Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed pushed in 2018 to repeal a Michigan felony requiring HIV-positive people to tell sexual partners, a law still carrying up to four years behind bars.
Just the News reported that El-Sayed, now Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, advocated repealing a state law that makes it a felony for a person who knows they have HIV to engage in sexual intercourse without disclosing that diagnosis to a partner.
The pitch came during his 2018 run for governor. The statute is reportedly still on the books and carries a prison sentence of up to four years.
In plain terms, the law targets secrecy before sex, not the fact of living with the virus. El-Sayed framed the fight differently.
Fox News recorded his 2018 governor-campaign remarks, which Just the News later resurfaced as he seeks a U.S. Senate seat.
"You should not be criminalized for a disease. That is absolutely wrong. It’s hateful. It’s discriminatory, and we can, as a state, do better. You can count on me for that,"
That is the choice he put on the table: treat nondisclosure of a known HIV status as a civil-rights problem rather than a partner-protection rule backed by a felony.
Michigan’s measure, tied in the reporting to compiled law page MCL 333.5210 on the state legislature site, makes the crime the act of sexual intercourse by someone who already knows they are HIV-positive and stays silent with the partner.
Voters can read the incentive cleanly. A partner who never hears the diagnosis never gets a real chance to refuse, demand protection, or walk away. Repeal would have erased the felony hammer behind that duty to speak up.
El-Sayed’s line, “criminalized for a disease”, skipped the actual trigger in the statute as described: knowing the infection and still withholding it before sex. The gap between the slogan and the conduct the law covers is the whole fight.
He is again on a statewide ballot, this time as the Democratic Senate nominee, and earlier controversies have already drawn bipartisan backlash over his posts and forced hard questions about judgment.
The 2018 repeal stance fits a pattern conservatives flag when candidates soft-pedal enforcement tools that protect ordinary people from hidden risk.
Just the News published the account on September 26, 2026, under Nicholas Ballasy’s byline, tying the old governor-campaign quote to El-Sayed’s present Senate bid.
No bill number, floor vote, or formal sponsorship appears in that reporting, only his public promise that voters could “count on” him to do better than a disclosure felony. The law’s described penalty ceiling remains up to four years in prison, and the piece states it is reportedly still in force.
Senate Democrats already face warnings that the Michigan seat is vulnerable. Fetterman has said the seat is now “in play” after El-Sayed’s primary win, which only raises the cost of every prior position that undercuts public-health basics and personal consent.
Partners deserve the truth before intimacy. A felony for knowing silence is one way a state backs that expectation with real teeth.
El-Sayed’s record on enforcement themes has drawn other contrasts as well, including how his own words on defunding police sit beside later denials, another reminder that campaign tape ages poorly when the office gets bigger.
Party fracture only sharpens the scrutiny. Midterm pressure has left Democratic candidates dodging national baggage while local records get a second look from voters who still expect straight talk on crime, health, and honesty.
Internal Democratic drama elsewhere, including fights in which Democrats move to push out one of their own, shows how little patience remains for nominees who keep handing opponents clean, dated quotes.
Michigan kept a simple rule on the books: if you know you have HIV, you tell the person before sex, or you face a felony. El-Sayed told the state it should drop that rule. Voters get to decide whether that judgment belongs in the Senate.
