On the eve of the consequential midterm elections in the United States, candidates in Michigan’s bitter, hard-fought US Senate race have made their final appeals to voters in a contest that could help determine control of Congress. During duelling campaign rallies on Monday evening, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers offered contrasting visions to the state’s voters. Despite dramatic, late-breaking developments, polls suggest the tenuous race has slipped further out of reach for the Republican Party.
As Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down played in the background, Rogers took the stage in Rochester Hills, Michigan, to talk about the race he described as a battle for the “heart and soul of the country”. He touched on the barrage of dark themes that have reverberated across the state – and the nation – in the closing days of the campaign, including a litany of anti-Muslim rhetoric. They wanna talk about me and my name and my faith.” The primary instigator of those attacks, US President Donald Trump, has said that El-Sayed, whose family emigrated from Egypt, would “invite hordes of jihadis” to the US.
Trump has also frequently purposefully misnamed the Democrat, calling him “Abdul Ramadan”, or emphasising his middle name, “Mohammed”. Representative Haley Stevens, a Democrat who lost to El-Sayed in the race for the US Senate nomination during the state’s primary earlier this year, sent shockwaves across the country on Sunday when she broke ranks and threw her support behind Rogers. Stevens, who had struggled in a series of interviews to explain why she decided to back the Republican in the race, posted a lengthy message to social media Monday detailing what went into her decision.
She said it was based on an advertisement unaffiliated with El-Sayed’s campaign that tied US support for Israel to rising grocery costs, as well as being “shut out” of the campaign. But Michigan has to elect a senator and there is no neutral choice that absolves me of responsibility,” Stevens wrote on X. Attendees at Rogers’s rally applauded when he highlighted Stevens’s and other Democratic endorsements he had received.
The crowd then burst into chants of “Haley!” A New York Times-Siena poll released on Sunday suggested El-Sayed is leading Rogers by 11 percentage points – 53 to 42 percent – among likely voters. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
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