The studio belonged to WOOD, the NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids. The date was Thursday, October 8, twenty-six days before Michigan votes. For one hour two men stood there asking for the Senate seat that Gary Peters, a Democrat, is giving up. Al Jazeera judged that the hour showed the whole tense, toss-up race in small. It was the first of two planned meetings between Mike Rogers, the former Republican congressman, and Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat and former public health official.
It did not go politely. Henry J. Gomez of NBC News described a debate that kept sliding into mean-spirited sniping. Each man returned again and again to the other’s property: Rogers’s house in Florida, a property in the United Arab Emirates owned by El-Sayed’s wife. The moderator, Rick Albin, asked them to ease off their attacks. At one point he cut in: “I’d like to be a part of the debate, too.”
The stakes explain the noise. The result could help decide who controls the Senate, and Republicans have not won a Senate seat in Michigan since 1994. The race now sits on a national map that has widened considerably.
The man walking backwards
Before the debate, Zack Stanton of MS NOW set out Rogers’s problem: he must put some distance between himself and President Donald Trump without driving off Trump’s voters. Lately he has been doing it in public. Last month he filmed a video in a supermarket, complained about rising prices and declared that “the war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly”. He did not say Trump’s name. In August he had written that “President Trump is right to put America First — and tariffs are necessary, but are not a one-size-fits-all solution.” On Wednesday his campaign released a 30-second advertisement filmed in a bar in Macomb County. In it Rogers drinks a Labatt Blue, a Canadian beer popular in Michigan, and says: “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war — now.”
Asked about the ad in the Oval Office, Trump waved it away: “I viewed him as saying that he thinks Canada should make a deal.”
El-Sayed spent the evening on the ground Rogers was trying to leave. The first question was whether they would pause the federal gas tax while the Iran war keeps fuel prices high, and both men said yes. El-Sayed then turned to the war itself, which he said his opponent had “cheer-led” from the start and had called a “win, win, win.” “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but when I go to the gas tank, I don’t feel like I’m winning.” Rogers switched to El-Sayed’s support for Medicare for All, which he said would push people off private insurance and raise taxes and gas prices. “It is a disaster,” he said. “We cannot afford Abdul.” Later he called his opponent’s pitch “the best con I think I’ve ever seen.”
On Canada, Rogers said he had “called the White House this week, talked to the secretary of commerce about getting the deal done.” NBC News reported that new Trump tariffs took effect last month, carrying duties of 15% to 50% on $20 billion of US exports to Canada. MS NOW traced the dispute back to Trump’s 50% tariff on some Canadian imports in July and Canada’s retaliation, which has hit Michigan’s auto industry especially hard. El-Sayed cited a study that put the cost to Michigan households at $5,600 a year. He said Rogers’s change of heart came from “his sagging poll numbers”, then added: “Weak, cowardly, won’t stand up until his poll numbers drop.”
A reflection, not a finding: a courtier who wants to leave his king has to do it a step at a time, and he has to hope the king reads every step as loyalty. So far Trump has read it that way.
The arithmetic behind those steps is unforgiving. In 2024 Trump carried Michigan by 1.4 percentage points, but Rogers lost to Elissa Slotkin by 0.34 points, about 19,000 votes. After that defeat Rogers suggested that a “van showed up in Detroit with ballots.” A Marist poll taken September 24–27 put Trump’s approval in the state at 41%, with 57% disapproving, and had El-Sayed ahead of Rogers by 51% to 44% among registered voters. A Fox News poll of likely voters found the race far closer, at 50% to 49%.
On one subject Rogers did break with the administration on stage. The immigration operation in Minneapolis this year, in which federal agents shot and killed two US citizens, was “probably not appropriate,” he said. Drawing on his years as an FBI agent in Chicago, he added: “You always want to go in quiet, get the bad guy, get out of the neighborhood for less problems.” El-Sayed has called for abolishing ICE.
A name and a faith
El-Sayed has a problem of his own. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez backed him, and he came out of a bruising primary against Rep. Haley Stevens, who ran as the moderate. He has to keep his progressive base while winning over the moderates, in a state still unsettled by the 2024 “Uncommitted” movement. His past calls to defund the police, his description of Gaza as a “genocide” and his ties to the streamer Hasan Piker have made it harder to court the Jewish voters who supported Stevens. Slotkin has now rallied with him, Kamala Harris campaigned with him last month, and Barack Obama is due later this month.
Albin pressed him on why he had refused, in a NewsNation interview, to say whether Israel or Iran is the greater threat to the United States. He refused again. “I’m just going to say that that’s a ridiculous hypothetical,” he said, arguing that Israel had lobbied Washington into the war. “I don’t want to be pushed into war by Israel.”
His opponents keep returning to his name and his religion. Vice President JD Vance has urged Republicans facing a Democrat “who’s not that crazy” to talk about El-Sayed instead. On Wednesday night Trump called him “Mohammed” on Truth Social and said he “goes back to the days of the Jihad.” At a lunch with Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Grand Rapids before the debate, El-Sayed replied: “my name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford a tank of gas.”
Then there are the voters. Hebah Ghafoor, 25, a marketing professional from Dearborn, told MS NOW that El-Sayed “is more for the people.” Alore, 28, a production manager from St. Johns who did not give her surname, said she had met him several times: “Medicare for all, money out of politics — that’s all verbiage that I agree with.”
The campaign had already sunk to schoolyard level before the debate. Rogers has mocked El-Sayed’s height, and El-Sayed has challenged him to a “no pads” football game. Afterwards, according to WOOD TV8, El-Sayed complained that “they skipped the last debate.” This week Trump said, “I’m going to Michigan in about a week and a half,” though no visit had been announced. El-Sayed had already answered on MS NOW: “Donald, welcome to Michigan. I dare you to come.”