When Republicans last won a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, families were flocking to theaters to see “The Lion King,” Sony was releasing the first PlayStation, and Jeff Bezos was founding Amazon in a garage. That was 1994. Next year could break the trend.
Like some other battleground states that have been firmly blue for generations, Michigan has trended red recently. Republicans are targeting an open Senate seat in the midterms, and they could flip it.
The GOP has settled on Mike Rogers as its nominee. Backed by President Trump, Mr. Rogers is an Army veteran who has served as an FBI special agent, a seven-term congressman and a House Intelligence Committee chairman. Smart and outgoing, he nearly won the state’s other Senate seat last fall. He lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin by only 0.14% of the vote despite being outspent $51 million to $13 million.
While Republicans are united, Democrats face an ugly primary that won’t be settled until August. The establishment candidate is Rep. Haley Stevens, who has served in the House since 2019 and is positioning herself as a centrist. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow is presenting herself as the younger, more exciting, more progressive outsider. She gained national attention for torching a GOP legislative colleague over trans rights in 2022 and slamming the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 in at last year’s Democratic National Convention. There’s also a socialist running: Abdul El-Sayed sought the Democratic nod for governor in 2018 and has Sen. Bernie Sanders’s backing. The two drew a wild crowd of thousands at a recent “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in Kalamazoo.
This sprawling primary fight could work to Mr. Rogers’s advantage on fundraising. In July, the Republican raised $1.5 million and has $1.1 million cash on hand, which he can focus on the general election. On the Democrats’ side, the candidates reported raising between $1.8 million and $2.8 million that month and each had from $827,000 to about $2 million on hand. But Mr. Rogers’s prospective opponents will have to spend all their money on a hard-fought primary.
After more than 100,000 Michigan Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the party’s 2024 presidential primary to protest President Biden’s Middle East policies, Israel will be a major dividing line. Ms. Stevens is a strong supporter of the Jewish state, Mr. El-Sayed a vocal critic, with Ms. Morrow positioning herself between the two but leaning toward Mr. El-Sayed. These candidates will also likely move left in the primary on issues like DEI and transgenderism—and away from swing voters.
The governor’s race could also hurt Democrats. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a popular business-oriented Democrat, is running for governor as an independent. That could complicate attempts to unify the party and to maximize turnout in Detroit—with spillover effects for the Senate race.
