Michigan Is Everything for the GOP

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, August 05, 2026

 

It’s difficult to overstate the stakes of the race for U.S. Senate in Michigan. The outcome of that contest will have not only political but societal ramifications.

 

It looks increasingly like this election’s results will either foreclose on the chances of a Democrat-led U.S. Senate next year or hand the Democrats the keys to the upper chamber. Republican candidates are by no means assured victories in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, and Texas, and Democrats are all but guaranteed a pickup in North Carolina. Republicans are unlikely to unseat Georgia’s Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, so Michigan is the GOP’s only possible Senate gain in this cycle.

 

A victory by the GOP’s Senate nominee in Michigan, former Representative Mike Rogers, would block a Democratic majority at a time when even the party’s “moderates” are committed to taking a sledgehammer to the Constitution, curtailing checks on majoritarian power, and packing the Supreme Court with pliant liberal apparatchiks. A victory by Rogers’s opponent in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, would convince Democrats of the wisdom of their far-left strategy and persuade them to pursue it with yet more vigor. A loss, by contrast, would impose some soul-searching on the many Democrats who caved to the party’s radical fringes.

 

The election is also an experiment to prove whether the parlor socialism that prevails in dark-blue congressional districts can play statewide, even in a state Trump won twice. El-Sayed does not identify as a Democratic Socialist, but the Democratic Socialists certainly identify with El-Sayed. A victory would convince Democratic voters that his platform — nationalizing the health insurance industry, abolishing federal immigration enforcement, and confiscating private wealth, if not to help the poor, then certainly to hurt the rich — isn’t radical at all.

 

Perhaps most consequentially, the race will show whether a Democratic candidate can win a swing state — and, therefore, the presidency — while aligning with the enemies of Western civilization.

 

Whether his grief was personal or, as he said, merely sympathy with his constituents, El-Sayed mourned the elimination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a man with much American blood on his hands. He has made the malignant Maoist influencer Hasan Piker a key figure in his campaign even though (or, maybe, because) the internet-famous streamer has praised Hamas and said that America deserved the 9/11 attacks. He agonized over whether to condemn an Islamist attack on a Michigan synagogue in which Jewish children were targets. Of course, El-Sayed eventually said, he “can condemn” the “attack on Temple Israel.” But then he must also “condemn the violence 6,000 miles away.” With that, El-Sayed revealed that he does not distinguish extralegal terrorist violence in America from Israel’s actions against U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

 

If he wins in November, progressives will have proof that El-Sayed’s proximity to radical Islamism is not a deal-breaker even in a competitive state.

 

Make no mistake: The GOP’s chances this year are not looking good. Of all the years to test the Great Lakes State’s partisan bent, no Republican would choose 2026 if he could avoid it. While Michigan hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since 1994, the GOP will be fighting powerful headwinds. Even if Rogers ran a perfect campaign, the pro-Democratic environment alone could push El-Sayed over the finish line.

 

But the GOP does have a shot. Michigan’s Republican primary voters chose wisely this cycle. Not only is Rogers an appealingly conventional Republican with name recognition and a pre-Trump pedigree, but so, too, is the rest of the Republican ticket. Gubernatorial nominee John James is no neophyte, nor is he a firebrand. Likewise, it will be hard for Democrats to tar secretary of state nominee Anthony Forlini or attorney general candidate Doug Lloyd with the MAGA brush. And while Michigan is a purple state with a distinctly blueish hue, its reddening complexion has been observable for years.

 

This is Rogers’s second bid to become one of Michigan’s U.S. senators. After representing Michigan’s eighth district in Congress for nearly 14 years before, he briefly retired from politics in 2015. In 2024, when Trump beat Kamala Harris in Michigan by 1.3 percent, Rogers ran for a Senate seat but lost to Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin by just 0.3 percent — about 19,000 votes of the more than 5.2 million cast.

 

Rogers’s allies will tell you that, even without Trump at the top of the ticket, Rogers can count on some unique advantages this year. Unlike 2024, they’ll say, Rogers has not had to bother with a contested primary. He is already a known quantity statewide, so his early ad spending has been on combative messaging rather than purely biographical spots. And his objective isn’t inconceivable. “Rogers said that in order to win next year,” Punchbowl News reported in 2025, “he just needs 85% of those who voted for him in 2024 to do the same in 2026.” That is no small feat, but it’s not inconceivable either.

 

The Michigan GOP will need to reach out to persuadable centrists, of course. But they must also ensure that the blistering wounds Democrats suffered throughout this bitter primary contest do not have the chance to heal. On that score, the GOP may get some help there from the Democratic nominee.

 

“Tomorrow, we begin to mend fences,” El-Sayed told his supporters on Tuesday night. “We’re focused on trying to figure [out] how we bring the party together.” So far, his efforts to bring the party together consist only of saying that he needs to bring the party together. But El-Sayed’s allies, including Hasan Piker, have shown no interest in repairing bonds with mainstream Democratic voters. “You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of s***,” the streamer said of El-Sayed’s Democratic critics. If former Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow is any indication (she called Piker “the biggest antisemite in media” on the stump this year), the animosity is mutual.

 

And while El-Sayed is a slick campaigner, he’s also an overconfident and brash rhetorician. “Mike Rogers is a weak-ass tool,” El-Sayed said of his opponent last year. “The man has zero political talent; he’s like a non-playing character in life.” That’s the sort of talk that enlivens the online left — emphasis on “online.” But it’s unlikely to win over the emergent “Never El-Sayed” movement.

 

“I will not stand beside someone who has allowed distinctly anti-American sentiment to enter our public dialogue,” Michigan’s Democratic Representative Hillary Scholten declared last week. Maybe Scholten is speaking for only a handful of rank-and-file Democrats. But even if the number is small, it’s not zero, and El-Sayed may have little margin for error in November.

 

Even that modest display of opposition to El-Sayed is extraordinary in an age of hyper-partisanship. But Scholten is clear-eyed about what the candidate represents. “Democrats really should be afraid of what I mean for their system of politics,” said El-Sayed himself. “When I say I’m coming for it, I’m coming for all of it.”

 

The GOP has a steep hill before them in Michigan, but it’s one that they must climb. This is no ordinary race. The consequences of failure extend well beyond the bounds of American electoral politics. The race is a proxy fight — a referendum on America as a civilizational proposition. It’s an up-or-down vote, and we cannot afford to see it fail.