Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin defeated GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers in the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat, NBC News projects, a key hold in one of the most contested battleground states.
Slotkin beat Rogers amid intense presidential campaigning between President-elect Donald Trump, who carried Michigan, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran behind Slotkin.
While Democrats have lost only two Senate races in Michigan in 52 years, many of those races have been close, and it has flipped back and forth in recent presidential campaigns. Trump narrowly won there in 2016, and Joe Biden flipped it blue again in 2020.
Slotkin will replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a fellow Democrat first elected to the seat in 2000 who is retiring this year. In August, Slotkin thanked Stabenow for paving the way and for making a conscious decision to “pass the torch.” The pair embraced onstage at Slotkin’s watch party after she won a contested Democratic primary in August.
Slotkin, who worked at the CIA and the Defense Department, often cites her mother’s battle with ovarian cancer for pushing her toward politics to combat health care costs and lower the prices of prescription drugs. She moved home to Michigan to run for Congress in 2018 after having served in the Obama administration, narrowly winning a mid-Michigan congressional district in one of that year’s closest battleground races.
Slotkin held the seat in two subsequent close elections before she ran for the Senate this election cycle.
Rogers represented the same congressional district from 2001 to 2015 before he retired. He was previously a critic of Trump but came around as he ran for the Senate and received Trump’s endorsement in March. Rogers appeared at a campaign stop with Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, in Big Rapids in late August.
Trump was far from the only big name who got involved in the Senate race. Slotkin got an early October endorsement from former President Barack Obama, who also starred in an ad that highlighted her national security experience.