The leading candidates in Michigan’s heated Senate race have faced off in their first televised debate, with less than a month remaining before the United States midterm elections.
Thursday’s hour-long debate was a microcosm of how tense the toss-up race has become.
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Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, formerly the health director for Wayne County, repeatedly sought to paint his Republican adversary Mike Rogers as a yacht-owning millionaire out of touch with ordinary voters.
For his part, Rogers, a former member of the US House of Representatives, lobbed accusations at El-Sayed that he was soft on “terrorism” and had foreign sympathies.
The Michigan-born El-Sayed has repeatedly faced Islamophobic attacks while on the campaign trail, with Republican President Donald Trump labelling him an “extremist, terrorist sympathizer” whose history “goes back to the days of the Jihad”. If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim member of the US Senate.
The two candidates spent much of their hour onstage together speaking over one another, as they exchanged pointed barbs.
“He can’t condemn a terrorist act that happened on our soil in the state of Michigan. He can’t bring himself to condemn –,” Rogers began, referencing a March attack on a synagogue.
“I did condemn it,” El-Sayed said, jumping in. “No, you did not,” Rogers replied, with El-Sayed quickly responding, “You make stuff up. You make stuff up.”
The Senate race in Michigan is considered key to the battle for control of the US Senate. Democrats are seeking to flip both chambers of Congress, but shifting control of the Senate will be a tougher prospect, given that only a third of its ۱۰۰ seats are on the November ۳ ballot.
Host Rick Albin at times struggled to keep the debate on track, as tensions rose.
“We’ve got dozens of questions we want to get to. You can’t litigate all of these with ۱۴ different rebuttals, so please work with me,” Albin told the two candidates at one point.
Here are the key takeaways from the evening’s debate.
Rogers insinuates El-Sayed family ties to ‘terrorism watch list’
The ferocity of the debate was underscored by the high volume of ad hominem attacks the candidates deployed against each other.
But Rogers repeatedly pushed a series of attacks that seemed to centre on El-Sayed’s identity as a Muslim.
In response to a question about healthcare, Rogers said that El-Sayed has “taken money from individuals on his campaign who openly support Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda”.
Later, when asked about his position on surveillance by Flock cameras, Rogers argued that such technology has helped catch people suspected of terrorism. He then implied that El-Sayed’s concerns about the cameras were suggestive.
“Why would that bother you?” Rogers asked El-Sayed. “Well, if you have somebody in your family that might be on the terrorism watch list …”
El-Sayed interjected, seeming to dare Rogers to continue his thought.
“Are you going to go ahead and say that I’m a – go ahead and say it,” El-Sayed said. “You’ve been tiptoeing about it the whole time. Just say it. Just say it. Go ahead and say it.”
Muslim and Arab candidates in the US have frequently been subjected to Islamophobic attacks on the campaign trail, accusing them of support for “terrorism” and Islamic fundamentalism.
Both sides agree on ending the Iran war
There were issues, however, on which both candidates found a measure of common ground.
Both Rogers and El-Sayed agreed the US-Israeli war against Iran should end, but they had opposite views on Washington’s relationship with Israel and its role in the conflict.
High gasoline prices and inflation, El-Sayed said, were directly caused by the Iran war, and he blamed the Trump administration for Iran’s decision to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a critical trade route.
“This is what happens when you start wars you never should be fighting,” El-Sayed said. “We literally taught the Iranian regime that they have a choke on the Strait of Hormuz, and now we’re living in that reality.”
Rogers agreed that “we need [the war] to come to an end”, but he also justified the conflict, saying that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme had been “set back twenty years”, echoing a frequent White House talking point.
The Trump administration has argued that the war was necessary to prevent Iran from creating a nuclear weapon, a goal Tehran has long denied.
Rogers’s position led El-Sayed to accuse him of “cheerleading” for the war and the Trump administration.
Rogers backs continued Israel aid, El-Sayed calls for end
As part of the debate about US foreign policy, the candidates were also pressed on their positions about the US alliance with Israel.
The country is considered the largest overall recipient of US aid since World War II. From the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October ۲۰۲۳ through September ۲۰۲۵, experts estimate that Israel received nearly $۲۱.۷bn in military aid.
El-Sayed has openly called for ending aid to Israel, and he has repeatedly denounced the conflict in Gaza as a genocide, in line with evaluations from United Nations experts and human rights watchdogs.
During the debate, he indicated he preferred US taxpayer dollars to be spent on domestic concerns like education and healthcare, rather than Israeli aid.
“He wants unconditional support for a foreign government,” El-Sayed said of Rogers. “I want unconditional support for kids in our schools, unconditional support for our healthcare, childcare.”
He also blamed Israel for the US military action in Iran. “I don’t want to be pushed into war by Israel, and I don’t want to be in war with Iran,” El-Sayed said.
Rogers, meanwhile, has joined most of his fellow Republicans in continuing to support aid for Israel. He argued that the country had “the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighbourhood”.
“Is there anything Israel could do that would lose your support?” the debate host asked.
“Listen, if they’re talking about using nuclear weapons, they would definitely lose my support,” Rogers replied.
Rogers calls immigration crackdown ‘not appropriate’
Another hot-button issue during the debate was Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
The Republican leader has pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history, and his campaign has spurred human rights concerns.
When asked how they would approach the crackdown, both Rogers and El-Sayed agreed on tempering the militarised nature of the campaign.
In several cities, including Minneapolis, Minnesota, immigration authorities have been accused of racial profiling and using excessive force against immigrants and protesters, as well as violating their rights to due process.
Multiple fatal shootings have occurred during immigration enforcement operations, including the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January.
Rogers indicated he would not have supported such confrontational operations, but he repeated a Trump claim that the raids were taking dangerous criminals off the streets.
“I think the public efforts in Minnesota were probably not appropriate,” Rogers said. “You always want to go in quiet, get the bad guy, get out of the neighbourhood for less problems. So that, to me, was something that they could have done differently.”
He later claimed that, under Trump, the country had seen “the largest decrease in murders ever recorded”.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has previously voiced support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a key agency in Trump’s deportation campaign. He defended that stance on the debate stage.
“ICE right now is not about immigration enforcement. ICE is about terrorising our streets,” he said.
Candidates debate Canada trade war and tariffs
Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada, felt acutely in neighbouring Michigan, was another key topic of conversation.
El-Sayed depicted Rogers as an uncritical backer of Trump and his tariffs and tied him to past free trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which paved the way for companies to shift manufacturing facilities out of the US – though Rogers did not enter Congress until ۲۰۰۱, eight years after NAFTA passed.
“You did that, man. That was your policy. NAFTA, that was your policy,” said El-Sayed.
Rogers sought to distance himself from the current trade war but expressed support for a deal with Canada that would loosen some of Ottawa’s tariffs on US goods.
“I would like to see the deal made,” said Rogers, adding that high Canadian tariffs for US goods “should be eliminated”.
Both candidates tried to strike a balance between criticism of the economic fallout of the trade war and qualifying their support for more selective tariffs, favoured by some industries and labour unions as a means of protecting domestic jobs.
