Michigan Democrats just did something interesting. They didn’t just pick a nominee Tuesday night — they picked a fight. With their own party.
Abdul El-Sayed beat Rep. Haley Stevens, the establishment’s chosen candidate, in a primary that got uglier and more expensive than anything the state has seen.
More than $80 million, all told — a record for a Democratic Senate primary anywhere. Sen. Gary Peters, who’s retiring and would like a say in who follows him, backed Stevens. The base said no thanks.
That’s the headline under the headline. The party of Gary Peters is not, at the moment, in charge of the party of Gary Peters.
Waiting on the other side is Mike Rogers, the former congressman and FBI man who ran the general election table by running unopposed. No drama, no spending war, no bruises. Just a candidate standing quietly at the finish line while the other side tore itself apart.
Rogers wasted no time making the contrast plain.
“The choice this November is simple,” he said Wednesday. “Common sense or complete insanity.”
It’s not subtle. It’s not supposed to be. When your opponent spent the spring calling for Medicare for All and campaigning alongside a streamer who won’t condemn terrorism, subtlety is not the strategic asset.
And Rogers went further than policy. He invoked bin Laden. He invoked 9/11.
“Never in a million years did I think I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11,” he said — a reference to El-Sayed’s association with Hasan Piker, not a small charge to make in a Senate race, and not one he’s likely to let go of between now and November.
He didn’t stop there. The Muslim Brotherhood. Violent offenders back on the street. A tax hike he pegs at $3,000 a year for the average family. Whether every line holds up to a fact-checker is a question for the campaign to fight out. What’s certain is that Rogers has decided his whole race will be a referendum on what El-Sayed believes, not what Rogers offers — and given the primary he just watched unfold across the aisle, that’s not a bad bet.
Then there’s the other man watching from Washington. President Trump was on TRUTH Social by Wednesday morning, calling El-Sayed a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel” and declaring the outcome, in his words, “great news for the Republican Party.”
Subtlety, again, was not on offer. But the underlying point — that Michigan Democrats just nominated someone Republicans will happily run against all fall — is one plenty of Democrats privately share.
El-Sayed, for his part, is trying to make peace with the voters who didn’t choose him.
“I think everybody understands what the stakes are,” he said, extending what he’s calling a welcome mat to Stevens’ supporters. It’s the right instinct. Whether it works is another matter.
Asking a coalition to unite around socialism and a bruising $80 million grudge match, all inside of ten weeks, is a tall order, even before Rogers and the President finish making their case.
Michigan is one of roughly a dozen states that will decide who runs the Senate. Democrats just made that fight harder than it needed to be. Rogers didn’t have to lift a finger to get here. Now he doesn’t have to invent a contrast. His opponents built it for him.
