Former Representative Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed meet Wednesday night in Detroit for their second and final debate in Michigan's open Senate race. El-Sayed goes in up about 2.6 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Rogers sat for a Fox News town hall on Monday, early in-person voting opens on Saturday, and both former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump are due in the state by Sunday.
The winner takes the seat retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters is giving up, in one of a handful of races that could decide control of the Senate next year. Coverage starts at 7 p.m. ET on WXYZ-TV, Channel 7, which is carrying the debate live and statewide from its Broadcast House studios in Detroit.
Their first meeting, on October 8 in Grand Rapids, went badly off script. For an hour the two men talked over each other and swapped personal shots, and they were still going when the station cut to a commercial. Moderator Rick Albin said he had not seen that in 30 years of debates.
Rogers went after El-Sayed's title. "And the doctor—well, he's not really a doctor," he said. El-Sayed has a medical degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in public health from Oxford University, and he has faced criticism for describing himself as a physician when he does not practice medicine.
Things got uglier on surveillance cameras. Rogers credited the technology with catching terrorism suspects, then implied El-Sayed might object because someone in his family could be on a watch list. He also repeated his claim that El-Sayed and his family are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
El-Sayed has denied that he or his family has ties to the organization. El-Sayed kept steering back to Trump, calling Rogers "weak and cowardly" for standing with the president. He also hit Rogers on money: the campaign donations, the investments and, once more, the two yachts El-Sayed says Rogers owns.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
