Michigan Senate debate goes off the rails: 4 takeaways
Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed sparred on Thursday in their first of two televised debates in the Michigan Senate race, with it even extending off camera.
“In 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial,” WOOD TV moderator Rick Albin said. “But it did”
Rogers and El-Sayed participated in a debate hosted by Nexstar’s Grand Rapids station where the pair lobbed personal attacks centering on corporate and foreign influence, carpetbagging, President Trump and their professional careers.
El-Sayed looked to make the debate a referendum on the president by tying Rogers to Trump while the GOP candidate sought to cast himself as bipartisan while characterizing the Democrat as dishonest. Last month, the Democrat took the debate stage alone after Rogers declined to participate, accusing the host outlet of bias.
The pair will square off one more time before the election on Oct. 21 in a debate hosted by WXYZ-TV.
Here’s four takeaways from the first Michigan Senate debate:
Candidates’ jabs largely personal
The debate ended where it started — feisty and spirited — as the two men immediately launched into personal attacks.
El-Sayed chided Rogers at multiple points, telling him to “be serious, my guy” while suggesting the former congressman was beholden to the president. The former Wayne County health official also brought up Rogers’ past Florida residence, suggesting he was a carpetbagger.
“I’ve been absolutely clear. I want our tax dollars spent here to provide schools here, and by here, I mean Michigan, not Florida,” El-Sayed said during the debate when asked if he would vote to provide Israel with defensive arms if attacked.
The Democrat described Rogers as a “rubber stamp” for Trump that is beholden to corporate interests.
Meanwhile, Rogers suggested that El-Sayed, who received a medical degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in public health at Oxford University, was falsely parading as a medical professional. El-Sayed has previously received scrutiny for calling himself a “physician” despite not practicing medicine.
“And the doctor — well, he’s not really a doctor.” Rogers said during the debate.
“Matter of fact, if somebody came into his office and he tried to treat that patient, he’d go to jail. So, listen to this guy and what he’s trying to sell here today,” Rogers added later.
Rogers also baselessly alleged that El-Sayed and his family have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Bridge Michigan reported last month that there was no evidence that El-Sayed has direct ties to the group.
The Republican appeared at one point to almost go as far as to suggest that El-Sayed, who is Muslim, could have terrorist family relatives.
“Those programs were really, really important in catching people who were suspected of terrorists and being terrorist — committing a terrorist act, that’s really, really important,” Rogers said when asked about his position of guardrails on flock cameras.
“And why would that bother you? Well, if you have someone in your family that might be on —” Rogers added, before El-Sayed, chimed in.
“Go ahead and say it,” El-Sayed said at one point, adding, “You’ve been tiptoeing around it the whole time, just say it.”
El-Sayed zeroes in on Trump
The progressive frequently invoked the president, as Republican candidates across the country grapple with Trump’s underwater approval ratings.
“It’s about whether or not you trust your next U.S. senator [to] stand up to Trump and Trumpism,” El-Sayed said.
“But when [you’re] running because Donald Trump called you and asked you to run, you can tell he’s not going to stand up to anybody,” he added,
At another point, El-Sayed called Rogers a “sock puppet for the Trump administration” while talking about the Republican and Trump’s war in Iran.
The former congressman, who is endorsed by the president, has sought to walk a tight rope with Trump amid his unpopularity. Earlier this week, Rogers called for an end to the trade war with Canada, and he previously called for the conflict in Iran to come to an end.
During the debate, Rogers said he called Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and pushed for a deal on tariffs with Canada.
“I would like to see the deal made,” he said, later adding that, “Canada still has some high tariffs for U.S. goods, and they did it before this started. Those should be eliminated. There are tariffs that I think are too high and not helpful for us. We ought to get rid of those.”
Rogers: Minnesota immigration crackdown ‘not appropriate’
Another notable point during the debate was Rogers’s break with the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, suggesting that actions taken by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minnesota had gone too far.
“I think the public efforts in Minnesota were probably not appropriate. I actually did fugitive raids when I was an FBI agent in Chicago. You always want to go in quiet, get the bad guy, get out of the neighborhood for less problems,” Rogers said. “So that’s — that to me was something that they could have done differently.”
The former congressman suggested that they later corrected their tactics.
Several shootings involving federal immigration enforcement officers, including two in Minnesota, have sparked scrutiny of the Trump administration as critics have argued that the White House’s crackdown on immigration has gone too far. On Thursday, a man was shot by ICE in New York.
El-Sayed sidesteps question on Israel, Iran
El-Sayed avoided answering a question on whether he saw Iran or Israel as the bigger threat when pressed multiple times on the debate stage, before suggesting that both countries were “dangerous” to the U.S.
“I’m just going to say that that’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” El-Sayed said. “We have watched as Iran has responded by bombing all kinds of countries in the Middle East and then choking off the world’s energy supply. So, this is a situation in which I don’t think we should be a part.”
Pressed again later, El-Sayed criticized the question before saying both were a threat.
“I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way. One at risk of attacking us. One getting us into wars we have no business fighting,” he said.
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