Both candidates in the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Michigan clashed over several topics in a debate that at times turned personal.
Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and his Republican opponent former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers met in Grand Rapids in a debate hosted by local station WOOD TV8. It was the first head-to-head of the campaign with less than a month until election day, after Rogers declined previous invitations.
El-Sayed focused on tying Rogers to several policies of President Donald Trump that have proved unpopular with voters, including the administration’s implementation of tariffs and the tactics being used by Immigration Custom Enforcement (ICE) officers.
“Donald Trump called you up and asked you to run…you can tell he’s not going to stand up to anybody,” El-Sayed said.
Rogers appeared to distance himself from Trump’s tariff policy and said he had been pitching the administration to make a deal with Canada, a key partner in Michigan’s automotive sector.
“I’ve actually called the White House this week, talked to the Secretary of Commerce about getting the deal done,” Rogers said. “I do think there are some tariffs that are too high and not helpful for us.”
Rogers, a former FBI agent, also said he disagreed with ICE’s high-profile display of their deportation efforts earlier this year which eventually led to deadly protests in Minnesota.
“I think the public efforts in Minnesota were probably not appropriate,” Rogers said. “You always want to go in quiet, get the bad guy, and get out of the neighborhood for less problems.”
El-Sayed, while agreeing undocumented immigrants who commit a crime should be deported, said the administration went too far.
“He [Rogers] said it was ‘probably not right,’ it was definitely not right; they killed two people.” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed said he was in favor of abolishing ICE and reinstituting the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a former federal agency under the Department of Justice that was disbanded in 2003.
Perhaps one of the more contentious topics of the debate was healthcare, where El-Sayed was asked to defend accusations from Democratic State Rep. Karen Whitsett, who has endorsed Rogers, that his proposal for a single-payer, government-funded healthcare system would force people to give up their private health insurance.
“If families want to keep their private health insurance, that’s fine by me,” El-Sayed said, but added, “I want to guarantee every single person in this country cradle-to-grave coverage without premiums, copays, or deductibles.”
He hit out at Rogers for voting against the Affordable Care Act during his time in Congress and highlighted the $1 million in contributions he received from pharmaceutical companies.
Rogers defended his record by citing his support for the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, which established coverage for prescription drugs, then pivoted by accusing El-Sayed of receiving donations from organizations connected to terrorism and questioning his medical credentials.
Several members of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group designated a terrorist organization in the United Arab Emirates, have been found to donate to El-Sayed’s campaign, including his father-in-law. While El-Sayed, who previously served as Director of Wayne County’s Department of Health, received his Doctor of Medicine from Columbia University in 2014, he does not hold a medical license.
The tense debate comes as the race is virtually neck and neck, with a poll released by YouGov earlier this week showing El-Sayed with a one-point lead over Rogers.
Democrats need to pick up four seats in the midterm elections in order to flip the Senate. A Republican has not won a Senate seat in Michigan since 1994.
Governor’s Race
Meanwhile, the state’s gubernatorial race also could come down to the wire. According to the same YouGov poll, Democratic candidate Jocelyn Benson holds a three-point lead over her GOP challenger, U.S. Rep. John James.
The two candidates faced off in their own debate in Grand Rapids.
Benson, who is currently Secretary of State, labelled Trump’s tariffs the “John James tax” and said that she would seek to negotiate a bilateral trade deal with Canada if elected.
“On Day One, I will call Canada and negotiate a contract between Michigan and Canada to eliminate that tax,” Benson said, arguing the tariffs were costing Michiganders an average of $5,600 per year, citing a recent report by the nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union.
It is unclear how Benson would be able to implement an exclusive trade deal with Canada, as Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government sole authority to impose or waive tariffs.
As with Rogers, James sought to distance himself from Trump’s tariff regime by claiming he has implored the administration’s trade representative to make a deal. James argued that, rather than looking at the Trump administration, blame for some of Michigan’s woes should be placed at Democratic leadership at the state’s capitol.
“Many Democrats want to blame Trump. But Michigan is 42nd in infrastructure, 43rd in the economy, 45th in education, 46th overall…that means 90 percent of the country is doing better than us,” James said. “It’s not going to be fixed by someone who has been a part of leadership in Lansing for the past eight years.”
While Trump narrowly carried Michigan in 2016 and 2024, the state has not elected a Republican to the governorship since 2014. Democrats have controlled all statewide offices since 2018.