Republican Mike Rogers courts Michigan Democrats and Trump voters as GOP hopes to hold the Senate

Republicans are trying to win an open Senate seat race in Michigan, and nominee Mike Rogers is stepping up his appeals to some Democrats

DETROIT -- Mike Rogers stood outside Cody High School on Detroit’s west side on a recent drizzly morning and decried Michigan's decline in reading achievement.

“This is the civil rights issue of our lifetime,” said the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in the open-seat race in November.

It had the look and sound of a Democratic campaign policy event, set in one of the nation’s Democratic-voting strongholds.

The contest has quickly become a focal point in the fight for Senate control, and Rogers is working to appeal to segments of Michigan's Democratic electorate. It's a key to what the former congressman sees as his path to defeating progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed this fall.

Rogers lost his first bid for Senate two years ago by barely 19,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast . This time, he is betting he can win over some Democrats and independents, particularly Black and Jewish voters who may be turned off by El-Sayed's positions, which are to the left of his party’s establishment, notably on U.S.-Israel relations. At the same time, Rogers must rally Donald Trump loyalists to turn out to vote, even though the president isn't on the ballot.

“He is threading a needle,” said Bobby Schostak, Rogers' campaign finance chairman.

Rogers' event outside Cody was part of his promotion of a nonprofit program to boost literacy in Michigan's largest city. A few days later, he promoted a home construction plan in downtown Detroit, where many thousands of lots remain vacant almost 20 years after the Great Recession.

Rogers' campaign sees opportunity in racially and culturally diverse Wayne County, home to Detroit, where roughly three-quarters of the population is Black.

In the 2024 Senate race, then-U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, won the county by more than a 2-to-1 margin over Rogers, or 264,000 votes. Squeezing even a couple more percentage points there in November could be enough for Rogers to win. His team is optimistic in part because in this year's Democratic primary, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens beat El-Sayed in the county.

El-Sayed has faced resistance from some of Detroit’s older and more establishment-aligned Black Democrats, who favored Stevens' longer-standing ties to Black churches and work on the Obama administration's auto industry rescue plan.

Some local Black activists also faulted El-Sayed, who if elected would be the first Muslim senator, for supporting the “uncommitted” campaign in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary. Some Black Michigan Democrats believe the effort, aimed at pressuring the Biden administration over Gaza, cost then-Vice President Kamala Harris in her campaign as the first Black woman to be a major party presidential nominee. Trump beat Harris by 1.4 percentage points in the state.

Harris plans to campaign with El-Sayed in Michigan on Tuesday, and the Congressional Black Caucus has endorsed El-Sayed.

"I don’t think anyone’s buying it,” the state party chair, Curtis Hertel, said of Rogers' efforts to court Black voters in Detroit.