- With primaries over, GOP candidate Mike Rogers has stepped back into the spotlight for his second run at the US Senate
- In recent weeks, he’s made overtures to Democrats and hammered opponent Abdul El-Sayed on a bevy of issues
- El-Sayed, Democrats have responded in kind as each side tries ‘to define their opponent before they can define themselves’
For months, Republican US Senate candidate Mike Rogers saved money, enjoyed support from President Donald Trump and bided his time while Michigan Democrats hashed out their differences in an expensive, drawn-out primary fight.
Now, the former US House member, military veteran and FBI agent is squarely back in the spotlight, arguing he’s more qualified and less extreme than Democrat Abdul El-Sayed as he again seeks a seat in the US Senate that eluded him in 2024.
“I’ve chased mobsters, faced terrorists, and sat across the table from world leaders. And what I’ve learned is, problems aren’t solved by slogans,” Rogers told GOP activists at the party’s nominating convention last weekend. “They’re solved by people who are willing to do the work.”
In reintroducing himself to general election voters, Rogers has highlighted his family’s middle-class roots and his past bipartisan work in Congress, tying his background to policy platforms like requiring shop classes in schools and building more affordable housing.
His campaign and key allies have also unleashed a barrage of attacks on El-Sayed after the progressive favorite’s primary victory. In recent messaging, Rogers has called El-Sayed a “conman” who can’t deliver on his biggest promises and has exploited ongoing tensions among Jewish Democrats concerned about El-Sayed’s positions on Israel.
El-Sayed has responded in kind, nicknaming his opponent “Mike Dodgers” for not agreeing to more debates and calling Rogers’ time in Washington and post-Congress career into question.
El-Sayed has suggested his opponent’s work in the private sector as a commentator and cybersecurity consultant made Rogers wealthy and amounted to “trading on the relationships he built while he was a congressman for this state.”
“Each side is trying to define their opponent before they can define themselves, and that’s the battle that’s happening at the moment,” Oakland University professor David Dulio said. “Rogers is trying to make El-Sayed an unacceptable candidate … We’ll see if that’s successful.”
In a statement provided to Bridge, Rogers said there were a lot of lessons learned from last cycle, but one of the biggest was timing: “we jumped in six months sooner to hit the ground running with fundraising and to build out the most powerful groundgame operation in the country.”
“And no matter where we go, we hear the same thing: the status quo just is not working,” he said.
Lessons learned, new challenges
Two years ago, Rogers was roughly 19,000 votes short of becoming the state’s first Republican US senator in decades, a sore spot in a year that otherwise went well for Michigan’s GOP.
Trump won the state’s electoral votes for the presidency in 2024, but Rogers underperformed him by about 123,000 votes and lost to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Holly Democrat.
Rogers is in a better financial position this time around, enjoys higher standing with the GOP base and isn’t coming off of a bruising primary, as he was in 2024. The seat is also viewed by national Republicans as the party’s best chance at a flip in the US Senate.
In July, Rogers described his current campaign to The Detroit News as “night and day” from his 2024 bid.
Michigan Republican Party Chair Jim Runestad told Bridge that in 2024, some of the more conservative factions of the party “would have some concern over this or that, some particular vote” when it came to Rogers.
At the GOP convention last week, he said, “it was absolute unity.”
“I believe I could go out and talk to those same groups that saw the results of what happened when they didn’t engage that are now 100% Mike Rogers people,” he said.
Unlike 2024, however, political headwinds are expected to be challenging for Republican candidates across the country. Without Trump at the top of the ticket and in a climate less favorable to the party in power, experts say a close alliance to the president could be a tougher sell for midterm general election voters.
“The party of the president almost always does poorly at the midterm, and that is the thing that is probably most concerning to Mike Rogers,” said Dulio of Oakland University, noting that voter frustration in actions taken during the president’s second term and a dip in turnout among faithful Trump voters could complicate Republican candidates’ campaigns.
“There’s a huge turnout effect, where a lot of the folks that came out in 24 to vote for Trump and/or Mike Rogers aren’t going to simply vote this time,” he said, adding, “There are some Republicans who will vote for Donald Trump and nobody else.”
Overtures to Democrats
After El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, the Rogers campaign appealed directly to voters who had supported Haley Stevens. In a video with his wife, Kristi Rogers, Rogers said any disenfranchised Democrats “have a home” in his campaign.
Rogers expanded on that concept last week, appearing in Detroit with a group of self-professed Democrats who said they’d be supporting Rogers in the general election.
Despite the disagreements many Democrats have with Trump and his policies, “for the future, for the long term, it’s much better for Mike Rogers to win this election,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Huntington Woods said last week at the Detroit event.
El-Sayed dismissed the effort as political spin by Republicans during a Tuesday press conference, suggesting it was “a nice narrative” with little basis in reality.
While serving in Congress, Rogers was widely regarded as a bipartisan operator, particularly for his work on the House Intelligence Committee. In 2012, he led an investigation into the terrorist attack at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, which debunked claims of intelligence failures or “stand down” orders delaying emergency response.
That reputation was diminished somewhat after Rogers politically aligned with Trump in both U.S. Senate campaigns, despite having previously denounced him for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss. Recently, Rogers has repeated some of Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election and even questioned his own loss to Slotkin in 2024.
Asked how Democrats might perceive his Trump connection during the Thursday press conference, Rogers acknowledged he and the president are “not always going to agree on everything” but argued Trump’s proposals to improve education, housing options and the state’s manufacturing industry meet voters where they’re at.
But Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel contends that Democrats or any Michigan resident concerned about the Iran war, tariffs or other actions taken by the Trump administration won’t want a senator unwilling to challenge policies “hurting them over and over again.”
“Whether it was giving tax cuts to billionaires and raising health care costs for everyone, Mike Rogers has stood with Donald Trump every single time,” he said. “I don’t think that Democrats will be fooled by Mike Rogers, nor will the Michigan people.”
Israel and AIPAC
Most prominent Michigan Democrats who previously endorsed Stevens have accepted El-Sayed as the US Senate nominee. Hertel and other party officials have called for unity, a message likely to be continued at the state Democratic convention this weekend.
Still, Rogers and GOP allies have been exploiting ongoing tensions among Democrats, particularly when it comes to El-Sayed’s stances on Israel and his connection with controversial figures like Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
El-Sayed, a critic of US aid to the Israeli government, frequently highlighted the roughly $30 million of spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for Stevens in the primary as a prime example of how special interest groups work to tip the scales in competitive elections.
The group is interested in backing Rogers, though The New York Times and Axios reported over the weekend that the campaign has expressed reservations over how public that support should be in the current political climate. A Rogers campaign advisor told the Times that the campaign welcomes support from the Jewish and pro-Israel community.
Piker, a left-wing political commentator who campaigned with El-Sayed during the primary cycle, recently criticized state senator and Democratic congressional candidate Jeremy Moss during a livestream, arguing that Jewish people are “making antisemitism worse” by assuming the entire community supports Israel.
“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” he said.
His comments drew swift backlash, including from Stevens, Slotkin and US Rep. Hillary Scholten, who has publicly distanced herself from El-Sayed. El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments, saying in a statement that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople” and suggesting his opponents are trying “to make this race about a Twitch streamer.”
Rogers said Piker “must be condemned by every single Michigan Democrat” in a statement, also suggesting that El-Sayed, “doesn’t have the guts” to disavow him.
Moss hasn’t formally endorsed El-Sayed, but made clear he wouldn’t be supporting Rogers. During a Dearborn press conference with faith leaders and other Democratic candidates, El-Sayed said he was “not going to sugarcoat that we have our disagreements” on foreign policy, but agree on many other key Democratic priorities.
Other issues in play
On the campaign trail, Rogers has prioritized Michigan-specific issues like improving literacy among Michigan students and workforce preparedness, calling for a shop class in every high school and encouraging students to consider and train for high-paying manufacturing jobs.
Rogers told Bridge he’s concerned that over the last quarter century, the state’s manufacturing jobs and test scores have plummeted while basic costs of living like energy and auto insurance have soared.
“By every barometer, our current Michigan leaders have failed us,” he said. “And what’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Both he and El-Sayed have highlighted affordability and economic prospects as a key issue for voters, though Rogers’ support of the Trump administration’s tax cuts differs from El-Sayed’s support of a wealth tax on the nation’s highest earners.
Rogers proposed an expansion of the TrumpRx program for lowering prescription drug costs and supports penalties for health providers and insurance companies that don’t publicly share itemized prices with patients or excessively deny coverage for care. El-Sayed favors a “Medicare for All” government-run health care system.
In February, Rogers announced a sweeping housing plan that would allow tax-free withdrawals from 529 college savings plans for first-time homebuyer down payments, a rollback of housing-related regulations and new incentives for homebuilders.
He’s also at times leaned into his law enforcement background, contrasting that with El-Sayed’s past comments on defunding the police and abolishing ICE.
Both candidates have agreed to one debate so far, an Oct. 8 matchup in Grand Rapids hosted by WOODTV. El-Sayed has continued to pressure Rogers for more debates, including a Sept. 15 debate proposed by Fox 2 Detroit.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under our Republication Guidelines. Questions? Email republishing@bridgemi.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.