SOUND THE ALARM: Mike Rogers Admits in Private Call That Republicans Want to Run Against Abdul El-Sayed

In case you missed it, U.S. Senate Republican candidate Mike Rogers was caught on a call telling supporters he knows he can beat Abdul El-Sayed. Rogers just confirmed what we already know — Haley Stevens is the stronger Democratic candidate in the general election. It’s no surprise then that Republicans are propping up her opponent.

Read an excerpt from the CNN piece below, and the full article here.

In private call, Michigan Republican running for Senate sees himself in ‘good shape’ against one particular Democrat, CNN
Patrick Svitek, 7/23/26

As Michigan Democrats debate who is their best candidate for Senate, the presumptive Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, has a frank private assessment of the field.

During a call with supporters last month, Rogers said his campaign was in “pretty good shape” overall – and feeling good if former public health official Abdul El-Sayed captures the Democratic nomination in the August 4 primary.

“If he wins, I think we’re in good shape,” Rogers said while responding to a question about his campaign’s strategy for El-Sayed. “I mean, I think he’s so radical. I think he’s going to lose big parts of the west part of the state. We think we can do well in part of the southeast part of the state. I think we’ll do well if he in fact is the nominee.”

Rogers’ comments fit into a fierce debate in the Democratic primary about who is best equipped to retain the seat held by the retiring Sen. Gary Peters: El-Sayed, who is running as an unabashed progressive with the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), or Rep. Haley Stevens, running as a more moderate candidate.

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National Democrats almost certainly have to keep Michigan in their column if they want to capture a majority in the Senate. Stevens’ campaign has long argued El-Sayed is too progressive for the closely divided battleground state and suggested Republicans want him to win the primary.

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Rogers, a former House member, is running for Senate again after losing a tight 2024 race to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin. He made the comments on a June 15 call with campaign supporters when a person asked him about his plan to counter the El-Sayed ads that they had been seeing. He assured the questioner that the El-Sayed ads are “targeting his Democrat base” in the primary and that Republicans would be ready to go once there is a Democratic nominee.

[…]

A spokesman for the Stevens campaign, Arik Wolk, said in a statement about the June 15 call that Rogers “admitted what Republicans have said for weeks: They know they can beat Abdul El-Sayed, and that’s why they’re running ads to boost his campaign.”

The Stevens campaign and its allies argue Republicans have been working to prop up El-Sayed because they believe he is a weaker candidate for the general election. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, released a digital ad last month warning that El-Sayed is “too radical for Michigan.”

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, told Semafor last month that El-Sayed’s nomination would “make it even better for us there.

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