Come November, thousands of political seats are up for grabs.

One of the most compelling races in Michigan is the Senate. That’s in part because of what it says about the Democratic Party, especially after Mallory McMorrow dropped out.

Most polls have Abdul El-Sayed leading in the race, but there is still uncertainty as to whether he can defeat Haley Stevens, a sitting congresswoman who gained notoriety for her moderation, and for bailing out the auto industry.

Dennis Darnoi is the founder of Densar Consulting, based in Farmington. He says many voters want candidates that have an anti-institutional and populist bent.

“Progressive candidates are running against these establishment candidates and they’re being more successful because the Democratic base is really looking for two things: They’re looking for people who are going to fight and they’re looking for people who are anti-system.”

Darnoi spoke with The Metro’s Robyn Vincent about the Senate race and how it reflects changes to politics in Michigan and beyond.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and stream on-demand.

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Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow has suspended her campaign for US Senate. 

In a video announcing her decision, McMorrow highlighted some of her and her colleague’s accomplishments in the Michigan legislature.  

“We repealed Michigan’s abortion ban. We raised wages. We made sure every child gets breakfast and lunch at school. We made it easier to go to college. We expanded civil rights, voting rights, and so, so much more,” McMorrow said.  

While McMorrow was not forthcoming her reasons for suspending her campaign, funding might have been an issue.  

Corporate PACs have spent heavily on Congresswoman Haley Stevens, with millions of dollars in ad-buys before McMorrow ever aired her first commercial. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running a campaign to the left of McMorrow and has also abstained from taking corporate PAC money. 

Even though McMorrow is leaving the race, she said she will not leave the “fight.” 

“So, here’s what we do next,” McMorrow said. “Every day through November 3, we win this Senate seat, and we send Mike Rogers back to Florida for good. Whoever wins this primary on August 4 will have my full support.” 

Reactions from both sides 

Stevens said she looks forward to working with McMorrow in the future, while also making her case as the strongest candidate to defeat Republican Mike Rogers in the general election.  

“Anyone who raises their hand to serve the people of Michigan and puts forward thoughtful ideas for how they would lead earns my respect,” Stevens wrote.  

On the same day of McMorrow’s announcement, Stevens earned an endorsement from Attorney General Dana Nessel.  

El-Sayed said people who are unhappy with corporate money in politics should consider his campaign.   

“The reality of it is that $30 million of AIPAC spending that came in to drown out Senator McMorrow’s voice, that’s coming in an even uglier way against me,” El-Sayed said. “So I’m hoping that folks who supported Senator McMorrow wants to make sure that we have a voice in our politics.” 

The Michigan Republican Party called both Stevens and El-Sayed “Marxist radicals,” asserting that Rogers will hold the future primary winner “accountable” for “turning their backs on Michigan’s families.” 

What happens next? 

Stevens and El-Sayed will face each other in a debate at Grand Rapids on Tuesday.   

Mail-in ballots were already delivered, meaning McMorrow’s name still appears. People who have already voted and wish to spoil their ballot may do so at their local clerk’s office.  

The democratic primary in the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat is one of the most-watched – and most-expensive – in the country. If Democrats want to retake control of the Senate, they must win Michigan.

At various points Mallory McMorrow, Haley Stevens, and Abdul El-Sayed have led in the primary polls.

A recent Zenith Research poll looked at each candidate’s viability in the general election.

Pollster Adam Carlson says his survey, which was commissioned by the pro-El-Sayed veterans group Common Defense, found that all democrats led GOP candidate Mike Rogers.

However, Carlson said he was surprised that El-Sayed – the most progressive of the trio –  was able to buck conventional wisdom and have the largest lead over the republican.

Carlson tells WDET’s Russ McNamara that there were other surprises in his poll

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Carlson: A lot of the polling and the conventional wisdom that we’ve seen so far has shown that Abdul El-Sayed faces a penalty in the general election, that he does worse than Haley Stevens and or Mallory McMorrow, and I wanted to get in there myself.

I was approached by a client, to see what was happening under the hood, because I know AIPAC had gotten more involved directly in this race, and in a way that was much more open than a lot of other races around the country. When they were going through shell PACs, they’re much more open about their support for Haley Stevens through their primary super PAC United Democracy Project, and that had been covered extensively by state and local media, as well as some national media, so the timing of it was auspicious. There’s this theory of the case, from progressives and the left, and people backing candidates like Abdul around the country, the traditional definition of electability is more moderate candidates do better in an environment like this. I’ve never seen in my 13 years doing this voters so angry, frustrated with conventional wisdom, and being told who is electable, and inflation, cost of living and all that. Just much more responsive to populism, more than a left-right kind of divide, so I wanted to get in there myself and see what was happening.

And what I found was, if you’re taking a more statistical view of things, Abdul El-Sayed definitely does not face an electoral penalty for being the most progressive candidate in the race. He leads Mike Rogers 45% to 42% with 13% undecided. McMorrow leads Rogers 44% to 42% and Stevens leads him 43% to 42%. So not a huge difference among the three, and certainly not a comfortable lead for any of them.

I think it does dispel some conventional wisdom that Haley Stevens is the most electable candidate, or that Abdul is uniquely unelectable. You just have to look under the hood a little bit to see why, and the thing that struck me the most—and I love when my polls surprise me, means I’m doing something right, they’re kind of dispelling some of my own assumptions—31% of very progressive and liberal voters hold a strongly unfavorable view of Haley Stevens. 26% of very progressive liberal voters say they’re undecided if Stevens is the nominee against Mike Rogers, which is a shockingly large number. And again, this is not a huge portion of the electorate, but it’s enough that El-Sayed does two points better than her in the head to head ballots, so that is the main story here. In open ended responses in the survey, people cited ties to AIPAC, just the general Zionist Israel movement that were causing them either just want to stay home or vote third party, and it makes sense in Michigan, which is kind of the birthplace or the home base of the Uncommitted movement in 2024. 

McNamara: That matches up what I’ve been seeing in the voters that I’ve talked to, because there’s still quite a hangover from 2024 and what they saw as general disrespect from the Harris-Walz campaign. Do you get the sense that Michigan is a lone case in this regard, or is this popping up in other areas?

Carlson: I’m doing a lot of polling in deep blue Democratic primary areas, which obviously—this is Michigan. This is the opposite of that. It is the swingiest of swing states, but also in some competitive swing states, like Georgia, what I see is, in Democratic primary electorates, Israel-Gaza is not the number one issue, or even the number two issue. It’s inflation, it’s cost of living.

I’ve never really seen in my career, and even before I started doing this professionally, public opinion shift this quickly among Democrats, at the very least, on Israel and Gaza. It is stark, and I’m not even sure that we’re done yet, to be honest with you. I think there’s more room to move, where you have kind of these more people that were probably right after October 7 tweeting out or posting on Facebook, saying I stand with Israel, who are now just kind of so disgusted with what the Netanyahu government is doing in Israel, and maybe, they’re not quite at Abdul’s position on like a full on arms embargo, pending Israel following international law, but it’s almost becoming a moral barrier to entry, basically being like almost a gut check, are your morals in the right place on this issue, and then if you pass that test, then I’ll look at your other stuff.

Again, this is a general election poll, but in a sense, we’re talking about the primary at the same time, based off of very progressive voters’ views of these candidates, and what we’re seeing, at least in this poll, and I welcome other data points here.

I always caution one poll is one poll, but it’s pretty compelling evidence here, particularly when you dig into the open-ended responses that people are very emotional about this, especially people from Dearborn and Dearborn Heights and Arab and Muslim voters doing this. This is progressive white voters all across the state, too. ‘I’m just going to stay home, or I am undecided,’ and whether they come home to Stevens in the general election is an open question, but I think it presents the conventional wisdom is that Abdul is the risky choice in the general election because he’s more progressive and could turn off kind of swing voters and moderates. That’s not what we found.

We found that, if anything, independents are slightly more negative on Stevens than they are on McMorrow and El-Sayed, and independents aren’t this group that are all super moderate on every single issue. I think that sometimes it’s how they’re framed. They’re pretty ideologically heterodox. ‘Maybe I’m very pro closed borders, but I’m very pro Medicare for all,’ and they don’t necessarily follow a traditional ideological map of like hard partisans, and I think that we’re seeing this response to not just this issue where El-Sayed is very clearly much more pro-Palestinian and critical of aid to Israel than the other two candidates in the race, but kind of a more economic populist message.

What we’re finding is that Haley Stevens might be the more risky general election choice, because people might say, ‘I stay home,’ because this is such a red line for people in Israel and Palestine that people don’t even necessarily want to hear what else she has to say if she can’t get there on this or soften a little bit on this. Stevens is very clearly backed by Schumer and the establishment, and we’re seeing some backlash to that. Chuck Schumer’s favorability overall in the state is -36 and even among private progressive voters it’s -20% 32%-52%. So he is toxic among all Democrats – only 47% of Democrats have a favorable view of Chuck Schumer. I haven’t really seen that been litigated a ton yet in this primary, that Stevens is kind of the default choice of the establishment, but all across the country we are seeing a backlash, DCCC candidates started losing. One just lost in Maine yesterday in ranked choice voting, another one in California a few weeks ago. It, with a few exceptions, can be a net negative, whereas in other cycles, like in 2018 where the electorate is very anti-Trump, but a little less angry as you’re combining like the cost of living crisis with anger towards Trump, whereas in 2018, the economy was much better, people were more satisfied with it, it’s creating this perfect storm where you could turn this idea of a traditional electability advantage or disadvantage on its head, and we won’t know until November, a poll is a poll, but I think that needs to be a bigger part of the conversation. 

McNamara: And I feel like the last time we really had that feeling was Republicans in the Tea Party. 

Carlson: 2010, that’s right, and the economy was bad then too, and that’s kind of the best-case scenario for Democrats this cycle, a Dem version of 2010. 

We’re a massive wave. I think people are a little skeptical of that. Polarization has increased and redistricting and all that for the House, but when states like Alaska and Ohio and Texas and Iowa are in place in the Senate, if that comes to fruition, that’s pretty much the equivalent of a Democratic 2010, at least the Senate level.

The reason the Michigan Senate race is so interesting is Democrats can’t win the Senate if they don’t hold the seat, and there’s a lot of trauma around 2024 and they want to win. There’s a lot of nervousness around that, and a lot of confusion around who is the most electable kind of Democrat these days, and a lot of questioning and litigation of what that is. So, a lot of voters are almost acting like pundits and gravitating a little bit more towards the center versus voting with their heart. I think you’re starting to see more people do the latter, not just here, but in other parts of the country as well, and we’ll see how it all shakes out in August, but I don’t think we’re done with the twists and turns of this race yet. 

McNamara: Did you get into the wedge issues at all?  

Carlson: We also tested in the poll a few unnamed issue positions head to head. And then we also tested stuff on policy towards Israel.

Polling all across the country, I’m seeing Medicare for all is very popular. Would you be more likely to vote for a candidate that supports Medicare for all, which is what El-Sayed supports versus a private health insurance system, which is more in line with what Mike Rogers supports. 

Some people were talking about how abolishing ICE and replacing it with a new immigration enforcement agency, like an INS or something like that, that we used to have. People were trying to equate that with defund the police, how it’s extreme position, it was an overly emotional reaction to what was happening in the moment that would hurt Democrats. But when I put abolishing ICE and replacing with a new immigration enforcement agency up against expanding ICE and increasing its funding, abolishing and replacing ICE actually narrowly won, almost exactly mapping onto Abdul El-Sayed’s overall lead over Rogers. But it’s certainly not this poison pill that a lot of more mainstream Democrats would have you believe in a state like Michigan.

The race for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race has been one of the most fascinating in the country. It drew national attention when controversial political commentator Hasan Piker rallied with Abdul El-Sayed on college campuses.

Piker has millions of followers on social media, largely made up of people under the age of 30.

The move was immediately met with condemnation from El-Sayed’s opponents – Congresswoman Haley Stevens, and State Senator Mallory McMorrow.

Since then, El-Sayed has steadily risen in the polls.

In a conversation this week, WDET’s Russ McNamara asked Piker what he seeks in an ideal candidate.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Hasan Piker: A candidate self-identifying as a socialist would be great, but in the absence of that, I care about where their primary focus is. Are they going to center the needs of the working class in their agenda, or are they malleable to corporate interests? And those are the things that I pay attention to.

I think some of the telltale markers of a candidate’s responsiveness to the masses is oftentimes their attitude on the issue of Israel, which is a 90-10 issue on the side of the voters within the Democratic Party, but a 10-90 issue seemingly when it comes to Congress.

Another one is Medicare for all. The private healthcare provider industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and they spend a great deal of money to ensure that Medicare for all is not implemented, and I think that’s another great litmus test to see if a candidate will actually put the needs and the interests of the working class first over their interest in farming campaign contributions from these moneyed interests.

Ed. Note – Piker recorded this interview while in New York City to support the Democratic Socialist candidates in their primary election. All won.

Russ McNamara, WDET: Then it sounds like Abdul El-Sayed checks a lot of those boxes.

Piker: Yes, absolutely.

McNamara: Was it all part of that that got you to come out onto the campaign trail for him earlier this year?

Piker: Yeah, Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t call himself a socialist, but I still like him quite a bit because I think he’s a fighter, and that’s what Americans need right now. Americans need fighters in the Senate, they need fighters in the House of Representatives, fighters that will put their interests first, fighters that won’t even shy away from sometimes telling the rest of the Democratic Party—not just the Republicans—that the path that they’re heading down is wrong.

Abdul obviously demonstrated that interest, and he has been a fighter for Medicare for all for a very long time, I mean, he wrote a book about it. His gubernatorial run was around the implementation of Medicare for all, so he has established a lot of trust in these communities, and I trust them as well.

McNamara: Kind of along those lines, when you came to Michigan in the spring, there was tremendous outcry in some circles. Congresswoman Haley Stevens said you were ‘divisive.’ Mallory McMorrow compared you to the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. What is your response to things like that? Because you seem to hear it a lot.

Piker: Unfortunately, this is the way that politics is conducted in this country. In most circumstances, people rely on the rest of the electorate not really knowing anything about me, and in the past this might have actually worked, because mainstream media and local institutions were capable of successfully gatekeeping outsider candidates and also outsider media figures.

Nowadays it’s a little bit different, especially because there’s so much diversity of choice in where people can get their news from, so people can come to me directly and figure out what I’m actually about, so that was one of the reasons why that smear campaign failed spectacularly, because people could just tune into my broadcast, or people were maybe somewhat familiar with what I represented, and they understood that these smears were simply being thrown in my direction, not because of any serious anti-Semitism that I’ve ever displayed.

I have not; I’ve actually combated anti-Semitism my entire professional media career and will continue to do so. I find it repugnant. It’s an odious form of bigotry, just like every other form of bigotry, including Islamophobia.

But the other reason why this smear campaign did not work is because a lot of people intrinsically now understand in the aftermath of three years of genocide, and a lot of establishment Democrats, and certainly the entirety of the Republicans, criticizing those who speak out against this genocide with these heinous accusations, a lot of people understand that this is not a person that is actually bigoted in any way, shape or form. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite. This is an anti-genocide advocate, and that’s part of the reason why he’s being called an anti-Semite.

Now, that dangerous conflation actually foments more anti-Semitism, which is, ironically, something that I’ve discussed quite a bit as well, for many, many years prior to October 7, and continue to do so now. But that’s why it didn’t work. It demonstrably failed, right? It fell flat on its face.

People started looking at Abdul’s campaign, people started hearing what he was saying, and they liked it… He was in third place before this smear campaign started, and now he’s comfortably in first place.

Abdul El-Sayed is a wonderful candidate. He has solid fundamentals. He’s probably one of the best candidates in the Democratic primary cycle this midterm season. Rhodes scholar, doctor, worked for Detroit Public Health, spent his entire professional life trying to heal people, and on top of that, he is against the genocide that Israel has committed, and that’s consistent with his values, consistent with my values as well, and yet he was not receiving a lot of media attention, that race in and of itself was not receiving a lot of media attention… and I guess Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow stepped on a landmine there and accidentally nationalized and publicized this (Michigan Senate) primary, and people actually started tuning in.

People started looking at Abdul’s campaign, people started hearing what he was saying, and they liked it. And lo and behold, he was in third place before this smear campaign started, and now he’s comfortably in first place.

McNamara: It seems like many within the Democratic Party still haven’t fully accepted the role Israel’s genocide in Gaza played in the 2024 election. I recently talked with pollster Adam Carlson about a recent Zenith research survey he did, and it had showed that Haley Stevens would lose a significant portion of people who identify as progressives in the general election, should she make it through the primary, less so for El-Sayed and McMorrow. Do you think this country’s views have shifted enough, and now unconditional support for Israel is seen as a political liability?

Piker: Absolutely, and that’s precisely the reason why AIPAC and AIPAC subsidiaries never actually reveal that the candidates that they’re fundraising for are pro-Israel. None of those ads, whether they be attack ads against their opponents or the ads in favor of their hand-selected candidates, ever mention this candidate’s point of view on Israel. If Israel was such a popular position, then they would proudly declare it. AIPAC wouldn’t need to use this opaque funding structure and find shell corporations to funnel money into by way of their donor network under the guise of United Democracy Fund, or Elect Women Fund, that was the one they used in Illinois in the Chicago primaries.

They do that because I think everyone understands that pro-Israel politics is demonstrably unpopular, and it’s only going to get less popular from this point on. I often throughout the genocide would say: going forward, today is the most popular Israel will be. Tomorrow, Israel will be less popular than it was today, and yesterday Israel was more popular than it is today. And that has been resilient.

There are constant demands for censorship against prominent critics of Israel.

That (pro Israel) attitude has shifted, and it will continue to shift as more and more people not only come to terms with Israel playing a destabilizing role in the region, but also the unbelievable amount of arrogance in display by those who are defenders of Israel and defenders of Israeli foreign policy.

I think that is oftentimes a less discussed aspect of the reason as to why Americans are frustrated with Israel, and it’s because there are constant demands for censorship against prominent critics of Israel. Some of those censorship attempts are actually successful, de-platforming initiatives that take place. I myself was banned from traveling to the United Kingdom only last month, and it was directly a consequence of my criticisms of Israel.

This kind of censorious attitude, especially when it’s the overwhelming majority’s position, is going to be unbelievably frustrating, and it’s only going to breed more enmity and hostility against the State of Israel. And outside of that there is this level of entitlement to unlimited funds coming from the United States of America, funds and weapons that Israel deploys on Palestinian civilians, on Lebanese civilians, as they’re doing currently, as they’re in the process of trying to disrupt the memorandum of understanding in a longstanding ceasefire negotiation that we might actually finally implement with Iran.

These kinds of destabilizing initiatives paired up with hubris, unbelievable entitlement and arrogance come across as very frustrating to the average American who is maybe uninitiated with the actions of Israel.

McNamara: Influencers are often brought up as a way for people to connect with younger voters. As you know, Democrats tried to do this to very mixed success at the DNC two years ago, but to you, what is the best way to gain the attention and the vote of the mythical younger voter?

Piker: I think it’s policies, ironically enough. In the post 2024 autopsy that was being conducted in public, a lot of Democrats went to mainstream media and decided the reason why Donald Trump won was because of Joe Rogan—and Joe Rogan was obviously the catch-all term for the podcast circuit, the manosphere.

Now, is the podcast circuit of the manosphere influential, especially in terms of converting young men to voters? Certainly, but ironically enough, they chose me as the left version of Joe Rogan because of my audience, because of the success I’ve seen in the independent sphere as the largest left content creator in these spaces that are inundated with far right and right-wing messaging.

The most significant issue is that the Democratic Party is not defined by a policy prescription for the problems that the working class faces in this country.

I told them over and over again, this is not an issue that you can podcast your way out of, that I myself am not the Joe Rogan of the left, and that Joe Rogan could potentially be the Joe Rogan of the left, and was the Joe Rogan of the left at some point when he endorsed Bernie Sanders. And that ultimately the problems that the Democratic Party are facing do not revolve around their lack of funding in messaging initiatives. That’s one element of the issue, but it’s not the most significant one.

The most significant issue is that the Democratic Party is not defined by a policy prescription for the problems that the working class faces in this country, and when they’re not defining themselves on those terms with left populous economic solutions: Medicare for all, an initiative in the direction of publicly funded housing, federal jobs guarantee, free college, these bold and somewhat radical agenda items that I think a lot of Americans are on board with.

Instead of doing that, the Democratic Party is constantly finding itself in a defensive posture against Republican culture war agenda items, and by not having a vision in the affirmative, they are allowing the Republican party to define the Democratic party, and that’s the reason why they keep losing. So it comes back to policies at the end of the day, because that’s the fundamental principle of theoretical democracy. We are going to vote an elected representative to represent our interests.

“What will you offer me?” This is the question that I think a lot of people understandably ask their elected representatives in the Democratic party, and their  answers have so far been insufficient. I hope that this sequence of electoral defeats will light a fire under the Democratic Party, so that they don’t shy away from a more bold agenda, a more bold vision for change, especially because there’s tremendous appetite in the base of support for said bold agenda of change that centers the needs of the working class first and does not get bogged down with unnecessary culture war distractions.

In this episode

• The current status of the Michigan US Democratic Senate race.
• Will the budget get done by the July 1st deadline?

Subscribe to MichMash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Over the past month, Michigan’s U.S. Senate race has emerged as one of the most competitive contests in the country. This week on WDET’s MichMash, Gongwer News Service’s Zach Gorchow and Alethia Kasben break down the major developments that have shaped the race.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens appear to have pulled ahead of state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. Fellow state Sen. Sam Singh said he still hopes McMorrow can gain ground before the primary election.

“What we are seeing right now is significant investment by outside groups [supporting Dr. El-Sayed and Rep. Stevens]. My understanding is that McMorrow has some independent expenditures that are happening. Now that people are spending real money, I think you’ll begin to see a clear path.”

The Michigan primaries is on August 4th 2026.

• More from WDET:
  Dr. Abdul El-Sayed on reaching voters and prioritizing issues near home
  Haley Stevens weighs in on energy costs, tariffs and Michigan jobs
  State Sen. Mallory McMorrow says she’s working to win over undecided voters, find path back to bipartisan cooperation

Democrats are locked in a three-way primary battle in the race for US Senate. The candidates are Abdul El-Sayed, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Senator Mallory McMorrow.  

McMorrow spoke to WDET about how she is campaigning across Michigan, talking with voters about their frustration with the current administration. 

McMorrow: The campaign is going great. I feel really excited about all of the events that we’re doing. We stopped in Saginaw and Bay City on the way up here, and people are really starting to tune into this race. Once you get past the politicos and the people who’ve been paying attention for the last year, the only thing that’s been consistent in this race is the number of people who are undecided. So, we are reaching out to those people every single day. The response is amazing, and it is our ninth oil change on the campaign, so we’re putting in a lot of miles, meeting a lot of people, and it feels awesome.  

McNamara: You’re a car lady, so are we doing the 3,000 mile oil change or the 5,000 mile? 

McMorrow: Oh gosh, we’re probably somewhere in between, we’re not trying to burn it out. 

McNamara: Earlier today, I talked with Jim Runestad, the Michigan GOP chair. I asked him who he wanted to face in the general election. He brought up Abdul Elsayed. He brought up Haley Stevens. You did not get mentioned. How do you receive that news? 

McMorrow: Well, Jim knows me better than anybody else as his colleague every day, and I take that as a compliment. 

McNamara: So, you’ve seen the latest round of polling. There’s always new polls coming out. I hate polls, honestly, because they’re just a snapshot of that particular day, right? What are you seeing, and what are you hearing from the community when it comes to this polling? Is it matching up with what you’ve been getting back from the people you’ve been talking to? 

McMorrow: Like I said, the only thing that’s been consistent is the number of voters who are undecided. So, we have been out on doors all across the state, we have been doing dozens of events. Our brewery tour is still ongoing, and what we hear from voters is people are nervous, they are scared, they are pissed off at this president, who apparently can just tell us that the war with Iran is over, when it isn’t. That’s not how it works, and they want somebody who’s going to fight for them. So, once I’m able to have a conversation and say, “I get it, I Googled how to run for office in 2018 on my very first try, I defeated a Republican incumbent helped build real power, and look at what we’ve been able to get done in Michigan.” Once they hear that, they’re excited, and they’re in. 

McNamara: What’s your base? Because I was talking with Congresswoman Stevens, she’s drawn quite a bit of support from the Black community. Abdul El-Sayed has the built-in Arab American and Muslim community, but what’s your community? 

McMorrow: Michiganders. As many people as possible who want a good life for their family, and the one thing that is a good note in the polling is I am up with independent voters against Mike Rogers by 12 points. 

McNamara: Mike Rogers, he doesn’t have the benefit of a primary. So, how do you go after somebody like that? Because you have to take aim at him, and you have to take some aim at your opponents. 

McMorrow: You do, and it’s a good point on how we frame all of this, because it is a Democratic primary to decide who will face Mike Rogers in November. All eyes are on this race. The Republicans know that control of the U.S. Senate runs through Michigan. If they can get Mike Rogers into the Senate, they block any path that Democrats have of flipping the Senate, and there is a real path. So, they are dumping tens of millions of dollars into this race.

And this is a moment where any Republican in the Congress or the Senate who has decided to stand up to Donald Trump has now lost their seat. Donald Trump has taken on retribution to primary any Republican who doesn’t bend the knee, and that’s how we’re going to go against Mike Rogers, because he’s making a bet right now. He’s got Donald Trump’s full backing. Is he going to stand up for Trump, or is he going to stand up for Michiganders? 

McNamara: The overall theme of the Mackinac Policy Conference is about unity, it’s about two sides coming together, bipartisanship. When you have a president that asks nothing but fealty from the people that are members of his party, how do you do that? Do you buy into slogans like that? Is bipartisanship always necessary?  

McMorrow: It has to be the goal. I sat down with seven Trump voters in Macomb County a few weeks ago and wanted to just get to know them as people first. Everybody wants to put everybody in boxes. You just asked me who’s your base, and I think it is true. It’s Michiganders. I went around the table and I asked, tell me in one word, how you feel about this moment. One woman said great. The others said scared, angry, anxious, pissed, and they are pointing at the president as a lot of the reason why. That he promised to end wars, he has started a number of wars and keeps us in wars, while telling us we can’t afford daycare, we can’t afford Medicare, we can’t afford Medicaid, and to your point has completely remade the Republican Party in his image, and if you don’t have loyalty to Trump, you’re out of the party. 

For us, I think it is critical that Michigan starts to show the way forward. I talk all the time about relationships that I have on the other side of the aisle that I really admire, whether it’s John Damoose or Roger Victory, Senator Bumstead in the Appropriations Committee. We’ve shown that we don’t have to agree on every issue, and we will debate each other passionately, but on areas where we can and want to work together, we do, and we do for the benefit of Michiganders.

Now, that is a rebuke in and of itself of what Trump is selling. Trump is selling a burn it all down, build up a party that is power above anything else to do what he wants to do, and what he wants to do is enrich himself and his family, and “who cares what it does to regular people?” So, yeah, I do believe in bipartisanship, and we have to get there with a Republican party that is not loyal to Donald Trump, and that means anybody who is bending the knee to Trump, we got to defeat. So hopefully we start to get Republicans who recognize that their constituents are the ones that matter and not this president. 

McNamara: To make it to the general election, there’s been some mudslinging. It comes with the territory. How comfortable are you with that? Because your opponent, Haley Stevens completely avoided the question, and, she says she wasn’t overly comfortable with it, essentially when pressed. So, I’m just wondering, does it come with the territory, and you get to move on, you guys can all be friends? Because as I was talking with somebody who follows Michigan politics quite a bit, there’s not a huge gap between yourself and your opponents. 

McMorrow: That’s exactly right. We’re going to have a debate tomorrow, and when you have three Democrats on stage, the policy differences are pretty minimal. Every single one of us wants Michiganders to have health care and wants that to be a guarantee, every single one of us wants to get out of the war with Iran. We have differences of opinions in how we do those things, but there is a stark contrast between the three people on stage and Mike Rogers, who is praising everything Donald Trump does, whether Trump attacks the Gordie Howe Bridge and threatens it to open, and Mike Rogers said, “Good, the President needs that for leverage against Canada.” When he threatened to annihilate all of the people of Iran, Mike Rogers said, “Good, peace through strength.” And that is the thing that I make want to make sure none of us lose sight of. I think that the primary does come with the territory. We should expect that the Republicans are going to unleash everything they have on any of us, so we’re all being put through our paces right now. Every detail about our lives, how we present ourselves, is going to be criticized. The voters will decide, and I believe that makes any of us much better positioned to win in November, because we will have been put through our paces, and the most important thing is that no matter what happens on August 4, we all come together on August 5 to defeat Mike Rogers.