I want Mike Rogers to win Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat. The Republican and former U.S. representative has already served his country with honor, and he'd do so again.
But he's going to have to work for it.
What happened this week in Detroit is a case study in unforced errors, and it's frustrating conservative voters – and a fair number of Democrats – in my state who truly don't want far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed anywhere near this seat.
To his credit, though, El-Sayed shows up.
Detroit's Fox 2 had planned a Sept. 15 debate between Rogers and El-Sayed, with invitations sent out 40 days in advance. El-Sayed agreed. Rogers didn't respond until the day of the event, when he declined in a statement accusing moderator Roop Raj, an anchor and host
at the station, of "bias." Raj is well-respected in the region, and Detroiters are loyal to their local TV news.
Fox 2 went ahead without Rogers, handing El-Sayed a platform to make his case unchallenged.
That was a mistake.
The race is a toss-up. And Michigan voters will start casting votes soon.
When El-Sayed beat the far more moderate U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary Aug. 5, the prevailing wisdom was that his extreme progressive views would hurt him in a purple state President Donald Trump has carried twice.
That's not showing up in the polls. The race looks like a toss-up. Of course, the polls could be wrong – they were in the primary, which predicted El-Sayed would blow Stevens away by about 10 points. It ended up much closer than that.
Regardless, Rogers needs to act as if that were true, and he’s going to have to win over an array of independents and Democrats if he’s going to prevail over El-Sayed. Rogers also ran for Senate in 2024, but narrowly lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, with Trump on the ballot helping him.
In a midterm election with an unpopular Trump, he's facing a much steeper climb.
That’s why skipping the Detroit debate was a mistake. Michigan voters can start voting absentee on Sept. 24, and nearly 40% did so in 2024. By the time the two planned debates (agreed on by both candidates) take place in October, many voters will already have made up their minds.
Rogers must expose El-Sayed's radical views every chance he can
I don't think Rogers is weak. But ducking El-Sayed at this forum signaled weakness. And after seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, he knows how to handle the news media.
If anyone should be nervous about debating, it should be El-Sayed, with his democratic socialist politics and friends and his coziness with extremists like Hasan Piker, the antisemitic and anti-American streamer who campaigned with him several times ahead of the primary.
El-Sayed has also scrubbed his social media and YouTube channel of problematic content that would be a gold mine for Rogers in a debate setting.
Given his background in law enforcement and intelligence, Rogers is also well-positioned to challenge El-Sayed on his past support for defunding the police, his push to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and his anti-Israel views.
I'm looking forward to the two Senate debates in October. But Rogers just missed a prime chance to define the stakes of this race for the voters he needs most.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rogers can win Michigan Senate race, but he has to show up | Opinion
