Democrat Elissa Slotkin will win the Michigan Senate seat, according to CNN projects

CNN
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According to CNN, Rep. Elissa Slotkin will win the hotly contested Michigan Senate race, keeping the seat in Democratic hands and making her the youngest Democratic woman elected to the Senate.

She will defeat former Rep. Mike Rogers, who was once chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and was endorsed by former President Donald Trump earlier this year. According to two sources, Rogers called Slotkin and conceded the race.

Slotkin will be sworn into a GOP-controlled Senate that will be able to bolster Trump's presidency. Republicans are also trying to defend their narrow majority in the US House of Representatives, even though it has not yet been convened.

Slotkin will succeed Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan's first female U.S. senator, who announced early last year that she would step down and “pass the torch” to a new generation of leadership.

Slotkin was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 and appealed to conservative voters. She ended her two debates with Rogers by saying that her father was a lifelong Republican who felt betrayed by his party's loyalty to Trump.

“In my office you always have an open door. You will always have a seat at the table because I want to hear from you,” she vowed during the campaign.

Rogers, who became friends with Trump after the January 6, 2021 insurrection despite his previous criticism of the former president, highlighted Slotkin's voting record in support of the Biden-Harris administration's agenda as she highlighted her skills as an independent thinker.

The Michigan Republican, whom Democrats criticized for moving to Florida after leaving the House in 2015, repeatedly linked Slotkin to the administration's efforts to incentivize the transition to electric vehicles, a hot topic among Michigan's auto workers .

Slotkin ran television ads across the state telling voters she didn't care what kind of car they drove, while Rogers accused her of wanting to ban gasoline-powered vehicles in the state altogether.

“I live on a dirt road, not near a charging station, so I don't own an electric car. Nobody should tell us what to buy and nobody is going to tell us anything,” she said at one point, explaining that her priority is to ensure electric vehicles are made in Michigan and not China.

Slotkin also ran a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign highlighting Roger's past voting record on abortion legislation and arguing that while access to the procedure is protected in the Michigan Constitution, Republicans would enact a statewide abortion ban if the power would be given to them.

“It’s not a topic of conversation for women, it’s our lives. It's about whether we bleed to death in a parking lot. It's about who and when decides how we start a family. Don’t trust him,” Slotkin shot back when Rogers promised in their first debate that he wouldn’t defy the will of the people of Michigan in Washington.

The Democratic congresswoman said that if elected, she would support reforming the Senate filibuster rule so that legislation codifying Roe v. Wade could be passed with a simple majority in the chamber.

Slotkin also emphasized her position on gun safety, noting that she is the first U.S. congresswoman to represent a district that has seen two school shootings, one at Oxford High School in 2021 and another at from Michigan State University in 2023.

“The idea that we can’t prosecute the No. 1 child murderer in America is broken,” she said on the debate stage in Detroit.

In 2022, Slotkin, then the 8th District Congresswoman, ran to represent the 7th District after Michigan's congressional map was redrawn to include a significant portion of her Lansing-area constituency in that seat.

Slotkin, who took a road trip-like tour of the state with Stabenow shortly after securing the Democratic nomination for Senate, said when she first decided to run for the seat, “it wasn't even “a question” about whether it was a woman was able to run thanks to Stabenow.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who often touted her accomplishments under presidents of both parties, urged voters shortly after her victory in the Democratic primary to “join us as a normal team,” a message that continued throughout her campaign , as she tried to build a broad coalition.