A Michigan Senate candidate aims to achieve what no Republican has done in three decades

ROCHESTER, MI — As U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ candidates navigate the manicured lawns and gated communities of some of Detroit’s wealthiest suburbs, they’re walking a fine line in their efforts to convince Republicans disillusioned with Donald Trump to sign another deal next month. support Republican candidates.

Nowhere else in Michigan reflects the state’s recent shift toward Democrats more than Oakland County, just north of Detroit, home to the state’s largest Republican base. Democrats won decisively here in recent elections, and winning back voters in a county once dominated by traditional country club Republicans could be crucial to Rogers’ chances of accomplishing what no Republican in more than has done for three decades: win a U.S. Senate race in Michigan. .

“We’ve created a big, probably the best ground game in the country right now,” Rogers said in a recent interview. “And we’re firing on all cylinders.”

With control of the Senate at stake, the race for Michigan’s open seat could be crucial. Democrats currently maintain a narrow margin in the Senate, but that’s true defend many more seats in this year’s elections than the Republicans.

Rogers and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, will meet Tuesday for their first debate. Neither participated in debates during the parties’ primaries, making this event the first opportunity for voters to compare their dramatically different policy views.

Republicans have grown increasingly confident that Rogers, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2015, can flip a seat held for two decades by Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who is at the end of her fourth term. term of office retires. Standing in their way is Slotkin, long seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party with a fundraising advantage and an established track record in a competitive House district.

“Where I see Michigan, as well as our races across the country, are exactly as I predicted them last year,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “These will amount to very close races.”

Slotkin entered the Senate race shortly afterwards Stabenow’s retirement announcement, effectively clearing the Democratic primary field and building a campaign war chest that dwarfed its potential Republican opponents. Her campaign said she had raised $42 million through the end of September.

With a big boost from national Republican Party fundraising groups, Rogers and Republicans have done their best to catch up. He took part in the race More than six months later, he faced the challenge of finding a way through a state GOP divided by internal strife between grassroots activists, fueled by Trump’s conservative populism, and the party’s old guard.

Rogers also faced a crowded Republican primary, which also included two other former members of Congress. Trump’s endorsement in March had a unifying effect and made Rogers the clear frontrunner, prompting many to vote its rivals opt out and allow him on the coast until the GOP nomination in August.

Or Rogers the divided GOP coalition together could go a long way in deciding the race.

By mid-July, Rogers had raised just over $5 million, the most recent figure reported by his campaign. While he has recently seen an influx of outside funding, including $22.5 million from Senator Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund announced last week, it has not given him the same opportunity to define his candidacy as Slotkin. In May she already sent out advertisements to draw attention to her background.

Ultimately, the outcome of the Senate race could depend on how the presidential candidates perform in Michigan. Some Democrats, including Slotkin, have expressed their concerns on Vice President Kamala Harris’ standing in Michigan with less than a month to go, in a state considered crucial to the presidential race.

Republicans think they see an opening in both contests.

“Michigan will be a state where our outcome in the Michigan Senate race will likely be very closely tied to President Trump’s outcome in Michigan,” Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said during a press roundtable in Las Vegas. . “Trump’s number and Mike Rogers’ number will be very close.”

Rogers’ team is working hard to close the gap. His campaign has 36 paid staffers statewide, who lead volunteer groups that knock on 50,000 doors every week, according to Rogers’ campaign.

Slotkin’s campaign says its field operation is integrated into One Campaign, a coordinated effort involving Democratic candidates at all levels. That initiative includes 52 field offices and nearly 400 staff members across Michigan.

Oakland, the state’s second-largest county, was once a Republican stronghold, but President Joe Biden won it by more than 14 percentage points, largely due to a shift among suburban women in a state where reproductive rights have been on the minds of voters since the U.S. Supreme Court handed these cases back to the states in 2022. Rogers’ team is now focused on winning back those voters.

On a crisp October morning, his investigators knocked on the door of the Oakland County suburb of Rochester, where lawn signs and other clues to the fierce political battle unfolding there were few and far between. While Rogers’ campaign materials emphasize Trump’s support, campaigners in neighborhoods like this typically only mention the former president’s name when voters bring it up first.

“Mike just seems like a really good guy and someone I would want to represent Oakland,” said Donnell Green, a longtime Rochester resident. After speaking to the canvassers on Oct. 4, she added, “I like that he works across the aisle.”

Green declined to share her thoughts on Trump. However, in a region where famously anti-Trump Republican Senator Mitt Romney grew up, Trump remains a polarizing figure, and many Republicans in the county continue to turn away from his combative politics.

Slotkin believes reproductive rights are still on voters’ minds in Oakland County, where a ballot proposal enshrining abortion rights passed by a 28-point margin in 2022, securing its approval statewide. She continues to campaign on the issue, warning that Republicans could push for a nationwide ban.

However, Rogers is calling it a non-issue after the 2022 election and has said he would not support a federal ban.

Slotkin currently represents a central Michigan district that was expected to be one of the most competitive and expensive races of the 2022 cycle. She won reelection by more than five percentage points, using a strategy she carried over into her Senate campaign. This approach, she says, involves “going to places where Democrats may not have shown up in 40 years.”

“I am a Democrat representing a Republican-leaning district,” Slotkin told reporters in Grand Rapids last month. “I wouldn’t have won if I hadn’t involved all kinds of different voters.”

Slotkin could be most vulnerable in metro Detroit, where divisions within the Democratic Party are over the Biden administration’s approach of the war between Israel and Hamas are becoming increasingly intense. The region has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, and frustration with Biden is spilling over to other Democratic candidates, including Slotkin, who is Jewish. She has remained a supporter of Israel even as she has been critical of the country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Growing discontent in metro Detroit could have an impact on Slotkin’s campaign.

“It’s something we’ve spent a lot of time on and I think it’s important for people to know that our Democratic candidates, incumbents, care deeply about listening to the Arab-American community,” Peters said.

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AP reporter Tom Beaumont contributed from Las Vegas.