DETROIT — Standing on the front lawn of a home in a Detroit neighborhood, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers brought together a group of Democrats who on Thursday said they would vote for the former congressman instead of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee.
The coalition, known as “Democrats for Rogers,” currently consists of a small group that included only outgoing state Rep. Karen Whitsett (D-Detroit), Chelsea Rebeck, who was described as a mother from West Bloomfield, and Rabbi Asher Lopatin, the leader of the Kehillat Etz Chayim congregation in Huntington Woods. Lopatin is also the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor’s director of community relations.
Rogers, speaking at a press conference outside of the Detroit home of Whitsett’s mother-in-law, who was also said to be supporting the Republican nominee, thanked his new supporters and called them “courageous” for standing with him in the November election, even if they had to hold their noses by doing so.
“It is about finding common ground and building a better nation. The Democrat voters who feel their nominee doesn’t represent them in their values, all hope is not lost,” Rogers said. “I’m not asking you to be a Republican. I’m asking you for the opportunity to earn your trust. Michigan deserves a senator who will sit down, whether you voted for me or not, and will listen to you. Will treat you with respect. Will represent everybody. There are real differences in this race.”
Since becoming the nominee, El-Sayed has faced resistance from some portions of the Democratic coalition that voted for his August primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham). Stevens garnered wide support from Black and Jewish voters and El-Sayed is currently in the process of mending fences with those key demographics as he tries to pull together a winning electorate against Rogers in the fall.
“Mike Rogers will put Donald Trump ahead of Michigan every single time. Just like he carried water for Trump’s dangerous election lies, he’ll rubber-stamp Trump’s reckless agenda—driving up gas prices and sending your tax dollars to fight foreign wars,” Cole Wozniak, El-Sayed’s campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “Abdul’s the only candidate with a coalition that can win this November and will get right to work in the US Senate getting money out of politics and putting money in your pockets.”
Rogers for his part has been bullish since El-Sayed won the nomination to court Black and Jewish voters who might not be willing to swing their support from Stevens.
Rogers said Thursday that he was hoping to bring those disaffected Democrats into the fold if they have deep reservations about El-Sayed’s progressive rhetoric, or his choice of campaign planks, including Medicare for All and opposition to the U.S. relationship with Israel over its ongoing military actions in Gaza.
“People are very disappointed in the Democrat candidate who got through that primary, and I think people have to take a step back and say his anger and divisiveness is separating Michiganders,” Rogers added.
El-Sayed made strongly progressive platforms a part of his campaign, and has been highly critical of the United States’ relationship with Israel — particularly the nation’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders and an independent United Nations body have concluded that Israel’s actions in the war have amounted to a genocide against the Palestinian people.
El-Sayed also made the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a key target during his August primary race against Stevens, which spent heavily on Stevens’ behalf due to her pro-Israel stance. AIPAC plans to spend big against El-Sayed again in the general election and in support of Rogers, who also holds the U.S. relationship with Israel as an important alliance in the Middle East.
That rhetoric about Israel has some Jews in Michigan feeling fearful and threatened as antisemitism rises across the nation, fueled in part by a growing opposition against Israel’s military actions, and have said they no longer feel safe or welcome in the Democratic Party.
It is still an open question of how many members of the Michigan’s Jewish community plan to defect from the Democratic Party to support Rogers, but Lopatin said the decision was a matter of values.
“Sadly, tragically, he’s shown contempt for the Jewish community and, frankly, for American values by making Hasan Piker, a vicious anti-Semite and racist, his campaign surrogate and someone he buddies up with before the primary and after the primary,” Lopatin said. “He has never disavowed Hasan’s anti-Semitism, who has called Orthodox Jews like me inbred. When Abdul El-Ayed was asked about the terrorists who attempted to blow up a synagogue right here in Michigan with hundreds of children … he said, ‘hurt people hurt people.’ Sadly, Abdul El-Sayed has shown only contempt for Jews as a people, and called my people bloodthirsty and the reason Michigan doesn’t have the funds it needs.”
Although steadfast in his opinion of El-Sayed, Lopatin appeared to be taking at least one of El-Sayed’s comments on Israel out of context.
El-Sayed, appearing on an Aug. 5 episode of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” program, used the term “bloodthirsty” while specifically referring to the Israeli government’s actions under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than Jewish people generally.
“I just think we need to treat Israel the way we would treat any other country who behave the way that Israel is behaving,” El-Sayed noted a day after his primary victory. “I understand that Netanyahu is a big reason why they’ve gotten so aggressive, and frankly, so bloodthirsty under his reign. But I also understand that it’s impossible for us to say that we want a two-state solution while we’ve been aiding, arming, and abetting the very people who’ve been trying to foreclose on the possibility of a Palestinian state.”
That said, Lopatin said Jews have a choice in this election, and there is clear contrast between Rogers and El-Sayed.
Lopatin was asked about the Democratic Party’s embrace of El-Sayed as a show of unity out of the gate toward the general election.
“I understand how they might want to endorse the Democratic candidate, but not to talk about their concerns about Hasan Piker and all the other things that Abdul Sayed has shown, and again, real contempt for the Jewish community,” Lopatin said. “And not only the Jewish community. That insensitivity, the fact that they have not spoken out against that, is very disappointing.”
Whitsett, who has been a thorn in the side of her Democratic state House caucus over the last few years by breaking with her colleagues on key legislative and budget priorities, is now standing with Rogers due to El-Sayed’s stance on health insurance and his Medicare for All platform.
Whitsett, who was defeated by progressive Denzel McCampbell by a nearly 2-1 margin when she ran for Detroit City Council in 2025, said that she was not supporting Rogers in her capacity as a state lawmaker, but felt the need to join his campaign because understands the needs of Detroit neighborhoods and that her values align with his.
“You need to pick your candidates by your issues, period,” Whitsett said. “I’m only going to talk about one issue that’s important to me, and that is health insurance. My husband is an operating engineer, and I want my health insurance. … You will lose your health insurance if the other candidate gets in office. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. That is what Medicare for all means.”
El-Sayed, however, has described his Medicare for All position as expanding the program to cover all necessary healthcare costs without premiums, copays or deductibles. He has said Medicare for All would make additional private coverage “redundant and unnecessary,” according to his campaign website.
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