DETROIT (AP) — Mike Rogers stood outside Cody High School on Detroit’s west side on a recent drizzly morning and decried Michigan's decline in reading achievement.
“This is the civil rights issue of our lifetime,” said the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in the open-seat race in November.
It had the look and sound of a Democratic campaign policy event, set in one of the nation’s Democratic-voting strongholds.
The contest has quickly become a focal
point in the fight for Senate control, and Rogers is working to appeal to segments of Michigan's Democratic electorate. It's a key to what the former congressman sees as his path to defeating progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed this fall.
Rogers lost his first bid for Senate two years ago by barely 19,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. This time, he is betting he can win over some Democrats and independents, particularly Black and Jewish voters who may be turned off by El-Sayed's positions, which are to the left of his party’s establishment, notably on U.S.-Israel relations. At the same time, Rogers must rally Donald Trump loyalists to turn out to vote, even though the president isn't on the ballot.
“He is threading a needle,” said Bobby Schostak, Rogers' campaign finance chairman.
Rogers' event outside Cody was part of his promotion of a nonprofit program to boost literacy in Michigan's largest city. A few days later, he promoted a home construction plan in downtown Detroit, where many thousands of lots remain vacant almost 20 years after the Great Recession.
Rogers' campaign sees opportunity in racially and culturally diverse Wayne County, home to Detroit, where roughly three-quarters of the population is Black.
In the 2024 Senate race, then-U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, won the county by more than a 2-to-1 margin over Rogers, or 264,000 votes. Squeezing even a couple more percentage points there in November could be enough for Rogers to win. His team is optimistic in part because in this year's Democratic primary, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens beat El-Sayed in the county.
El-Sayed has faced resistance from some of Detroit’s older and more establishment-aligned Black Democrats, who favored Stevens' longer-standing ties to Black churches and work on the Obama administration's auto industry rescue plan.
Some local Black activists also faulted El-Sayed, who if elected would be the first Muslim senator, for supporting the “uncommitted” campaign in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary. Some Black Michigan Democrats believe the effort, aimed at pressuring the Biden administration over Gaza, cost then-Vice President Kamala Harris in her campaign as the first Black woman to be a major party presidential nominee. Trump beat Harris by 1.4 percentage points in the state.
Harris plans to campaign with El-Sayed in Michigan on Tuesday, and the Congressional Black Caucus has endorsed El-Sayed.
Democratic leaders have dismissed Rogers' efforts at inroads.
"I don’t think anyone’s buying it,” the state party chair, Curtis Hertel, said of Rogers' efforts to court Black voters in Detroit. “I don’t think (Rogers) has a connection in those communities, I think he’s going to have a hard time.”
Rogers has also leaned into the defections by some Democratic Jewish voters, an influential group particularly in Oakland County, Michigan's second most-populous county.
A day after the August primary, a prominent Democrat, Detroit-area business leader Brian Hermelin, called Schostak, Rogers' campaign finance chairman, asking how he could help. Within 10 days, Rogers was headlining a fundraiser hosted by the Hermelin family and attended by about 130 people, mostly Democrats, Schostak said.
El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel and has called the U.S. ally's military campaign in Gaza a "genocide,” an accusation rejected by the Israeli and U.S. governments. The former public health official also has angered some Jewish Democrats with statements he made after the March attack on Temple Israel, Michigan’s largest Jewish congregation.
El-Sayed's suggestion that “hurt people hurt people” was interpreted by some as justification for the attack. El-Sayed later apologized for his response, but the remark helped push some influential Jewish Democrats toward Rogers.
Oakland County commercial real estate broker Benji Rosenzweig, who is Jewish and tends to vote for Democrats, plans to vote for the Republican.
“As a Jew, my family doesn't feel safe with Abdul El-Sayed,” Rosenzweig said.
The seat is open because Democrat Gary Peters is not seeking reelection. If Rogers wins, Republicans would retain their Senate majority even if Democrats pick up as many as four GOP-held seats in November.
Ad spending reflects the stakes. More money has been spent in Michigan — almost $125 million since the Aug. 4 primary — than in any other state where Republicans have a chance at gaining a seat, according to the advertising-tracking firm AdImpact. That is spending by El-Sayed, Rogers and allied groups.
The race has jumped to the top of the Trump political team's priority list.
No Going Back, a new entity linked to Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC, early this month spent $18.5 million to air ads and reserve advertising time in Michigan, the most the group has committed to any 2026 Senate race so far, according to AdImpact.
The ads show the split-screen tack Rogers and his allies are taking in reaching out to atypical Republican voters while working to inspire the Trump base.
Rogers' campaign organization is airing ads, many of them with him direct to camera, promoting him as the son of a middle-class family, a collaborator during his time in Congress and interested in bringing down costs, notably for healthcare.
The super PACs supporting his candidacy are swinging the hammer. For instance, the super PAC associated with GOP Senate leadership is airing ads noting El-Sayed's past association with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker and the candidate's support for abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The division of messaging reflects that Rogers' team is wary of Trump's low approval, especially on handling the economy, and wants to be seen among the broad swath of Michigan voters as not beholden to the president.
As he says in one ad, “Michigan comes first.”
Yet he has shifted closer to Trump.
After the 2020 election, Rogers was unequivocal that Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump for the White House, and Rogers he criticized Trump's unfounded claims of widespread fraud. But in July, after Trump's primetime address recycling the disproven claims, Rogers praised Trump's “commitment to transparency."
He has not shied away from the rhetoric that appeals to Trump's supporters, but delivers it in a less edgy tone.
Speaking to the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Rogers referenced “radical Islamic terrorism.” He also said El-Sayed had “chosen Hasan Piker as his running mate."
Piker, who in 2019 said the U.S. “deserved 9/11,” had hosted El-Sayed on his livestream and later campaigned with him at rallies during the primary. El-Sayed has since disavowed Piker’s controversial statements and ended plans for joint campaigning, but has not categorically repudiated him nor apologized for appearing with him.
Not once during Rogers' convention speech did he mention Trump, as so many speakers did over the two-night event.
Instead, Rogers closed by echoing a quote attributed to Michigan native Todd Beamer, among the passengers aboard United Flight 93 before its crash in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11.
Jabbing a finger toward the audience, Rogers said, “America, let's roll."
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Grand Rapids, Mich., contributed to this report.
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GaNun is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
