Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that his campaign is seeing momentum with auto workers and black men in the home stretch of Michigan’s U.S. Senate race.
Rogers joined Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle for a twenty-minute segment on the program, and Boyle kicked things off by asking Rogers about his path to victory over Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) as they vie for Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-MI) seat.
“Listen, we’re doing great. The momentum hit at the right time for us. You know, we’ve always thought we could win this race, and we put a ground game together that is second to none,” Rogers said. “Honestly, just last week alone, we hit 88,000 doors just last week, and we should finish up close to that again for the remainder of this week going we do Sunday to Sunday.”
“We’re very excited about our ground game. That’s what kept us in the race,” he added. “We were outspent early on, for sure, and people are just kind of dialing in, and it feels to us like they’re getting more fired up and more fired up.”
Polling shows Rogers with the momentum. A Mitchell Research and Communications/Michigan News Source poll published Thursday found Rogers with a two-point lead over Slotkin after surging six points in a month. A campaign source said this tracks with its internal polling.
Detailing his path to victory, Rogers pointed to several key issues, including electric vehicle mandates and the Israel-Hamas war, and how they are shaping attitudes among key voting blocs in Michigan.
“EV mandates: big part of this race. You know, we’ve been saying, dumb idea, get the government out of making cars because it’s not going to work,” Rogers said.
He noted that more than 700 employees are being hit with temporary layoffs at a Ford plant in Michigan as the company announced last week a pause in production of its F-150 Lightning electric vehicle.
“They weren’t selling,” he said.
“And so auto workers starting to come our way, where they have already been, but this, I think, puts the nail in the coffin,” Rogers went on to add.
After noting there has been “lots and lots of engagement” with black men and that the campaign is making progress with the demographic, he shifted to another key group: Arab Americans.
Wayne County is home to Arab-dense cities like Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck. While Arabs in these communities have typically voted Democrat, the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the conflict in the Middle East has led to a steep decline in support in these areas.
“You saw where Donald Trump went to Dearborn yesterday, first candidate for office ever to do that of either party, by the way, so big news, exciting news,” Rogers said. “They are not happy. The Arab Muslims are not happy with the Democrats. It just presents an opportunity for Republicans to win.”
Rogers expanded on the dynamic with Arab American voters later in the interview.
“Listen, they don’t like, you know, most of our Israel positions, but what they do want is peace, and then they want some commitment that, ‘Hey, we’re going to help the Palestinian people when this is over.’ And there’s where we can find common ground,” Rogers said. “And so what I think the Democrats, they decided to be pro-Israel one day, pro-Hamas the next day, pro-Israel one day, pro-Hamas the next day. And what they’ve done is alienated everybody.”
“They’re not voting for Democrats. They may not vote for Republicans, but they are not voting for Democrats,” he added.
Rogers told Boyle that in the final three-day stretch to Election Day, he will focus on the race’s key issues.
“So the next three days, we’re just talking about the issues, talking about your, you know, your pocketbook issues, your kitchen table issues, reminding auto workers, guess what, these EV mandates will put you out of work, and it will not solve the problem that they want to solve, and it just makes us more reliant on China,” Rogers said. “And so that message is resonating, and so we’re moving out smartly here.”
“Now, we did get outspent, so absentee ballots came back a little higher for Democrats than us, and these are based on modeling, so you don’t know exactly how they voted,” he added. “But early voting, I have to tell you, early voting has been, according to our modeling, we are in a double-digit lead in early voting. So if that keeps up for the next three days, man, we are going to be right in this thing.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.