Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that has called to "abolish" police departments and referred to police officers as "fascist pigs."
In 2020, El-Sayed endorsed the movement to "defund" police departments in a series of tweets he later deleted. He has also called to "abolish" ICE.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice 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. The indictment is an allegation, not a conviction, but it adds yet another troubling connection to a campaign already struggling with questions about the company it keeps.
El-Sayed has hammered his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, for accepting support from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying organization. That line of attack plays well with the progressive base, but it sits uneasily alongside the DOJ indictment of his own former aide on charges related to terrorizing Jewish targets. The Michigan Senate primary has already produced heated exchanges over these fault lines.
Michigan Democrats face a choice in this primary that will say a great deal about where the party is headed. El-Sayed offers a test case: a candidate with deep progressive credentials, a media-ready biography, and a trail of associations and statements that would be disqualifying in any era that still valued basic accountability.
The simplest question remains unanswered. Did El-Sayed know, when he sat down for that April 2020 podcast, that his host had pleaded guilty to soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex? Hoe's criminal history was well known. His advocacy against sex offender registries was public. His guilty plea had been covered by local media. And Hoe himself, on the podcast, referred to his own incarceration.
If El-Sayed knew, his warm encouragement, "I hope that you'll run", takes on a meaning that no amount of criminal justice reform rhetoric can soften. If he did not know, it raises a different problem: a candidate running for the United States Senate who could not be bothered to learn the first thing about the man interviewing him.
Either way, his campaign has offered no explanation. In a party that has seen some members break ranks over questions of basic judgment, El-Sayed's silence speaks for itself.
Michigan voters deserve a Senate candidate who can tell the difference between criminal justice reform and lending his credibility to a convicted child predator. So far, Abdul El-Sayed has shown no interest in drawing that line.
