Detroit Democrats challenge Mike Rogers’ touted gains with Black voters in US Senate race

A handful of Black civic leaders, Detroit elected officials and union heads said Tuesday that Republican U.S. Senate nominee and former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers has a record of suppressing Black voting power in the city and across Michigan — an attempt to push back against Rogers’ claims that his Black voter outreach program is producing real results for his campaign against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

State Rep. Tonya Myers Phillips (D-Detroit) and Detroit City Councilmember Denzel McCampbell, along with the leaders of AFT Michigan, Detroit Action and the Detroit Federation of Teachers led the news conference held in Detroit Tuesday morning.

Each said that Rogers has a record dating back to the 1990s of demeaning Black voters and depriving them of real representation. They pointed to his time in the Michigan Senate, where he helped pass a law that the group said took away Detroiters’ right to elect their own school board, which they said resulted in Detroit parents having no vote over their children’s schools. The group, which advocated for Black voters to elect El-Sayed over Rogers, also said that those actions put Detroit schools in financial distress.

“I know what students, families, and educators need,” said Terrence Martin, president of AFT Michigan. “They need safe schools. They need trusted teachers, and they need real voice and decisions that shape their futures. Detroit families have too often been denied that voice.”

Martin pointed to Public Act 10 of 1999, a bill co-sponsored by Rogers that originated in the Michigan Senate. He said that the law paved the way for state control of Detroit schools. Martin said that act led to decisions about Detroit schools from people who were not elected by Detroiters and were instead appointed by the state, leaving them unaccountable to the constituents they served. 

Rogers was the state Senate majority floor leader from 1999 to 2000.

“We simply can’t go back. Students felt the effects; their families lost a meaningful say in their schools,” Martin added. “Educators saw communities’ concerns pushed aside, and Detroit’s public school system went from a $100 million operating surplus to a $200 million deficit. PA 10 helped to set in motion years of financial crisis, instability that harmed students and made it harder for schools to provide the resources and reliable learning environments they deserve.”

Lakia Wilson-Lumpkins, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said, “Our history matters.”

“When our school boards have authority, our voters have authority,” Wilson-Lumpkins said. “Our school boards elect superintendents, and we do not want any reoccurrence of an emergency manager. We are the people, and we rebuke any attempt to remove power from the people.”

Scott Holiday, executive director of Detroit Action, said the group supported El-Sayed and his vision for policies that promote public education “and meaningful community control.”

McCampbell also noted Rogers’ record of supporting Trump’s tariff policies before seeking to distance himself from the president on the issue. 

“When we look at someone’s track record, you know they can go around on the campaign trail now and speak and act like they support Detroiters or act like they support Black Michiganders,” McCampbell said. “But Mike Rogers’ record speaks for itself.”

In response, Rogers spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet told the Advance that the press conference represented “fourth quarter theatrics” by the El-Sayed campaign and “don’t change the fact that he has a base problem.”

“Detroiters are tired of Democrats taking them for granted. And while Abdul gives them slogans, Mike Rogers is showing up in Detroit with real solutions,” Brouillet said. “He will put phonics and shop class back in schools to set students up for success — after Democrat failures dropped us to 45th in the nation for education.”

Rogers has said that he supports the president’s actions, and even championed them at one point, while more recently saying tariffs needed to be levied in a way that benefits Michigan. Rogers has called for an end to Trump’s tariff war with Canada — a comment featured most prominently in an ad in which Rogers talks about drinking LaBatt beer and watching the Red Wings.

Mike Rogers touts Democratic defectors as he seeks to exploit divisions over Abdul El-Sayed

Rogers’ campaign, in conversations with Michigan Advance and in comments during the first debate between Rogers and El-Sayed on Oct. 8, has said that its Black voter outreach operation is building a powerful coalition against El-Sayed in the general election. 

El-Sayed struggled to win over Black voters in the Democratic primary race, as a large portion of Detroit voters chose U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham) instead. El-Sayed has made it a point to court Black voters and has seen some gains — netting the support of Myers Phillips, McCampbell, Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield, a host of Black pastors and preachers, and groups like The Black Slate, Inc., Black Mayors of Michigan, the Kent County Black Caucus and Washtenaw County Democratic Party Black Caucus.

Still, the Republican nominee and his allies in Democrats for Mike Rogers, led by estranged Democratic State Rep. Karen Whitsett of Detroit — who has all but left the Democratic Party after much friction with her caucus — have been adamant that the Black voting bloc is a blind spot for his campaign.

Rogers has been working hard to chip away those blind spots by making campaign stops in Detroit and Pontiac, meeting with tutors, students and alumni at Beyond Basics, a reading remediation program, and discussed his education priorities. He also released a housing initiative to unlock home ownership, a platform unveiled in Detroit. Brouillet touted Rogers’ four-point plan for housing affordability “so that you don’t have to wait until age 40 to buy your first house.”

On Tuesday, Myers Phillips said Rogers and Trump were one and the same.

“Black people, we are not supporting Donald Trump. We are not. We might be able to find a few, but for the most part, voters in the cities of the city of Detroit, right here, our community has been devastated by Trump’s policies,” Myers Phillips said. “Not only the city of Detroit, no, the state of Michigan. We are experiencing so much harm. We just finished our budget process, and we have to do our best to continue to do what we can to provide for the least of these, but a lot of the trouble that we are experiencing right now, particularly at the state level, is because of the passage of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill.’”

Rogers supported Trump’s signature 2025 tax and spending law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but was not in Congress when it passed and did not vote on it.

Still, Myers Phillips said Rogers “didn’t do one thing to stand up for our children, for the state of Michigan, for anybody but himself and his rich friends to let something so harmful pass.”

“When you think of Mike Rogers, that’s Donald Trump,” she said. “That’s the big, beautiful bill, and we are going to vote for someone, Dr. Abdul El Sayed, that’s looking out for us; that’s not just going to go along with the MAGA lines and follow Donald Trump to our community’s destruction. We are not going to do that.”