A Longtime Democrat Is Backing Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan. The Bigger Test Is Whether Other Democrats Follow.
For Republicans, Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary created an obvious opportunity.
For Democrats, it created a harder question.
Would voters who supported Rep. Haley Stevens — the establishment-backed candidate who came within less than one percentage point of winning — quickly unite behind El-Sayed?
Or would some decide that the party’s nominee had moved too far from them on policy, style and foreign affairs?
One longtime Democratic operative has now given Republicans the answer they wanted to hear.
Julian Epstein, a former chief counsel for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton era, announced that he plans to support Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers in November rather than El-Sayed. Epstein later described the decision as effectively “jumping ship” in Michigan’s Senate race.
Epstein has spent decades working in and around Democratic politics.
His decision does not prove that a large bloc of Democrats will follow him.
But it gives Rogers something every general-election candidate wants after the opposing party has endured a bruising primary: permission for dissatisfied voters to cross the aisle.
And that may be more important than Epstein’s endorsement itself.
El-Sayed narrowly defeated Stevens in the August 4 Democratic primary after a campaign that became one of the clearest tests yet of the party’s progressive wing.
When the Associated Press called the race, El-Sayed led by 14,893 votes out of more than 1.5 million counted — less than one percentage point.
That narrow result matters.
Nearly half of Democratic primary voters chose Stevens, who had support from prominent Michigan Democrats including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Sen. Gary Peters, as well as Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
El-Sayed, by contrast, ran as an unapologetic progressive.
He supports Medicare for All, campaign-finance reform and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. He was backed by national progressive figures including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But one distinction matters.
El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, despite some political commentary presenting his victory as a DSA takeover. Major reporting describes him as a progressive Democrat rather than a DSA member.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important because Republicans want to frame the Michigan contest as part of a much broader Democratic movement toward socialism.
Epstein is making a similar argument — but from inside the Democratic political world.
In an opinion column published after the primary, he said he would support and financially contribute to Rogers and encouraged other Democrats dissatisfied with their party’s direction to consider doing the same.
His criticism goes well beyond El-Sayed.
Epstein argues that Democratic leaders have been too reluctant to confront portions of the activist left, particularly over Israel, policing, economic policy and the role of government.
Those are Epstein’s political judgments.
They are not established descriptions of the Democratic Party as a whole.
But they reveal the argument Republicans are likely to push relentlessly between now and November.
Michigan, they will argue, is no longer simply a contest between Mike Rogers and Abdul El-Sayed.
It is a test of which version of the Democratic Party can actually win a competitive state.
Rogers has already started making that pitch directly to Stevens voters.
In a post-primary video, the Republican nominee told Democrats who woke up disappointed by the result that there was “still hope,” before appealing to voters concerned about education, housing costs, taxes and Michigan’s economy.
It was a carefully designed message.
Rogers did not ask those voters to become Republicans.
He asked them to consider voting Republican once.
That is the opening the GOP believes El-Sayed’s narrow primary victory may have created.
But that only tells half the story.
The Democratic establishment is not abandoning El-Sayed.
Stevens called El-Sayed to concede and pledged her support. Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Curtis Hertel appeared publicly with him after the primary, while party officials began pushing for unity ahead of November.
That gives Democrats their own counterargument.
A bitter primary does not automatically produce a fractured general-election electorate.
El-Sayed’s supporters also see his victory as evidence that progressive economic politics can expand Democratic enthusiasm rather than destroy it.
His campaign says it visited 110 Michigan cities, held more than 500 events and built a volunteer network of approximately 12,000 people.
He also overcame more than $60 million in outside spending, including tens of millions from groups backing Stevens or opposing his candidacy.
Progressives point to those numbers as evidence that El-Sayed possesses something traditional candidates often struggle to manufacture: an energized grassroots organization.
That is where the Michigan contest becomes more complicated than the familiar “moderates versus socialists” storyline.
Both parties are testing competing theories of swing-state politics.
Republicans believe El-Sayed’s positions — particularly on Israel, immigration and government spending — can drive moderate Democrats and independents toward Rogers.
El-Sayed’s allies believe Washington strategists misunderstand what swing voters actually want.
Their argument is that economic populism, healthcare costs and anger at entrenched political institutions can appeal to voters who may not identify as traditionally progressive.
Michigan will now put those theories into the same election.
There is another source of friction Democrats cannot completely dismiss.
El-Sayed repeatedly campaigned with political streamer Hasan Piker, whose past comments became a point of controversy during the Democratic primary.
Piker’s 2019 remark that “America deserved 9/11” resurfaced during the campaign, prompting criticism from some Democrats. AP reported that El-Sayed appeared with Piker repeatedly and that those appearances became a source of backlash during the primary.
El-Sayed defended engaging with large online audiences.
His opponents argued that doing so with Piker could become a liability with general-election voters.
Republicans now have every incentive to ensure voters keep hearing about that relationship.
But the biggest warning sign for Democrats may not be Piker.
It may simply be the primary result.
El-Sayed won.
But he did not win overwhelmingly.
Stevens came extraordinarily close in a Democratic primary that drew more than 1.5 million votes — unusually high participation for such a contest.
That means Rogers does not necessarily need a mass Democratic rebellion.
He may only need a relatively small percentage of Stevens supporters to cross over, stay home or remain undecided.
And the stakes are substantial.
Michigan’s open Senate seat is considered pivotal to Democrats’ hopes of gaining control of the chamber, and Republicans have already reserved about $45 million in Michigan advertising to support Rogers.
So Epstein’s announcement should not be mistaken for evidence that Democratic voters are suddenly abandoning El-Sayed.
There is no evidence of a broad defection yet.
But it provides Republicans with something politically useful: an early example of a Democrat publicly arguing that voting for Rogers does not require leaving the Democratic Party.
That is the strategy Rogers is now trying to build.
Turn a narrow Democratic primary into a general-election argument that politically homeless moderates have somewhere else to go.
El-Sayed has roughly three months to prevent that argument from taking hold.
His first challenge was defeating the Democratic establishment.
He accomplished it — barely.
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His next challenge is harder.
He now has to convince many of the same Democrats who nearly stopped him that they should help send him to the Senate anyway.
