ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin has dashed Republican hopes of winning a Michigan Senate seat for the first time since 1994 with a narrow victory over GOP challenger Mike Rogers.
Slotkin leads with 48.6% of the vote, edging ever so slightly past Rogers’ 48.3% with 99% of votes counted, the Associated Press reports.
Slotkin, who represents Michigan’s 7th District in Congress, stepped into the race when four-term Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow announced her retirement.
Rogers, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman, was hoping to buck history and undo three decades of Democratic dominance in the U.S. Senate for Michigan. The last Republican to win the Senate in Michigan was Spencer Abraham in 1994, who beat out Democrat Bob Carr.
Throughout the campaign, the candidates sparred on hot-button issues afflicting voters in the Wolverine State like electric vehicle mandates, border and immigration policy, and taxes. In the end, Slotkin was able to overcome questions about her farming background, which led Rogers to nab a crucial endorsement from Michigan Farm Bureau.
Though the race tightened toward the end, Slotkin was long favored to win the seat in polling data.
Slotkin, who’s been successful at positioning herself as a moderate throughout her congressional career, continued to play to the middle this cycle to clinch her Hail Mary win.
On illegal immigration, she set herself apart from fellow Democrats, arguing that she pushed for tighter border restrictions.
In one campaign ad, she adopted a tough-on-the-border tone, telling voters: “No one’s proud of what’s happening at our southern border and everyone in Washington’s to blame.”
In another ad, the Democratic candidate flip-flopped on the issue of electric vehicle mandates, telling voters, “No one’s gonna tell us what to buy, and no one’s gonna mandate anything.”
These attempts to shift to the right sparked numerous feuds with the Rogers campaign, which tried feverishly to rebut her moderate makeover.
Rogers, a former Michigan rep in Congress, campaigned aggressively against Slotkin for her connections to a controversial Chinese government-sponsored electric battery plant in Big Rapids, her dubious connections to the state she represents, and her questionable background as a farmer.
The Post reported that Slotkin takes a farming tax credit at her rural Oakland County home, but does no farming on the property. The tax cut is literally grandfathered in, Slotkin’s campaign said.
But in two hour-long TV debates, one in Grand Rapids, the other in Southfield, Rogers failed to attack Slotkin for taking the tax credit.
Slotkin’s first time casting a vote in Michigan was in 2018, when she moved back from Washington, D.C. to run for Congress. But the carpetbagger attack worked in both directions. Slotkin framed Rogers as a “Florida man.” Rogers lived in Florida for years after departing Congress in 2015.
In the end, Slotkin maintained the lead she held since the beginning.
