A former bodyguard for Michigan Senate Democrat Abdul El-Sayed says the progressive hopeful farts openly for comedy, pads his résumé, and never left the high school locker room.
Jordan Domingue worked as bodyguard and personal assistant on two of Abdul El-Sayed’s campaigns. He has now gone public with a blistering account of the Michigan Senate Democratic nominee’s habits, maturity, and messaging. The New York Post reported Domingue’s posts after Gateway Pundit first flagged them, including the charge that El-Sayed is a “manufactured man.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Sunday. Domingue says he once excused the same conduct out of loyalty. He no longer does.
Domingue’s break lands in a race already defined by image and identity politics. El-Sayed has made Israel and the Gaza war central to his political brand while selling toughness and public-service gravitas on the trail.
In a Sept. 17 post, Domingue described the moment the excuses ran out.
"Everything I had previously ignored or excused made it obvious to who he was and that I was on the wrong side,"
He tied the pattern to arrested development rather than quirky charm.
"His masculinity is a performance, and he has the maturity to match it,"
Domingue wrote that the behavior is “best explained by the guy who never grew past the high school locker room.” He also owned his own role in enabling it.
"Now I’m far from blameless, and will reflect for years how I let myself be captured by loyalty and personality,"
That confession matters because Domingue was not a distant critic. He was inside the operation on two campaigns. Progressive Democrats have already elevated El-Sayed as a national face, including when Kamala Harris stumped for him in Michigan.
Domingue’s most vivid claim is also the simplest. He said El-Sayed treated passing gas in front of staff as entertainment.
"He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy,"
He added that the candidate still finds the act peak humor.
"To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do."
Last month El-Sayed posted a campaign video of himself dancing to a Taylor Swift song. Some users used the clip to question his masculinity. Domingue rejected separate speculation that the candidate might be gay, calling those claims “inaccurate.” His point was different: the toughness is an act, and the maturity matches the act.
Voters already have reason to scrutinize the polished version of this candidacy. Prior coverage has tracked how El-Sayed once ranked British democracy above America’s, a reminder that the brand and the record do not always line up.
Domingue also challenged a staple line from the campaign trail. He said El-Sayed repeatedly sells a decade of public service.
"On the trail he likes to say he has ‘10 years of public service experience,’"
Domingue said he knew the claim was false while working for him and was surprised El-Sayed kept using it. He called 10 years of public-service experience at 41 embarrassing, not impressive. He also described El-Sayed in earlier years as a “30-year-old leapfrogging into a job he was inexperienced for and only got through connections.”
That is the heart of the “manufactured man” charge. The résumé talk, the masculinity performance, and the locker-room humor all point the same way: an image built for voters rather than a record that can stand on its own. Financial questions around the same Michigan race have already drawn attention, including reporting on how El-Sayed collected $9,000 a month from Wayne County taxpayers while campaigning.
Domingue said the double-talk was not occasional. He described El-Sayed saying one thing to one group and something else to another group hours later. At the time, Domingue treated it as normal politics or what El-Sayed called “strategic ambiguity.” He no longer buys that framing.
He also said that in 2017 and 2018, El-Sayed “acted like an entitled mobster to elected officials,” conduct Domingue then excused as an outsider earning his place. The same former aide now presents that history as evidence of character, not hustle.
In July, the Wayne County Deputy Sheriff’s Association endorsed El-Sayed. Domingue called the endorsement ironic and pointed to what he described as a history of disrespect toward law enforcement. He urged the press to look past the “tough guy act,” especially in the final stretch before the midterms, and not to avoid hard questions about the Middle East.
El-Sayed’s associations have already been a flashpoint in Michigan. Separate reporting has covered an El-Sayed Dearborn fundraiser alongside activists who praised Hamas and pushed ugly rhetoric about Jews. Domingue’s own Sept. 9 post framed antisemitism inside the Democratic Party and the safety of Jewish Americans as defining questions of the moment.
He wrote that changing “the incentives leading antisemitism in the Democratic Party” and protecting Jewish Americans “against these existential risks are the defining political questions of our time.” He also criticized El-Sayed’s response after a researcher announced a resignation from Anthropic. The campaign’s Sunday silence left those attacks unanswered in the reporting.
Past political judgment is part of the same file voters can review. El-Sayed previously co-signed a letter urging Egypt’s Morsi to purge the media and police, another data point about instincts long before this Senate bid.
None of Domingue’s posts came from a stranger with a grudge invented last week. They came from a man who guarded El-Sayed and managed the daily proximity that staffers see and voters do not. He listed the fart jokes, the shifting lines for different rooms, the résumé inflation, and the old swagger toward elected officials. Then he said the sum of it showed him he had picked the wrong side.
El-Sayed still presents himself as a serious progressive ready for the Senate. His former aide presents a candidate who confuses performance with strength and treats basic adulthood as optional. The campaign’s choice not to answer Sunday left the contrast standing on its own.
Michigan voters can decide which version matches the man asking for six years in Washington. Performance politics thrives when nobody who was in the room speaks up. This time, someone did.
