Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin has won the highly competitive Michigan U.S. Senate race, defeating her Republican rival, former Rep. Mike Rogers, according to Decision Desk HQ.
Decision Desk HQ called it Wednesday at 3:01 p.m. ET.
Decision Desk HQ projects Elissa Slotkin (D) wins the US Senate election in Michigan.#DecisionMade: 3:01 PM EDT
— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 6, 2024
Follow live results here:https://t.co/cmyM8omXdf pic.twitter.com/kJJKY3Qk3i
Last year, incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) announced she was retiring, deciding against seeking a fifth term and setting the stage for Michigan's first open U.S. Senate race for this seat since 1994. There has not been a Republican senator from Michigan since Spencer Abraham, whose one-term tenure ended in early 2001 after losing to Stabenow.
While the "blue wall" states of battleground Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were all up for grabs, Michigan was the least likely of the three to flip as the others had narrowed the gap in the lead-up to Election Day.
As of Tuesday morning, Slotkin was polling ahead of Rogers by 2.9 percentage points in an average of polls from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ. Rogers had recently gained ground though in the tightening contest, moving from over five points down in mid-September.
Rogers nabbed a key endorsement in September from the Michigan Farm Bureau, which hadn't backed a GOP Senate candidate in nearly 20 years. This is despite Slotkin participating in an August form with the bureau, where she touted her own family's farm. "We grow soy and corn on about 300 acres, little bit less than 300 acres right now," she said, vying for the bureau's support.
Apparently, she exaggerated details, taking a page out of Tim Walz's playbook. The New York Post exposed Slotkin's tall tales about the family farm:
But property records show Slotkin’s parcel of land is much smaller. It’s just 10 acres, and aerial images show no corn or soybeans being grown.
Those records also reveal she continues to take a farming tax credit, despite doing no farming on the grounds. The home’s agricultural zoning confers a property-tax exemption, which Slotkin just claimed when she filed her summer taxes.
It appeared Slotkin's lies lost her the bureau's endorsement, which Stabenow easily earned the last two election cycles. The farm bureau, also known as AgriPac, had not endorsed a Republican running for a Michigan Senate seat since 2006.
Rogers centered the final days of his campaign on blasting Slotkin for the non-disclosure agreements she reportedly signed concerning the development of a Chinese-owned electric vehicle battery plant near Big Rapids.
One of the Senate Republican hopeful's ad buys slammed Slotkin for "sign[ing] a secret deal that helped a Chinese company — taking away jobs from Michigan workers." Rogers called on Slotkin to release herself from the NDAs in the controversial Chinese EV factory deal. Slotkin denied signing such paperwork, though she admitted her staffers did. The New York Post viewed two she signed herself.
During his speech at the RNC this year, Rogers accused Slotkin of "getting into bed with the Communist Party of China" and supporting energy policies that would "destroy American jobs."
The parent company behind the Chinese entity in question has strong ties to the CCP, including having hundreds of members on their payroll, The Daily Caller reported.
Slotkin's campaign tried to paint Rogers as a carpetbagger, a candidate seeking election in an area they have no local connections to, but the congresswoman doesn't live in the district she represents, per The Washington Free Beacon. In fact, she hasn't resided there for nearly a year, The Free Beacon reported.
"Slotkin moved out of Michigan's Seventh Congressional District in the summer of 2023, months after she was elected to the seat. She told the Lansing City Pulse that she had moved to a property owned by her family in the state's ninth district, which is represented by Republican representative Lisa McClain," according to The Free Beacon's reporting. "Voting records show Slotkin hasn't been registered to vote in the district she represents since June 2023."
Rogers is an ex-Army officer and FBI special agent who specialized in organized crime and public corruption at the agency's Chicago office. According to The Detroit News, Rogers was interviewed for the role of FBI director after James Comey was dismissed.
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