THE DETROIT NEWS: Rogers seeks Senate seat to enact Trump agenda, restore jobs
Mike Rogers is giving another go at being Michigan’s next senator with lessons learned and a clear mission to help secure President Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress.
“If you thought [Trump] was the right guy, he took the beachhead and now you need people behind it,” Rogers says. “A lot of the messaging you’re going to see is, listen, there’s 111 executive orders, and if you like them — and by the way they’re wildly popular — now you have to legislate on that unless you want the Democrats coming in and you have this flip flop every two years.”
Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat will be one of the most targeted in the 2026 midterm elections — and one of the most expensive. Spending in the Michigan senate race last year topped $250 million.
Rogers, the GOP senate nominee in 2024, came in fewer than 20,000 votes behind now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, in that race, but underperformed Trump by roughly 100,000 votes.
But Rogers says he’s confident he can get those Trump voters this time.
“We only have to get 85% of the people who already voted ‘yes’ for Mike Rogers,” he says. “We have to get those people back to the polls. That’s an easier place to be than a Democrat. They still have to go out and define themselves.”
There is no other announced Republican in the 2026 race. Congressman Bill Huizenga and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon are considering running. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens are running on the Democratic side.
Rogers says the departure of Democratic Sen. Gary Peters made the race “a different animal.”
The open seat gives Rogers the opportunity to build on the momentum he achieved in his first run.
“We almost won. Now we know what we didn’t do enough of,” he says. “What we knew after November was we gotta do a couple things differently: We have to get it started earlier, we have to raise a lot more money, and we have to build our ground game earlier.”
Rogers won the Republican primary in March 2024 before losing in the general. But he had to devote resources early in the campaign to overcome a fractured base, which set him back in the general election bid.
A slew of outside spending in the final weeks that still didn’t nearly match Slotkin’s war chest pushed Rogers within a very competitive 0.3% margin of her by Election Day.
He says outside fundraising groups are ready to spend for him on this election.
Rogers has already received the endorsement of Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and others in Republican leadership.
“It’s really important for us to send this signal that we are all unified about winning the race in November,” Rogers says.
He says the GOP’s focus on unity has changed the dynamics this time.
“Grassroots call us,” he says. “We didn’t really have that last go-around. We had to work all that.
“But I think people saw that we ran a heck of a campaign, we did the mechanics right — best ground game in the country. Just our team knocked on 750,000 doors, 4 million voter contacts. All of that is really, really significant.”
Rogers’ message will focus, among other things, on growing jobs in Michigan — a key part of Trump’s agenda and a potential focus of the president’s Tuesday visit to Macomb County to celebrate his first 100 days in office. Rogers will be at the event with Trump.
“Under Biden-Whitmer, we lost 27,000 manufacturing jobs. That’s unsustainable,” Rogers says. “We’ve got to change that paradigm or we’re going to be in trouble. I’m going to help change that paradigm.”
Trump endorsed Rogers in 2024.
“I would be honored to have the president’s endorsement,” Rogers says. “Whenever that makes sense, it makes sense. I believe President Trump is really interested in winning this for Michigan. That will be really helpful.
“I think we’re going to be in really good shape going into next year.”
