The two leading candidates in Michigan’s Senate race spent much of their first televised debate talking over each other. Republican Mike Rogers accused Democrat Abdul El-Sayed of being soft on terrorism; El-Sayed painted Rogers as an out-of-touch millionaire. The seat could help decide control of the US Senate.
The leading candidates in Michigan’s Senate race met on Thursday, October 8, for their first televised debate, with less than a month to go before the United States midterm elections, Al Jazeera reported.
The hour-long debate in Grand Rapids reflected how tense the contest has become.
The Candidates
- Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee, is a former health director for Wayne County. If elected, he would be the first Muslim member of the US Senate.
- Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, is a former member of the US House of Representatives.
The Lines of Attack
El-Sayed repeatedly portrayed Rogers as a yacht-owning millionaire out of touch with ordinary voters.
Rogers accused El-Sayed of being soft on “terrorism” and of having foreign sympathies. He claimed El-Sayed had “taken money from individuals on his campaign who openly support Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda”.
The two spent much of the hour speaking over one another. At one point the moderator, Rick Albin, told them: “You can’t litigate all of these with 14 different rebuttals, so please work with me.”
The Sharpest Exchange
The most pointed moment came during a question about surveillance cameras.
“Why would that bother you?” Rogers asked. “Well, if you have somebody in your family that might be on the terrorism watch list …”
El-Sayed cut in. “You’ve been tiptoeing about it the whole time. Just say it. Go ahead and say it.”
Earlier, Rogers said El-Sayed could not bring himself to condemn a March attack on a synagogue in Michigan. “I did condemn it,” El-Sayed replied. “You make stuff up.”
Al Jazeera noted that the Michigan-born El-Sayed has faced repeated Islamophobic attacks during the campaign, and that President Donald Trump has called him an “extremist, terrorist sympathizer”.
Some Common Ground on Iran
Both candidates agreed that the war against Iran should end, though they differed on almost everything around it.
El-Sayed blamed the war for high petrol prices and inflation. “This is what happens when you start wars you never should be fighting,” he said.
Rogers agreed that “we need [the war] to come to an end”, but defended it, saying Iran’s uranium enrichment programme had been “set back twenty years”.
Why This Race Matters
The Michigan contest is rated a toss-up and is considered key to control of the Senate.
Democrats hope to win both chambers of Congress on November 3. The Senate is the harder target, because only a third of its 100 seats are on the ballot.
Image: Abdul El-Sayed at a campaign event in October 2025 (file photo, not the debate). Photo by Conlan Houston via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
