Left-wing Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is running as a populist who rails against the wealthy. At the same time, he’s been photographed on the campaign trail wearing an array of luxury watches worth thousands of dollars, a Washington Free Beacon review found. El-Sayed has even bemoaned the “perverse psychological consequences” of Rolex advertisements along the Michigan freeway. “How many people who drive this road can actually afford one of those?” he asked in his 2020 book.
As it turns out, El-Sayed, who described himself in an interview with LGBTDetroit in May as a “sucker for automatic watches” and “classic watches,” can afford some pricey wristwear. He even earned a shout-out from a watch podcast the same month for “rocking what looks like the Sinn U-1 SE,” a German diver’s watch that costs roughly $4,000.
“Badass stealthy pick, well done Doc!,” an Instagram post from the Lan Jam podcast declared. The podcast bills itself as “a friendly discussion between two blokes on watches, cars, aviation, movies, and everything in between.”
The following month, in June, El-Sayed posted a video wearing what appears to be an Omega Seamaster DeVille, a vintage watch worth about $3,000.
El-Sayed appeared to wear a pricier Omega—the Speedmaster Moon Phase Chronograph, worth roughly $10,000—in a June campaign video. And he donned a Mühle Glashütte S.A.R. Rescue-Timer, a German nautical watch worth nearly $2,000, while “getting ice cream in Grand Haven, MI.” He also sported a vintage 1950s Elgin “Doctors Watch” worth nearly $2,000.
El-Sayed has billed himself as a crusader for the working-class against the wealthy and has suggested that he struggles to afford groceries and health care. “Why do we have a trillionaire when the rest of us can barely afford groceries or healthcare?” he wrote in an X post earlier this week. In March, he wrote: “How come we work a full time job and still can’t afford a home? The answer: corporations can buy politicians.”
He has also said he has maximalist political views but a minimalist style and has lacerated American “oligarchs,” saying, “We finally need to start taxing billionaire wealth.”
El-Sayed participated in an Instagram video with a self-described “stylist for regular people,” Sophie Strauss, in which she attempted to dress him in a manner that matches his radical politics. When Strauss suggested he wear “something green since you support climate justice,” El-Sayed responded, “Of course, but this feels like money green, and I’m trying to get that out of politics.”
In the video, El-Sayed is wearing a watch that resembles a Rolex Submariner, a luxury piece that costs roughly $15,000. Watchmakers like Tag Heuer and Tudor sell lookalikes that cost roughly $2,500 and $5,000, respectively. The Free Beacon could not identify the exact watch El-Sayed is wearing, and a campaign spokeswoman said El-Sayed does not own a Rolex—though the campaign confirmed that he owns several other pricey watches.
“He regularly wears a SAR Rescue Timer on the campaign trail because he is trying to rescue our politics from corporate corruption,” said El Sayed spokeswoman Roxie Richner. “Sometimes he wears a vintage doctor’s watch because he is a doctor,” Richner said, though El-Sayed has never practiced medicine. El-Sayed attended medical school at Columbia University but did not complete a residency. He has never been licensed to practice medicine, though he has referred to himself as a “physician” on the campaign trail.
El-Sayed railed against luxury watches before running for Senate. In his 2020 autobiography Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey Into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, he lamented the Rolex billboards that lined Michigan’s highways, saying the ads “have real power” because they serve as “a reminder to almost everyone on that highway that although they cannot afford one, someone driving on that same highway can.”
“The cheapest of those watches sells for at least $3,000, even when they’re used,” he wrote. “How many people who drive this road can actually afford one of those?”
“Consider the perverse psychological consequences of this signaling,” he continued. “This signaling exacerbates material insecurity. It renders poorer people in more unequal societies more likely to pursue luxury items that they are less able to afford.”
El-Sayed’s “impressive” collection earned praise from Josh Rogin, a Washington, D.C., watch collector who runs the Instagram account @WatchTheRamen. He singled out El-Sayed’s Sinn U-1, calling it an “if you know, you know” piece for those who “still want to wear a $5k watch (and not get mugged).”
“He clearly spent years curating it and went way out of his way to collect the pieces he really likes and cares about,” Rogin told the Free Beacon. “Most of them cannot be bought in a retail store.”
El-Sayed’s net worth appears to have risen substantially since he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018. During that campaign, he released tax returns that showed he and his wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, earned around $237,000 in 2016. Jukaku has since launched a private practice, Mind Work Psychiatry, that does not accept Medicare or any other insurance and requires patients to pay out-of-pocket, the Free Beacon reported. El-Sayed has called for universal health care through a single-payer “Medicare for All” system that would cover every American “from cradle to grave.”
El-Sayed also earned nearly $50,000 from paid speeches between January 2024 and April 2025, according to his 2025 financial disclosure, which also lists him as the owner of an “audio and video media” company, Incision Media LLC, worth between $100,000 and $250,000. In 2024 and 2025, El-Sayed earned $278,939 working as health director for Wayne County. He and Jukaku own at least two rental properties, one in Michigan and one in India, worth up to $500,000 and $250,000, respectively, according to the disclosure.
El-Sayed’s in-laws are also well-off. His father-in-law is a kidney doctor who has donated at least $200,000 to a super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s candidacy. Jukaku also serves on the founders’ committee for the Islamic Society of North America and is a former president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Federal prosecutors named both groups as unindicted co-conspirators in the landmark terrorist financing case USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Free Beacon reported.
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