Michigan Senate race nears end as candidates make final appeals

Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed presented contrasting visions to Michiganders on Monday evening. Rogers, speaking in Rochester Hills, framed the election as a struggle for the nation’s “heart and soul,” questioning whether attendees were “ready to fight for freedom” and to “defeat the Democrat Socialists of America.”

In Detroit, El-Sayed addressed a rally with members of the United Auto Workers, emphasizing his platform focused on the cost of living. He addressed the recent surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric that has dominated the campaign’s final days. “You might think that in a moment when gas is too expensive and people can’t afford their groceries, that if you wanted to win an election, you might want to talk about gas and groceries,” El-Sayed stated. “They don’t wanna talk about gas and groceries. They wanna talk about me and my name and my faith.”

US President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of El-Sayed, repeatedly mispronouncing his name and alleging he would “invite hordes of jihadis” to the United States. El-Sayed responded, “I don’t even care if [Trump] knows what my name is,” adding, “Because after tomorrow, we’re gonna make sure he calls me senator.”

A surprising development emerged Sunday when Representative Haley Stevens, who previously lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic primary, publicly endorsed Rogers. Stevens explained her decision on social media was influenced by an advertisement linking US support for Israel to rising grocery costs, and a feeling of being excluded from the campaign. “Once I concluded that Abdul El-Sayed is not fit to serve in the United States Senate, I had to confront who should,” she wrote.

Rogers acknowledged Stevens’s endorsement at his rally, praising it as an act of “special kind of courage.” A New York Times-Siena poll released Sunday indicated El-Sayed holds an 11-percentage-point lead over Rogers, 53 to 42 percent, within a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.