Rogers Courts Michigan Democrats and Trump Base in Tight Senate Race

Republican Mike Rogers is running for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat with a two-front strategy: peeling away Democratic and independent voters in Detroit while ensuring Donald Trump's loyalists turn out in November, even though the president is not on the ballot.

Standing outside Cody High School on Detroit's west side on a drizzly morning, Rogers called Michigan's decline in reading achievement "the civil rights issue of our lifetime." The setting — a Democratic stronghold — and the message were part of his promotion of a nonprofit literacy program in the city. Days later, he pitched a home construction plan downtown, where thousands of lots remain vacant nearly two decades after the Great Recession.

Rogers, a former congressman, lost his first Senate bid two years ago by roughly 19,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. His campaign sees opportunity in Wayne County, home to Detroit, where about three-quarters of residents are Black. Democrat Elissa Slotkin carried the county by more than a two-to-one margin in 2024, a gap of some 264,000 votes. Rogers' team believes shaving even a couple of percentage points there could flip the seat.

Part of that optimism stems from this year's Democratic primary, in which U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens defeated El-Sayed in Wayne County. El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim senator if elected, has faced resistance from older, establishment-aligned Black Democrats who favored Stevens' ties to Black churches and her work on the Obama administration's auto industry rescue. Some local Black activists also faulted him for backing the "uncommitted" campaign in the 2024 presidential primary over Gaza, which some believe cost Kamala Harris the state. Trump won Michigan by 1.4 percentage points.

Rogers is also courting Jewish Democrats, an influential bloc in Oakland County. A day after the August primary, Detroit-area business leader Brian Hermelin called Rogers' campaign finance chairman, Bobby Schostak, to offer help. Within ten days, Rogers headlined a fundraiser hosted by the Hermelin family with about 130 attendees, mostly Democrats. El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel and has called its Gaza campaign a "genocide," a charge Israel and Washington reject. He also drew criticism from some Jewish Democrats over his response to the March attack on Temple Israel, Michigan's largest Jewish congregation; he later apologized.

Oakland County commercial real estate broker Benji Rosenzweig, who is Jewish and typically votes Democratic, said he plans to back Rogers. "As a Jew, my family doesn't feel safe with Abdul El-Sayed," he said.

Democratic leaders are unconvinced. State party chair Curtis Hertel said of Rogers' outreach to Black Detroiters, "I don't think anyone's buying it." Harris is set to campaign with El-Sayed in Michigan, and the Congressional Black Caucus has endorsed him.

The seat is open because Democrat Gary Peters is not seeking reelection. A Rogers win would let Republicans keep their Senate majority even if Democrats pick up as many as four GOP-held seats. Ad spending reflects the stakes: nearly $125 million has been spent in Michigan since the August primary, more than in any other state where Republicans could gain a seat, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. No Going Back, linked to Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC, spent $18.5 million this month on ads and reserved airtime — its largest commitment to any 2026 Senate race so far.

Rogers' own ads cast him as the son of a middle-class family and a congressional collaborator focused on lowering costs, especially healthcare. Super PACs supporting him are taking a sharper approach, highlighting El-Sayed's past association with streamer Hasan Piker and his support for abolishing ICE. The split messaging reflects Rogers' wariness of Trump's low approval ratings, particularly on the economy, and his desire to avoid appearing beholden to the president. "Michigan comes first," he says in one ad.

Yet Rogers has moved closer to Trump. After the 2020 election, he said plainly that Joe Biden won and criticized Trump's fraud claims. In July, after Trump's primetime address repeating those claims, Rogers praised his "commitment to transparency." At a Republican midterm convention in Dallas on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Rogers referenced "radical Islamic terrorism" and said El-Sayed had "chosen Hasan Piker as his running mate." Piker said in 2019 that the U.S. "deserved 9/11"; he hosted El-Sayed on his livestream and campaigned with him during the primary. El-Sayed has since disavowed Piker's remarks and ended joint campaigning but has not categorically repudiated him.

Rogers never mentioned Trump during his convention speech, closing instead with a line attributed to Michigan native Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Flight 93: "America, let's roll."