Michigan primary election sets stage for battle for Senate majority

Michigan’s Senate primaries on Tuesday are set to solidify one of the biggest matches in the country that could ultimately determine control of the upper chamber.

A battleground state for races up and down the ballot, Michigan is crucial for who lands in the White House and who fills its open Senate seat being vacated by longtime retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

The Democratic front-runner, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), faces off against actor and small business owner Hill Harper.

The Republican front-runner, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, is up against physician Sherry O’Donnell and Republican-turned-Libertarian former Rep. Justin Amash.

The primary results are likely to pit Slotkin and Rogers in a general election faceoff in the Great Lakes State.

Recent polling gives Slotkin a several-point advantage in the “toss-up” contest, but it remains within the margin of error. Democrats must both retain the seat and the White House to keep the Senate majority.

To Slotkin’s advantage, the man tasked with getting Senate Democrats elected across the country is a fellow Michigander: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).

“There’s no way we’re losing Michigan on my watch,” Peters told the Washington Examiner.

As part of that effort, DSCC said it’s pumped $11 million on TV reservations in Michigan and is funding staff for “on-the-ground Republican accountability programs” aimed at showing “how GOP candidates’ records, actions, votes and statements disqualify them from holding office.”

Rogers is looking to clench a Michigan Senate seat for Republicans in what would be the first time in two decades. With an open seat thanks to Stabenow’s retirement, who’s 74 years old and was first elected to the upper chamber in 2000, Republicans see their greatest opportunity in decades to flip the state.

“You can probably get almost every Republican who is either in the field or ran in the field to admit that they wouldn’t have run against Debbie [Stabenow],” a source close to the Rogers campaign told the Washington Examiner. “I think going against Slotkin, who we haven’t really seen run statewide, we don’t really know her vulnerabilities” in more liberal areas such as Detroit and Dearborn.

The pro-Palestinian protest movement to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s February presidential primary triumphed over President Joe Biden in Dearborn, home to large Arab American and Muslim communities. The contentious foreign conflict and U.S. support for Israel could prove to play a major role in the Senate race as well.

Slotkin was among the chorus of Democrats who sounded the alarm over Biden’s ability to beat Trump, a contributing factor to his eventual exit from the race. Biden’s potential down-ballot drag prompted Slotkin to avoid him on the campaign trail and convinced the nonpartisan election forecaster Cook Political Report to shift the Senate race’s outlook last month from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up.”

Slotkin has since endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.

Rep. John James (R-MI) lost to Peters by less than two percentage points in 2020, a narrow margin where Rogers’s team sees an opportunity to improve with a stronger field operation and better embrace of former President Donald Trump.

Rogers, a one-time Trump critic, has since been endorsed by the GOP presidential nominee and is backed by the Senate GOP’s campaign arm.

However, a significant element heavily favoring Slotkin is her ability to outraise Rogers by a nearly 5:1 margin, raking in $24 million this cycle with $8.7 million cash on hand compared to his $5.4 million raised and $2.5 million in the bank.

Both candidates are likely to tout their national security backgrounds on the trail in the coming months.

Slotkin is a former CIA intelligence analyst who served three tours in Iraq. Rogers is a former U.S. Army officer and ex-FBI agent, as well as the former head of the House Intelligence Committee.