Michigan U.S. Senate ‘primary storm’ captivates, but worries Democrats
Craig Mauger and Melissa Nann Burke
The Detroit News
April 12, 2026
Some Michigan Democrats said they’re becoming concerned that a bitter primary will boost Republican Mike Rogers’ chances of becoming the first GOP candidate to win a U.S. Senate race in Michigan in 32 years.
Since 2001, Democrats have controlled Michigan’s two Senate seats and avoided competitive primary contests to pick the party’s nominees. At least one of those things seems guaranteed to change this year.
Progressive physician Abdul El-Sayed of Ann Arbor, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham are locked in what’s seen as a tight race to be the Democratic Party’s Senate candidate. With the media spotlight on them — and the national fight for the U.S. Senate majority hanging in the balance — their campaigns and supporters have been aggressively pointing out each other’s missteps and weaknesses.
McMorrow and Stevens both criticized El-Sayed’s decision to appear on Tuesday with left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, who has made a series of controversial comments about Israel and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Piker responded at an event with El-Sayed in East Lansing, calling out McMorrow and Stevens by name, and accusing them of repeating messages from “corporate donors” and “foreign lobbyists.”
At another point in the speech, Piker talked about his response to some of his recent critics. “F— ’em,” he said.
The comment drew loud applause from the crowd of a few hundred people in a lecture hall on Michigan State University’s campus.
In more than a dozen interviews last week, many Michigan Democrats said they saw the primary race’s rhetoric as problematic when it comes to ultimately winning the Senate seat in November. Rogers of White Lake Township, a former U.S. representative who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2024, is expected to glide to the GOP nomination in the Aug. 4 primary election.
“It’s totally counterproductive,” said Brandon Dillon, former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, of the current tenor of the Democratic race. “They should focus on keeping the Senate seat in Democratic hands.”
The key question, according to multiple Democrats, will be whether the battling factions in the Senate primary line up behind the eventual Democratic nominee. Jonathan Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner and member of state party leadership, said he thinks they will.
“We’re still in the throes of this primary storm,” Kinloch said. “And so emotions are all over the place.”
But I think in the end, after August, that people will know that we all have to stand behind the Democratic nominee.
“However, Angela Rogensues, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Warren, acknowledged being worried about whether the candidates’ supporters will back the eventual primary winner.
“I don’t know that a lot of people who are supporting Abdul are going to be able to swallow supporting another candidate,” Rogensues said. “Will they put that aside? I don’t know that they will.”
Given the anticipated toxic environment for Republicans nationally and how Rogers has “so tightly wrapped himself” up with Republican President Donald Trump, former U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Lansing, argued there’s “no reason” that Democrats should not win the Senate race in the midterm election.
“Now, you add a highly contested primary, if it turns nasty, that’s not helpful. I think it’s still early,” Stabenow told The Detroit News.
“There’s always bound to be tension in a primary. But, certainly, if that continues, that’s not helpful,” she added.
A Republican win in Michigan would bolster the party’s chances of keeping its majority in the U.S. Senate.
Democratic Senate primary presents an unusual situation for Michigan
Over the last 30 years, nine of Michigan’s 10 U.S. Senate Democratic primaries have been uncontested.
The only one that saw multiple candidates was in 2024, after Stabenow decided not to seek re-election. Then-U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Holly defeated actor Hill Harper of Detroit by more than 50 percentage points, 76%-24%.
Michigan Democrats have avoided crowded Senate primaries by having influential leaders, with broad support, lined up to run when an opening occurred. That happened with Slotkin in 2024 and then-U.S. Rep. Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township in 2014 after longtime Sen. Carl Levin of Detroit announced his retirement.
“It’s because we have a lot of talent and people who will be a logical nominee,” former Gov. Jim Blanchard said of the lack of competitive Democratic primaries for the Senate.
Peters declined to seek reelection this year, leaving his seat open.
The last time there was a hotly contested Democratic Senate primary was 1994, which was also the last time Republicans won a Senate race in Michigan.
That year, U.S. Rep. Bob Carr of East Lansing won a six-candidate primary by fewer than 7,000 votes, with state Sen. Lana Pollack of Ann Arbor finishing second, according to state records. Former Michigan Republican Party Chairman Spencer Abraham of Auburn Hills went on to win the general election.
In 2000, Stabenow, then a member of the U.S. House, was unopposed in the Senate primary and unseated Abraham in the general election.
Blanchard was among the Michigan Democrats who passed on running in 2000. The former governor said he would hate to see Michigan’s current crop of Democratic Senate contenders spend their time and money “beating up on each other.”
“Yeah, I worry about all of that,” Blanchard acknowledged. “But I don’t know what we can do about it.”
Stevens says Michigan needs to send ‘pit bull’ to Senate
Blanchard is among the prominent Democrats who are backing the 42-year-old Stevens in the Democratic primary fight.
In recent decades, Democrats have often coalesced around a U.S. representative when there’s a vacancy in the Senate. But this year, with a contingent of voters and key political figures looking for a different option, Stevens’ supporters have been unable to clear the field.
At a time when a debate over the future direction of the Democratic Party rages, Blanchard described El-Sayed and McMorrow as “more the protest candidates.”
“I see Haley as the workhorse,” Blanchard said.
On the campaign trail, Stevens has been frequently meeting with union groups and not holding the large public events her opponents have preferred. On policy, Stevens said she wants to lower electricity bills, lessen the country’s dependence on China and secure supply chains.
“Send Michigan’s pit bull to the United States Senate,” Stevens said Friday after turning in petition signatures to get on the primary ballot. “Send somebody who knows how to fight and win.”
She’s served in the U.S. House since 2019. She won a competitive general election in 2018 against businesswoman Lena Epstein of Bloomfield Township and a competitive primary election against fellow Rep. Andy Levin of Bloomfield Township in 2022, after redistricting forced them to run against each other.
In that 2022 primary contest, a group called United Democracy Project, with ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC, spent about $4.1 million to boost Stevens. Her connections to AIPAC have drawn criticism this year as the Trump administration and Israel conduct a controversial war against Iran.
On March 9, El-Sayed shared a post from AIPAC, in which the group thanked Stevens “for standing with Israel.”
“Good to know,” El-Sayed wrote. “I stand with Michigan.”
The Stevens campaign has also attacked its primary opponents. As an example, the campaign highlighted in January that McMorrow is originally from New Jersey.
Campaign style comes under scrutiny
Standing in downtown Lansing on Friday, after submitting her petitions, Stevens didn’t directly answer questions about whether she was concerned about the negativity in the Senate primary.
Instead, she said her campaign is a “love letter to the state.”
“I am not looking at, you know, online arguments or discussions,” Stevens said. “I am focused on the real needs of Michiganders and what it’s going to take to earn their vote and accomplish things for them in the United States Senate.”
Four days earlier, after touring a plumbers and pipefitters union training facility in Lansing, Stevens took a shot at her primary opponents.
“I’m the only person in this race who’s not a millionaire,” she told reporters, saying financial disclosures showed the net worths of McMorrow, a state legislator, and El-Sayed, a former local health department official, were potentially over $1 million each.
Stevens has been ridiculed by commenters online for some of her actions on the campaign trail, including a video where she discussed walking to school as a child and a friend’s dog named Poochie.
On Monday, as she toured the union facility, she attempted to turn a valve on a piece of equipment.
“Don’t hose me. I didn’t make the hot list this year,” Stevens said to a reporter as he recorded her effort.
John Sellek, a consultant who has worked for GOP candidates and is CEO of the Lansing-based firm Harbor Strategic, said Stevens’ campaigning “has not been spectacular,” with the four-term congresswoman on a much bigger and brighter political stage than she’s ever been before.
“The internet has a tendency to fall victim to its own bullying bubble, and she tends to easily provide the clips and footage for that. She still has a chance to sell herself to the rest of the state that’s never seen or talked to her before,” Sellek said.
Most of the insider political battle takes place among the “politically obsessed” on X.com, and the Pew Research Center has released polling showing most people aren’t on there, Sellek noted.
El-Sayed pushes a ‘righteous politics that unites us’
Stevens appears to be seeking a path to winning the primary that features union voters, Black voters in Metro Detroit and moderate Democrats — a coalition that might be enough to win in Michigan on Aug. 4, according to her supporters.
El-Sayed, the progressive 41-year-old, is attempting to build on his performance in the 2018 gubernatorial primary.
With 30% of the primary vote, he came in second that year to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who got 52%. The third-place finisher was now-U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar of Detroit at 18%.
El-Sayed is focusing his campaign on a message of getting money out of politics, expanding health care coverage to everyone and putting more money in people’s pockets.
“I’ve been to 90 cities now,” El-Sayed told the crowd at Michigan State University on Tuesday night. “I’ve done 300 plus public events, and it doesn’t matter where you go, you can be in a living room in Grand Rapids, you could be in a VFW hall in Escanaba, you could be in a church in Detroit, people understand a basic thing that we can have nice things, but we can’t do it alone.
“The only way to do it is to do it together, to build a righteous politics that unites us across the things we deserve in our society.”
El-Sayed argued he would expand his support from 2018 through his statewide campaign efforts and media appearances on all types of outlets, including Fox News.
He also said the electorate has changed substantially.
“I think they’re looking for folks who are serious about what they want to do, not just picking and prodding different positions because they feel they look nice, but have been about it,” El-Sayed. “I’ve been consistent since 2018.”
Levin, a former congressman who’s backing El-Sayed in the primary, said it would be a “huge mistake” for Democrats “to run to the middle and say, ‘Oh my gosh,’ we have to win and, therefore, we have to choose the most cautious, centrist candidates.”
That won’t energize the party’s base, Levin said.
Ultimately, Levin predicted that Democrats will unite after the primary to “win the war,” using an analogy of a pair of platoon-mates who hate one another banding together to storm the beach at Normandy and “duke it out” with the Nazis.
“Anybody who cares about democracy, anybody who cares about economic or racial justice or the climate, or just following the law sees such an imperative to win in this off-year election,” Levin said.
Are there lanes?
While Stevens and El-Sayed appear to represent opposing factions of the Democratic Party in 2026, McMorrow is offering primary voters a third option. And her campaign has contended she has found the momentum in the race.
McMorrow, a 39-year-old state lawmaker and former industrial designer, doesn’t fit neatly into traditional perceptions of centrist or progressive politics. This might be a strength because she might appeal to a wide range of primary voters, but it might be a weakness because there’s no large base of obvious support.
Her campaign website said she wants to create a public option for health care coverage and make “big corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.” She’s proposed a national cash grant policy for new mothers.
She’s been holding a series of meetings with voters at breweries and pubs across Michigan.
“I hope this campaign brings together a lot of people who wouldn’t normally come together, not only just Democrats,” McMorrow said during a March 11 stop in Lansing. “Republicans, independents, people who believe in kindness and decency.”
In an interview in March, McMorrow said her wide base of small-dollar donors and volunteers will help power her to victory in the primary.
“We want to get to know people, and that is how I believe I set myself apart,” McMorrow said. “I also reject the idea that there are lanes.“
“There’s been a lot of national punditry about this is the progressive candidate and this is the centrist candidate, and you’re somewhere in the middle. Michiganders don’t think like that.”
McMorrow rose to national prominence because of a 2022 viral speech that hit back at Republican opponents on cultural issues. However, she hasn’t previously run in a battleground U.S. House race, as Stevens has, or statewide, as El-Sayed has.
Among McMorrow’s supporters is former state Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich of Flint. The political trends are favorable for Democrats this year, Ananich said, but some candidates in the Senate primary have better chances to win in November than others.
The former Flint lawmaker said he’s never seen a statewide Democratic primary in Michigan like the one unfolding for the U.S. Senate seat.
“I don’t love it,” Ananich said. “I feel like we’re attacking each other more than we’re focused on Rogers.”
He added, “I hope they can tone it down a little bit.”
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