We have just a little over two weeks to go before Election Day, but in Michigan, where early, in-person voting is already underway in some parts of the state, the candidates are stepping up their games in an effort to win over late-deciding voters, especially in races that are expected to be close.
The hotly contested Michigan Senate race is one of them. Polls show Democrat nominee Abdul El-Sayed and GOP nominee Mike Rogers neck and neck down the homestretch, with the Sanders/Piker-backed El-Sayed only "leading" within the margin of error in most of them. Trump-backed Rogers has kept it close in part by trying to win over disaffected Democrats, some of whom cannot bring themselves to support El-Sayed, based in part on his anti-Israelism and antisemitism.
Rogers has been successful to some extent in this regard, especially among black and Jewish Democrats, some of the more prominent ones of whom have held fundraisers and launched targeted campaigns to convince their fellow Democrats to put the party labels off to the side in the interests of keeping someone as rotten and dangerous as El-Sayed out of the United States Senate.
But the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is so potent for some of them that they simply can't bring themselves to pull the lever for Mike Rogers. So one group of prominent Democrats has proposed an alternative: just simply leave the El-Sayed circle blank on their ballot:
Why we’re leaving El-Sayed’s spot on the ballot blank | Opinion https://t.co/aBr7KPDYMV
— Detroit News Opinion (@DetNewsOpinion) October 16, 2026
In an op-ed for the Detroit News, the two Michigan Democrats who are leading the effort explained why:
Lon Johnson, a former Michigan Democratic Party chair, and David Kramer, a longtime Democratic strategist who has previously helped elect Democrats to the Senate, are leading the effort. Both supported Rep. Haley Stephens over El-Sayed in the August Democratic primary.
"Supporting a candidate after a hard-fought primary is an act of party unity, not a surrender of principle," the pair wrote in an op-ed for The Detroit News. "Democrats (who were) asked to set aside their differences for Abdul El-Sayed had every right to expect ... a commitment to earn their trust, address their legitimate concerns and unite a party whose nomination he won with less than 50% of the vote."
"He has failed that test."
This is a similar strategy to one backed by "Abdual" El-Sayed in February 2024. He promoted a movement at the time endorsed by Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) to vote "uncommitted" instead of voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the presidential primary to send a message of discontent over the Biden administration's support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas war:
>100,000 Michiganders voted #uncommitted in an uncontested primary yesterday over the admin’s handling of Gaza. The margin of victory in a hotly contested general 4 yrs ago was ~150,000. The message is clear: ceasefire now. Let’s not risk these votes in November.
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) February 28, 2024
In the last Senate race in 2024, Mike Rogers came very close - within 20,000 votes out of the nearly 5.6 million cast - to defeating then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin (MI-07) in an election year that proved terrible for Democrats overall. Though midterm election years are historically bad for the party in power, El-Sayed has been an exceptionally bad candidate, while Rogers has risen to the occasion in how he's gone about defining himself, his opponent, and the larger implications of this race.
It's been 25 years since Republicans have had a Senator from Michigan. It will be interesting to see if Rogers can defy the odds this time around.