With Trump endorsement and lead, Rogers tries to fend off rivals in US Senate race

Returning to Michigan politics after a decade — and living outside the state for much of that time — former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers has situated himself as the front-runner among the Republicans seeking the nomination for the seat being vacated by Democrat U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow in this year's election.

Some readers take issue with that presumption: Rogers, they say, hasn't won anything and represents another era of Republicanism that embraced more aggressive foreign policies and national security measures at a time when terrorism was a heightened concern. Others argue that he really still lives in Florida — though he's registered to drive and vote in Michigan — and has been compromised by the millions he has made since leaving Congress in 2015 working with corporations, including some foreign-based companies, especially as a cybersecurity expert. Some say a former CNN analyst doesn't deserve GOP backing.

But Rogers' advantages — at least at this moment less than a month before absentee voting begins for the Aug. 6 primary — are clear: He has locked down much of the mainstream support in his party. The few independent polls done show him with a sizable lead over his rivals, former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, of Cascade Township, Grosse Pointe businessman Sandy Pensler and west Michigan physician Sherry O'Donnell, though there is a large undecided bloc. His name recognition was somewhat higher than the others in a recent survey done for the Detroit Regional Chamber.

Then there's that endorsement from the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump.

"The powers that be," Lansing pollster Ed Sarpolus said, putting it bluntly, "want Rogers."

Underscoring that, early Friday the National Republican Senatorial Committee in Washington, which had already embraced Rogers as their candidate, promised to pump at least $1 million into an on-the-ground get-out-the-vote effort on his behalf.

Compared with the Democratic race for the Senate nomination, which is being dominated by U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, of Holly, Rogers, who lives in Brighton, is facing a somewhat harder task, however. Amash, who served five terms in Congress, denounces Rogers as a member of the bureaucratic "deep state" Trump says he wants to wipe out; Pensler is a multimillionaire who has pumped lots of his own money into the race and has been on the attack against Rogers, especially in TV ads.

"Slightly more interesting," than the Democratic race, is how David Dulio, a political science professor and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Oakland University in Rochester, put it. "Sandy Pensler is doing what he can to make Mike Rogers work for it. But I don't think in the end it's going to be enough."

The polls seem to bear that out. Real Clear Politics, a national website which aggregates poll data, shows Rogers with an average polling lead of 21 percentage points on Amash, his next closest competitor, and both Amash and Pensler in single digits (and O'Donnell hardly registering at all). “Pensler, who has spent at least 3 million dollars attacking Rogers still has not been able to gain any traction," Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell said this week.

But his attacks on the front-runner have already changed the dynamic of an election nearly two months away: It's got Rogers playing keep-away, trying to protect his lead.

Rogers is campaigning as if he's already the nominee

Last month, just ahead of the annual Mackinac Policy Conference, the Detroit Regional Chamber, which organizes it, had to cancel a scheduled May 30 debate between the three Democrats and the three leading Republicans, Rogers, Amash and Pensler. The upshot was that the fragile deal between the main participants unraveled because Rogers did not want to share a stage with Pensler — who had been blasting Rogers for a report he helped author that largely cleared the intelligence community of any responsibility for the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans during former President Barack Obama's tenure.

In his ad, Pensler said Rogers "called our soldiers liars."

Rogers, in a Free Press editorial board meeting, called Pensler's claims "factually inaccurate," noting that it was his job, as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, to investigate the intelligence community's role not, as Pensler makes it sound, the role of the State Department response under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But given the cancellation of the May 30 debate, it's clear that Rogers doesn't feel a need to give Pensler — who also has run ads pointing out Rogers' past statements criticizing Trump — a chance to attack him in public. Clearly trying to claim the front-runner's mantle, Rogers' spokesman, Chris Gustafson said, "When Elissa Slotkin wants to debate … Mike Rogers has a simple message: anytime, anywhere."

Even before Trump's endorsement, Rogers was seen as a formidable candidate. A former FBI agent, Rogers served in the House from 2001 to 2015 and is a staunch conservative, despite suggestions to the contrary. He opposed abortion rights — though he says now he won't support any federal efforts to challenge the state's referendum guaranteeing access to abortion — and remains a strict believer in smaller government, lower taxes and less regulation. He voted against the Affordable Care Act and for its repeal.

But he also was willing to work with Democrats, and positioned himself as less an ideological legislator than a pragmatic one. That — or so the argument goes — could make him a formidable general election candidate in a state that hasn't elected a Republican U.S. senator in three decades. On the stump, he talks about the need to lock down a Southern border he says is being flooded with illegal immigrants and drugs and argues against the Biden administration's efforts to push to jump-start sales of electric vehicles which he and other Republicans call a "mandate."

"I think the market will get us there," he told the Free Press editorial board. "I like the idea of electric vehicles but I don’t like the government mandating you buy one." In person, Rogers is amiable and a practiced campaigner, an easy presence. He says none of the other candidates could put coalitions together in the Senate the way he could on his first day.

What polling has been done has suggested Rogers would be a stronger candidate against Slotkin in the general election than the others. One this week done by Mainstreet Research and Florida Atlantic University found a 41%-41% tie between Rogers and Slotkin in a general election matchup. Others have shown Slotkin ahead slightly.

Rogers' relationship with Trump has been complex, however. He criticized the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election which he lost to President Joe Biden, and even toyed with a run for president himself. But he has since firmly embraced Trump, appearing with him onstage at an event in Saginaw County this spring and repeating the claim — for which there is no evidence — that Biden has "weaponized" the Justice Department against the former president.

Asked about the 2020 election and Trump's efforts to overturn it, Rogers showed no interest in discussing it, telling the Free Press editorial board, "Looking back is not going to help us one little bit." He said he far prefers the policies of the Trump administration over those of Biden's.

From Trump's perspective, it's not hard to guess why he's backing Rogers: He's being told Rogers presents the best chance of winning and after picking a slew of candidates who couldn't win statewide in Michigan's 2022 elections, he wants to campaign with someone in a key swing state who helps lift his ticket, not drags it down.

"HE KNOWS HOW TO WIN," Trump boasted on social media when he gave Rogers his endorsement.

Amash, returning to the party, is a different kind of candidate

On the major issues, there's not a lot to separate the Republican candidates, at least according to the way in which they present their own positions in interviews and on their websites. Each argues that illegal immigration across the Southern border, which has exploded in recent years, must be stopped; each blames Biden for driving up inflation. None has suggested the Senate should take up legislation to ban abortion rights now enshrined in the state constitution, though they wouldn't have voted to approve that referendum.

From there, the differences are largely those of style and experience.

Pensler ran for and lost a 2018 bid for the GOP nomination to face Stabenow to John James, now a U.S. House member. His experience is wide-ranging, with degrees in chemical engineering and economics from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. He eventually launched his own capital investment firm and owns Korex, which makes household cleaning products, and has plants in Wixom, Chicago and Toronto.

On the stump, he can be easygoing and funny: In the digital ad he used to enter the race, he showered the viewer with images of veterans, children and dogs then made light of the political cliches, saying, “There you go, checked all the boxes. There’s your standard BS political ad.” Then he became serious, claiming America has lost its “moral compass” and “is burning.”

His website also calls for the U.S. to gain energy independence and “protect women’s sports,” presumably from transgender athletes. None of those stances, however, are much different than the mainstream Republican talking points against Democrats.

O'Donnell, meanwhile, trails badly in the race, lacking both name ID and financial support. She had banked less than $300,000 as of the end of the last reporting period on March 31, compared with about $3 million each for Rogers and Pensler (who loaned his campaign almost all of that) and just under $500,000 for Amash, who had just entered the race. A grassroots candidate who has responded to health crises all over the world, O'Donnell is running on a message that the government mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading misinformation and exacerbating the harm through prolonged shutdowns and mandates.

"I think the real vote is going to be between me and Mike Rogers," said O'Donnell, who challenged U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, two years ago and lost in the primary. "These recycled politicians are not what the people are looking for."

Then, there's Amash, who has always cut a distinctive figure in politics. Elected to Congress as a west Michigan Republican in 2010, he made a name as someone who refused to go along with the party line on spending bills or other issues — like government surveillance — he considered unconstitutional, sometimes partnering with like-minded Democrats. But he has never been a liberal, believing fervently in restricting government intervention in free markets. He doesn't believe in tariffs, doesn't believe in government subsidies for businesses. He used to post on social media an explanation of every vote he took in Congress.

"I don’t think there’s anyone who’s been in Congress who has been quite like me," he told the Free Press' editorial board recently.

During his tenure, he became an outspoken opponent of Trump's, who he found to be unmoored to conservative principles. He voted to impeach Trump as part of the investigation into whether the former president solicited Ukraine's aid to dig up dirt on Biden, though, by that time in 2019, Amash, a constitutional lawyer, had already left the party to become an independent saying politics was "trapped in a partisan death spiral." He would later look at running for president as a Libertarian.

Given Trump's sway with the party, it's hard to see how Amash can win but he says his independent reputation provides him a path to do so.

"I’ve never felt more confident about winning a race," Amash said, arguing that since Trump isn't on the ballot on Aug. 6, Rogers can't count on his support to mean much. And he says Rogers doesn't have the "organic" grassroots support that he does.

"It's not close who is considered more conservative," Amash added. "I run the table on him on every issue."

Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: With lead, Mike Rogers tries to fend off rivals in US Senate race