Elissa Slotkin, Mike Rogers race for US Senate too close to call in Michigan

• Elissa Slotkin and Mike Rogers in tight race as results come in from Michigan US Senate election
• Both candidates have foreign policy and national security backgrounds and both have served in Congress
• But the candidates have sharp policy divides on issues, including the economy, abortion and electric vehicles

LANSING — The race between Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s high-stakes US Senate race remained too close to call as ballot counting continued into Wednesday morning.

Slotkin initially took an early lead as partial returns came in from Democratic-leaning areas, but Rogers pulled ahead late Tuesday evening as more votes in Republican-leaning counties were counted.

Speaking at a Democratic party event in Detroit shortly after 12:30 a.m., Slotkin told supporters to get some rest and “hunker down,” adding, “we’ve got a long way to go.”

Rogers, too, urged patience from his supporters, telling a crowd at an Oakland County watch party that Republicans should “keep our spirits high” but be prepared for a long night.

Check the latest results for the Senate race, which is considered one of the most competitive in the country:

The winner will replace retiring US Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who first won election to the seat in 2000. 

The Michigan contest drew national attention as one of the top chances for Republicans to flip a seat in the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a two-seat advantage. 

But regardless of the outcome in Michigan, Republicans are projected to take control of the Senate next year due to pickups in Ohio and West Virginia. 

Voters who spoke with Bridge at the polls on Tuesday said their Senate preference largely aligned with their choice in the presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. 

Raymond Tadgerson, a 58-year-old Trump voter from Grand Ledge who works in sales, said he voted for Rogers as "the lesser of two evils."

He didn’t align squarely with either candidate’s policy stances, he said, but ultimately felt Rogers was more “economy-focused,” while Slotkin was “more emotional-based.”

But Carrie DeJonghe, a 62-year-old Saline Township voter, said she backed Slotkin and Harris because of their support for women's rights.

Slotkin is "so accomplished," she said, noting her three service tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst. And Harris, she said, is “smart” and “compassionate."

Open seat, toss-up race

Michigan’s Senate race has long been viewed by experts as a tossup that could help decide control of the upper chamber. Democrats have controlled both Michigan seats since Stabenow won election more than two decades ago.

Democrats pinned their hopes for her replacement on Slotkin, a Holly Democrat who has served in the US House since 2019 and has dominated fundraising since entering the Senate race.

Slotkin — who if elected would be the youngest woman in the Senate and only the second woman to represent Michigan in that chamber — is a former CIA analyst who later served in the administrations of former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, most recently working as acting assistant secretary of defense for national security affairs.

She returned to her family’s Holly farm after then-President Trump took office and launched her first Congressional campaign a year later, highlighting her work under both Republican and Democratic presidents and promising bipartisanship. 

Slotkin was part of a wave of Democratic women, many of whom with national security experience, who flipped Republican-leaning districts in 2018 as suburban and moderate voters veered away from Trump.

She’s since prevailed in other close races, even after redistricting made the 7th Congressional District she currently represents a near 50-50 split on paper.  

With Stabenow’s retirement, Republicans saw a rare pickup opportunity. They found their champion in Rogers, who served in the House from 2001 through 2014 and has kept the race close with aggressive campaigning.

Rogers previously served in the FBI and as chair of the House Intelligence Committee while representing Michigan in Congress. He continued his work in the national and cybersecurity space after stepping down, working as a television commentator and cybersecurity consultant.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Rogers denounced Trump and allies for attempting to overturn his loss. But in this year’s Republican primary, Rogers made peace with the former president and accepted his endorsement, a move many observers in Michigan saw as a necessary step to unite a fractured state GOP.

Similar backgrounds, diverging stances

Both Rogers and Slotkin grew up in Michigan and spent time outside the state before representing similar regions in Congress, and both have prevailed in close elections before. Both entered the race with reputations as bipartisan public servants who used their national security expertise to solve domestic problems. 

The candidates’ similarities ended there as the race grew increasingly heated. Neither hesitated to question their opponent’s integrity amid well-funded ad campaigns that challenged each other’s congressional records, credentials, positions on foreign and domestic issues — and where or how long they’ve lived in Michigan.

The pair also sparred in two contentious debates in October on national security issues, gun reforms, abortion rights, immigration and more.  

Rogers and other Republicans spent months criticizing state incentives for an electric vehicle battery plant being constructed near Big Rapids by Gotion, Inc., the US subsidiary of Chinese company Gotion High-Tech.

Rogers accused Slotkin and other Democrats of threatening national security and wasting taxpayer money by allowing the project to proceed. Trump bashed the planned development too, even while encouraging other foreign companies to make products in the US.

Slotkin didn’t approve any funding for the Gotion project, and her office disputed Rogers’ claims about her record, pointing to her work in Congress to combat Chinese influence in critical supply chains, automotive interests and other industries like agriculture and real estate. 

Slotkin frequently hammered Rogers on his abortion record, telling Michigan voters not to trust him to adhere to state-level abortion protections approved via ballot initiative in 2022. 

Slotkin has maintained steady support for abortion rights, including legislation to establish a right for health care providers to provide abortion and ban any form of government from restricting access to the procedure.

Rogers previously said he only supported abortions to save the life of the mother. He co-sponsored legislation to define human life as beginning at conception, supported a national abortion ban at 20 weeks of pregnancy and proposed withdrawing federal approval of the abortion-inducing medication Mifepristone.

But since announcing his run for US Senate, Rogers has said he would not pursue a federal abortion ban because Michigan voters approved a 2022 ballot measure that wrote reproductive rights into the state constitution.