Rogers Doesn’t Care Who Wins Michigan’s Dem Primary: ‘Not Much Difference’ Between Stevens, El-Sayed
Commerce Township, Mich. — Michigan has had Democratic senators for the past 25 years. Mike Rogers, the presumptive Republican nominee, is confident that he can break that curse, regardless of which Democrat emerges victorious in Tuesday’s primary.
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The conventional wisdom holds that Rogers should be more concerned about a contest against Haley Stevens, given that she runs as a sensible, moderate alternative to Abdul El-Sayed, a firebrand socialist who has advocated the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and supports Medicare for All. But Rogers believes that Stevens is just as radical as El-Sayed and that voters will ultimately see through her centrist branding.
“She’s voted to mandate EV [electric vehicle] mandates, right? You build cars in Michigan, that pretty much makes you a socialist,” Rogers said. “The government is going to tell you what kind of car to drive, what kind of car to produce. . . . That, to me, could be the death of the auto industry.”
Stevens supported former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which included the largest federal climate investment in the history of the U.S. She also voted against a congressional resolution introduced to overturn California’s Advanced Clean Cars II program. California’s program attempted to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 and, notably, could be applied to other states.
“She just voted again to put men in womens’ sports,” Rogers continued. “So if you look at all of the things that she supported, there’s not a lot of difference between the two. He [El-Sayed] just adds a whole other level of crazy to the whole mix.”
Rogers is referring to Stevens’s vote against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, which ultimately passed the House and would have changed Title IX to bar schools that receive federal funding from allowing men to compete in women’s sports. This has been a hot-button issue in Michigan, as defenders of women’s sports have clashed with the state athletic board, the Michigan High School Athletic Association. Even after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in favor of keeping boys’ and girls’ sports separate, MHSAA said transgender athletes in Michigan can still apply for a waiver to compete on the team of their choosing.
While Stevens is willing to support a two-state solution in Israel and hasn’t come out in support of a full abolition of Immigration and Customs enforcement, her voting record remains progressive, setting her closer to El-Sayed than more mainstream Democrats might admit.
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Regardless, Rogers isn’t worried. He said Democrats have told him that even they no longer trust Democratic officeholders and candidates to handle issues like affordability. According to a recent Mitchell Research Poll, the cost of living is the second biggest issue for Michiganders.
Recent polling shows El-Sayed defeating Stevens in the primary election by double-digit margins. If Stevens were to prevail, however, she appears to be a more formidable opponent than El-Sayed. For Rogers, though, this isn’t a concern in the general election.
“I think they [the Stevens campaign] don’t think that [socialism] sells well in a general election, so they’re trying to be in both camps,” Rogers said. “Listen, she can’t be a great candidate. If somebody gave me $60 million to run a campaign, I would, you know, be on my porch right now with a glass of wine, versus out working all day every day, seven days a week.”
General election polling tells a similar story, with Rogers performing better against El-Sayed than against Stevens.
In light of her commitment to endorse El-Sayed if he wins the race, Stevens refused to reject a single policy that her opponent supports, regardless of the very different campaigns the two Democrats have run. When National Review pressed again, the campaign never responded.
“They are just absolutely not in line with the Michigan working family. They have gone so far to the left; they don’t align with people who get up every day, kiss their kids, put them on the bus, and they go to work,” Rogers said. “As I tell people, the crazy train has arrived in Michigan, and AOC is the engineer, and Bernie Sanders throws coal in the fire, and my opponents, with all of their endorsements are riding that train. It’s just not who we are here.”
