60 Minutes Transcript: Candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers on the Michigan Senate race
This Tuesday, control of the U.S. Senate may be decided in the battleground state of Michigan. The Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, could be the nation's first Muslim senator, and he's running on transformation – busting monopolies, "Medicare For All," an arms embargo on Israel. The Republican candidate, former congressman Mike Rogers, is eager to paint his opponent as a radical – but on policy, he tries to stay inside state lines, focused on Michigan jobs and education. The test for Rogers is whether a Republican can win in the shadow of inflation, war and president Donald Trump's unpopularity. The test for El-Sayed is whether ideas that thrill the progressive wing of the Democratic party are what Middle America wants right now. The contest is close, contentious and it's left the two men without a kind word to say about each other.
In the home stretch of an expensive, bruising, and consequential Senate race, we went to speak to both candidates – and see them in action.
The son of Egyptian immigrants, Abdul El-Dayed won the Democratic primary against a more centrist rival by a sliver of a percentage point. But he has big ambitions – not just to beat the Republican party, but to remake his own.
After a Rhodes Scholarship and a medical degree from Columbia University, El-Sayed went straight into public health administration and then politics.
He's often associated with the Democratic Socialists of America – but he isn't a member, and he keeps his distance from the label.
Ross Douthat: Pick one economic issue that you think should be the priority for the next Congress.
Abdul El-Sayed: Monopolies and oligopolies. I'm a capitalist. If you read Adam Smith, he'll tell you the biggest risk to capitalism was never government regulation. It was always monopoly and oligopoly.
Ross Douthat: You ran for office-- in 2018?
Abdul El-Sayed: Uh-huh.
Ross Douthat: Right? For the first time. You were endorsed by Bernie Sanders in that race. Were you ever a socialist?
Abdul El-Sayed: No. I'm a capitalist who understands the idea that you should have guaranteed healthcare in the country, anybody who tells you that's anti-capitalist is not really understanding how capitalism works.
El-Sayed is promising a version of Medicare For All that he says would leave private health insurance options intact. He would fund it, in part, with a sweeping tax on billionaire wealth.
On the trail, though, he says healthcare is no longer voters' top concern.
Ross Douthat: What is the most important issue that you hear about from Michigan voters in this campaign? Pick one.
Abdul El-Sayed: I think right now we are barreling toward a world where the most important issue I hear about every day is AI.
Ross Douthat: Tell me about that.
Abdul El-Sayed: It comes in-- in two different ways. One is students saying, "So I just took $60,000 in loans and the job that I was supposed to have on the back end doesn't exist anymore or might not exist in ten years." Or it's folks in rural communities who say, "They're trying to put a data center in my backyard. I already can't afford my utilities and I'm worried about what it's going to mean for our water."
El-Sayed wants a Cabinet-level agency to regulate AI. And for the frontier AI research that some fear threatens the human race …
Ross Douthat: Full on pause?
Abdul El-Sayed: Full on pause.
Where the 42-year-old Democrat sometimes sounds like a candidate for president, his Republican rival Mike Rogers is trying to keep things local.
Michigan hasn't elected a republican to the Senate in decades. Rogers hopes to make that a virtue.
Mike Rogers: This is a change election in Michigan. And that's why I don't really care what's happening (LAUGH) around the country. I need to fix Michigan.
In a populist era, Rogers can sound like a throwback Republican. A former Army officer and FBI agent, he left Congress after 14 years just as Donald Trump ascended. And his platform sometimes channels the compassionate conservative rhetoric of president George W. Bush.
Ross Douthat: So what's the number one piece of legislation you'd want to work on on a bipartisan basis if you were in the Senate?
Mike Rogers: Reading. Literacy. I'm a big military family. My father, my brother, me, our son is fourth generation. Patriotism runs deep in our family. One of the big reasons they were missing recruiting during COVID and other places was that kids weren't reading well enough to pass the test in America in 2026. If we don't change that, we are all in trouble.
When El-Sayed recently took a bus tour with Democratic Socialist star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through Trump country in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, they weren't talking about literacy...
Abdul El-Sayed: "Shouldn't be this hard in the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world to afford a tank of gas"
While the Democrat woos MAGA voters, the 63-year old Rogers has been going into predominantly Black neighborhoods that rarely see a republican, trying to persuade African Americans that El-Sayed is taking them for granted.
Mike Rogers at campaign event: "He went to New York with AOC to talk about how they're going to change the world in 2028. You know what I want to do? I wanna take care of Flint. I wanna take care of every Michigander who has kids and grandkids who want to stay in this state."
For his pitch to work, Michigan voters have to believe that a Republican senator can fix a Republican president's policies. Trump's trade wars – especially the tariffs on Canada, Michigan's neighbor and trading partner – have cost the state an estimated $23 billion since January 2025.
Mike Rogers: I don't like the Canadian tariffs. I've said so. I've, you know, raised my concerns to the secretary of-- commerce.
Ross Douthat: And what did he say?
Mike Rogers: "I'll get back to ya."
Ross Douthat: Why can't other Republican senators fix it, though? There's a Republican Senate majority. Why can't they get the White House to change course?
Mike Rogers: Well, you need one more Republican senator there. That's how you do it.
Ross Douthat: Would you support, as a Republican senator, trying to override the president on tariffs that you disagree with like the Canadian tariffs?
Mike Rogers: If I can't work it out-- and it came to that, yeah. Absolutely.
One of El-Sayed's attack lines is that a vote for Rogers is effectively a vote for Trump.
The Republican candidate seems to be looking for daylight with the president while avoiding direct confrontation. He supported the unpopular war with Iran. But now says it needs to, quote, "wind" down.
When it comes to another issue on voters' minds this fall, Rogers chooses his words carefully.
Ross Douthat: Do you think that the Trump administration has a corruption problem?
Mike Rogers: Well, I can tell you this. I'm-- I-- I'm an FBI agent by training.
Ross Douthat: And what did you work on as an FBI agent?
Mike Rogers: Organized crime and public corruption.
Ross Douthat: And public corruption. Yes.
Mike Rogers: Yeah. Yeah.
Ross Douthat: Yes.
Mike Rogers: So-- I'm gonna act as a United States senator with the best interests of Michigan. I can tell you that right now.
Ross Douthat: Can you tell me a little bit more about what that would mean?
Mike Rogers: I'll take the facts as I see them and I'll make a decision based on that.
Ross Douthat: The president of the United States accepted a jet from a Middle Eastern nation. Do you think he should have done that?
Mike Rogers: I mean, that's not what I would have done. But that's-- I don't think it's illegal for the president to do that.
It's a delicate relationship. President Trump needs Rogers to flip the seat. Rogers needs the president to turn out the party base.
They campaigned together in Port Huron, Michigan, last week, where Mr. Trump trained his fire on El-Sayed.
President Trump at rally: "I'm here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator."
The president is talking about an Islamist movement whose offshoots were recently designated as terrorist groups. Rogers has also accused his opponent of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, citing a 2012 letter that El-Sayed signed after the Arab Spring in support of Egypt's new democratically elected government, which was backed by the Brotherhood.
El-Sayed has declined to comment on the letter but says he disavows the Muslim Brotherhood. He argues that Republicans are targeting his Islamic faith.
Ross Douthat: There's a lot of people, Muslim, Christian, otherwise, who are raised in religion and it doesn't stick. Why did faith stick for you?
Abdul El-Sayed: I think anybody of faith has on again, off again relationships with one's own faith. In my younger years, I certainly rebelled. And it was something that-- that kinda came back to me in college.
Ross Douthat: Tell me something about how that faith shapes your politics.
Abdul El-Sayed: There is this-- notion of speak the truth, even if it be against yourself. And I try to be, like, radically honest.
One place where El-Sayed casts himself as a truth-teller is the debate over U.S. support for Israel.
Ross Douthat: In your view, what's wrong with America's relationship with Israel?
Abdul El-Sayed: Number one, we have been told that we are pursuing a two-state solution, only to aid, arm, and abet the very people who are trying to foreclose on the possibility of a second state. So it's incoherent on its own terms. Number two, I don't know about you, but I don't pay my taxes to buy another country a bomb or a tank. That's Israel. That's Egypt. That's Saudi Arabia. That's Pakistan. Three, the state of Israel did a genocide.
Mike Rogers: His language is wrong. They use terms like genocide.
In the argument over Israel's war in Gaza, following the October 7th attacks by Hamas, Rogers leaves no doubt which side he's on.
Mike Rogers: I passionately defend Israel's right to defend itself and to exist as a Jewish state. That sets me at odds with my opponent right off the bat. He refuses to even acknowledge that Israel has the right to exist.
Abdul El-Sayed: I don't ever get the question of, "Does Palestine have the right to exist?"
Ross Douthat: Does Palestine have the right to exist?
Abdul El-Sayed: Yes.
Ross Douthat: Does Israel have--
Abdul El-Sayed: And--
Ross Douthat: --the right to exist?
Abdul El-Sayed: S-- yes. If there is a shared understanding--
Ross Douthat: Wait. You said-- you said--
Abdul El-Sayed: Let me just-- let me just-- let me just-- understand. I believe-- and this is the-- this is the problem with this debate. We start from where we sit rather than start from principles. I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. If the Palestinian people decide and the Israeli people decide that they want two states for two people, and they decide that on equal terms, I'm for it. If they decide that they want one state shared in a different way, I'm for that.
In a state with one of the nation's largest Arab American populations – and about 100,000 Jewish voters – the Middle East is territory where the campaign's national and local elements converge.
This past March, after a terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool, El-Sayed condemned the violence.
Abdul El-Sayed video: "There is never a justification for attacking innocent people or houses of worship. Never.''
But he added:
Abdul El-Sayed: "Hurt people hurt people"
… seeming to put blame on Israel. He later apologized.
Mike Rogers at an event: "So you've either got to pick your team. You want to represent Palestine, or you want to represent Michigan? I want to represent Michigan!"
To Rogers, his opponent's rhetoric is feeding an atmosphere of antisemitism.
Mike Rogers: There are Jewish students at [the] University of Michigan that my wife and I talk to who have to hide their Star of David to walk across campus because the harassment is so bad. Think of that.
In a close election, the Rogers campaign hopes that Jewish Michiganders, usually a reliable Democratic constituency, could be one of its keys to victory.
Ross Douthat: Do you think that you are saying enough to reassure those voters that you are on their side?
Abdul El-Sayed: Wherever our disagreements are when it comes to Israel, there are a lot more things that we agree on here. When it comes to standing up for Jewish-Americans, I will be right there.
However the Jewish vote breaks, the state's more than 200,000 Arab Americans are expected to turn out to vote for El-Sayed in record numbers.
It's one more variable in a race filled with them – where the winning Michigan coalition could be a national surprise.
Ross Douthat: What's the biggest thing that you think is different in U.S. politics if you win?
Abdul El-Sayed: The ability to run a campaign and win against big money by engaging with people. Having a conversation about who we are and who we want to be.
Ross Douthat: What's the biggest thing that's different about American politics if you win this election?
Mike Rogers: Well, I'm not sure about American politics, but I'm gonna change the politics of Michigan, for sure. Cause you're gonna have somebody who's an advocate for the state of Michigan.
One close race, two very different campaigns – and an election whose outcome will reverberate far beyond the state of Michigan.
Produced by Keith Sharman. Associate producer, Roxanne Feitel. Broadcast associates, Paloma Vigil and Novi Zhukovsky. Edited by Sean Kelly.
