In the 26 years I've evaluated candidates as a political journalist, I return to one question: What won't you do to win? What line won't you cross?
To claim any measure of integrity, there must be something a candidate won't say or do, something more important than winning: The integrity of American democracy, the respect candidates owe those they hope to lead, the humanity I believe we are required to recognize in each other, even those with whom we disagree.
It's one of my core convictions, a standard I've applied to Democrats and Republicans alike.
Mike Rogers, a respected lawmaker during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, has crossed those lines. Quietly in 2024, with a foray into election denialism, and with increasing volume
in this year's U.S. Senate race, as Rogers shouts from the rooftops of his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, that the Arab guy is dangerous, with the corollary of elect me, I'm safe ... and white.
It's behavior unfitting for any would-be leader, particularly in our state of immigrants, particularly in these dangerous times. In prosecuting a campaign based on racism and outright lies, Rogers has shown that he is determined to advance himself at any cost ‒ that nothing, not the truth, not integrity, not the literal danger his increasingly heated rhetoric aims at El-Sayed ‒ is more important to him than winning.
In grasping to discredit El-Sayed by any means necessary, Rogers is running one of the most disgusting and self-interested political campaigns I can recall. Out of politics for 12 years, cravenly attached to the dark agenda of Donald Trump, stuck with a decade-old suite of beliefs that simply don't resonate with modern voters, Rogers has little to recommend him, so he is determined to destroy El-Sayed.
Rogers wants Michiganders to fear Abdul El-Sayed
In a certain sort of movie, 63-year-old Rogers, broad-shouldered, well-coiffed and white, could be central casting's choice for a U.S. senator. Rogers is leaning into this stereotype, banking on identity politics to sell "normal," even as his political agenda is anything but. The Oakland County-born El-Sayed, 41, a former high school football player, University of Michigan graduate and married father of two, in Rogers' fevered fantasies is a radical extremist, an untrustworthy Arab with unsavory ties to terrorism, if not a terrorist himself.
The only thing Conman @AbdulElSayed hasn’t flip-flopped on: his support for terrorist organizations. pic.twitter.com/5DT9xiCEC2
— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) October 13, 2026
Let's be clear: There is zero evidence linking El-Sayed to any terrorist or jihadist organization, and any case that purports to "prove" otherwise rests on skewed readings of facts.
Rogers' Islamophobia hit a fever pitch this month with a series of ads and media appearances, in the first debate of this election cycle and finally on social media over the weekend. Rogers routinely discusses El-Sayed in the most noxious terms on his regular cable news appearances. His ads, and those placed on his behalf, would count as near defamation outside any context but a political campaign.
In last week's debate, El-Sayed challenged Rogers to speak plainly: "Go ahead and say it," El-Sayed told him. "You have been tiptoeing around the whole time." Rogers couldn't wait to draw a contrast between his own mother, a former chamber of commerce official, and El-Sayed's birth mother, a nurse practitioner who, multiple fact-checks and reports have shown, worked for a relief organization where some officials were convicted, in 2007, of violating U.S. financial sanctions against Iran, but were never charged with, or convicted of, terrorism. (El-Sayed was raised by his Egyptian-immigrant father and Michigan-born stepmother.)
Trump, who has endorsed Rogers, called El-Sayed a "radical jihadist" at an Oct. 10 rally in Tennessee, a slur Rogers ought to bat back. Instead, Rogers invited Trump to campaign with him in Michigan.
Rogers compounded his sins in reposting a popular sports blogger's quip that El-Sayed "really is a terrorist," after the former football player remarked that the University of Michigan, his alma mater, was unlikely to win a game without cheating. "... Exactly right," Rogers said in his own post, one that exactly zero respondents, pro or con, understood to reference football.
.@StoolPresidente is exactly right. https://t.co/qviWSjftLf
— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) October 10, 2026
Later on Saturday, Rogers supporters rallied in Muskegon with signs reading "no infidels here," "Abdul = terrorist in a suit" and "stop Muslim takeover of Democratic Party," some bearing wooden crosses, as though El-Sayed were a diminutive, athletic vampire.
What won't you do to win? Rogers hasn’t hit bottom yet.
It's been a difficult few years for Rogers, retired and ensconced in Florida, recruited back to Michigan politics in 2024 in the race for that year's open Senate seat. Rogers lost to now-U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a humiliating defeat in a red wave year that saw Michigan vote for President Donald Trump and Republicans regain control of the state House. But the GOP bench is thin, and, presumably, Rogers was the party's best hope for 2026. He sailed through the Republican primary unopposed, as three Democratic contenders slugged it out for the chance to face him in the Nov. 3 general election.
Now, things aren't going well for Rogers. New polls show El-Sayed with a small but distinct lead, and the trend lines do not favor the Republican.
Folks who know Rogers better than I have told me he's better than this, that if it weren't for Trump, he'd be running a different sort of campaign.
I don't see it.
And honestly, if that's true ‒ if Rogers is an intelligent, capable man who has simply sacrificed every shred of integrity or honesty he once possessed in an effort to claim a high office he feels entitled to, regardless of the consequences?
It's worse.
In his desperation to claim a U.S. Senate seat, Rogers is courting disaster ‒ for his own campaign, for the safety of his opponent, for Michigan ‒ and for our democracy.
And he has answered the most important question I have about any candidate: There is, apparently, nothing he won't do to win.
This isn't democratic. This isn't senatorial. This isn't leadership. Now, voters must decide what lines they won't cross.
Nancy Kaffer is the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: There is nothing Mike Rogers won't do to beat Abdul El-Sayed | Opinion
