Commentary: Mike Rogers never understood Michigan — but Michigan voters understood him

There is a reason Republicans haven’t won a U.S. Senate race in Michigan since the last century. 

The state is politically competitive, culturally diverse and home to an electorate that doesn’t fit neatly into the narrow partisan boxes that have come to define Republican politics. Mike Rogers is simply the latest Republican to learn that lesson the hard way…twice.

Election cycle after election cycle, Michigan Republicans have put forward candidates who seem to be running congressional campaigns designed to win purposely drawn districts with a relatively uniform group of voters. 

But Michigan is not a congressional district. It is a diverse state, incorporating everything from major cities like Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids to the suburbs of Oakland and Kent counties to the wide-open rural expanses up north. The political priorities and experiences of these communities vary considerably.

And that’s the point. Winning statewide in Michigan requires building a coalition broad enough to reflect that diversity. Rogers never seemed particularly interested in doing that.

Trump invokes anti-Muslim rhetoric to attack El-Sayed at Michigan rally supporting Rogers, James

Instead, his campaign sought to exploit divisions among Black and Jewish Democratic voters, often in ways that were harmful, inflammatory and deeply cynical. Though Rogers denied his Muslim Brotherhood line of attack against El-Sayed was based on his faith, he helped unleash a wave of outright Islamophobia that was not only disgusting, but also a profoundly misguided political strategy.

Attempting to turn a candidate’s Muslim faith into a liability might energize a segment of the Republican base, but it does little to persuade the broad cross-section of Michigan voters necessary to win a U.S. Senate seat.

That miscalculation reflects something deeper about Rogers and his political experience.

I reported on Rogers throughout the entirety of his congressional career, largely defined by the security of representing the same mid-Michigan district in which he grew up. The only congressional election that appeared to seriously test him was his first in 2000, which he won by just 111 votes. Redistricting the following year made the seat safe for Republicans by adding a GOP-leaning part of Oakland County. After that, Rogers went on to serve six more terms in Congress, never facing any real reelection challenge.

There is a significant difference between winning repeatedly in a safely Republican congressional district and building a statewide political coalition. Rogers spent much of his career doing the former. Both of his Senate campaigns suggested he never quite learned how to do the latter.

When Rogers decided against seeking reelection in 2014, it appeared he might be headed for something considerably bigger. As chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, he had developed a national profile and established himself as a prominent voice on national security. His name was frequently mentioned in national political circles, and a future in the White House did not seem out of the question.

But the Republican Party was about to meet a transformative force that few, Rogers included, anticipated: Donald Trump.

Trump’s rise in 2015 remade the party, reshaping its political priorities, its rhetoric and its expectations of elected officials. Rogers initially appeared to resist that transformation.

During Trump’s first term, he was, at times, a relatively moderate Republican voice willing to offer criticism of the president and the direction of his party. He openly contradicted Trump’s approach toward Russia in 2018, criticized Trump for trying to interfere with the results of the 2020 election and committed perhaps the greatest apostasy in MAGA world: condemned Trump after Jan. 6 (on CNN no less) for contributing “to violence at the Capitol to try to overturn an election.”

Eventually, though, Rogers seemed to get the memo that opposition to Trump was a dead-end in Republican politics. So when he decided to return from his new home in Florida for his first run at U.S. Senate in 2024, principled opposition gave way to accommodation. Rogers abandoned much of that independence and climbed aboard the Trump Train, seemingly convinced that aligning himself with the president was the surest route back to elected office.

But he made that transition too late to become a natural part of Trump’s political movement and too completely to retain the independence that once distinguished him. He has spent much of the time since trying to catch up, clinging to the caboose of a political train that has moved well beyond the Republican Party he once represented.

His 2026 Senate campaign brought those contradictions into sharp focus. Rather than offering a vision broad enough to appeal to Michigan’s diverse electorate, Rogers leaned into the divisive politics that have become the currency of the national Republican Party. He treated Michigan as though it were another safely Republican congressional district, where appealing to the base and attacking the opposition might be enough.

It wasn’t.

Michigan voters have consistently demonstrated that statewide success requires something more than partisan loyalty and culture-war rhetoric. It requires an understanding of the state’s communities, a willingness to reach beyond the political base and a recognition that voters are not simply interchangeable pieces in a national partisan, and frankly bigoted, strategy.

Mike Rogers had decades in politics to learn that. His Senate campaign demonstrated that he never did.