Republican<\/a> candidate Mike Rogers \u2013 and therefore maintaining a vital senate seat \u2013 is that he needs to win over the traditional black, city-based vote. Michigan blows with the wind in presidential cycles but no Republican has won a US senate seat in Michigan since Spence Abraham in 1994. <\/p>\nA recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that of the 83 per cent of black voters who want the Democrats to win control of the senate, 67 per cent would vote for El-Sayed in the Michigan race. Bridging that gap is essential for El-Sayed if he is to win. The reasons for the wariness among black voters are down to a combination of the ubiquitous attack adverts accentuating El-Sayed as a radical candidate, and a simple lack of familiarity: the communities just don\u2019t know him.<\/p>\n
During the series of questions from supporters in Flint, Michele Kelly asked El-Sayed why the campaign, and the Democratic Party, was not actively campaigning in black neighbourhoods in cities like Flint.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am 67 years old and I don\u2019t think anybody has directly targeted project people,\u201d she told me afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know they haven\u2019t. Knocking on doors. Calling around. I\u2019m not blaming anybody. I say \u2018black community\u2019 because that\u2019s how we talk. But it burns me up when they say, \u2018the base\u2019. The base of the Democratic Party is the black community. The base of the Republican Party is the white community. Guess who they cover? Them. Guess who the media covers? Them. Guess who gets to go on TV? Them. So, we don\u2019t see no reason … El-Sayed needs Detroit, yes. But in order to pull an election win off, he needs smaller cities. Like Flint. Which is a black city. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis room here did not reflect Flint. At all. Flint is 80 per cent black. White Americans who live in Flint \u2013 well, they live in Davison, Burton, Grand Blanc. Most of Flint city itself is black. I thought he did the best he could today. I have been out here trying to encourage family members to pay attention to politics forever. \u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/BZST53ANQNCU7NAEL6AYW4R2AQ.jpg\")
A General Motors Flint Assembly plant in Flint, Michigan. Photograph: Anthony Lanzilote\/Bloomberg via Getty Images ![\"Saginaw](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/3ZM5SAJMOZHSXPU3JDJTULXDSQ.jpg\")
Saginaw Street in downtown Flint, Michigan. Photograph: Emily Elconin\/Bloomberg via Getty Images <\/p>\n
The census statistics on Flint reflect a city still reeling from the rapid contraction of automotive jobs in the city in the 1980s: a median income of $34,000; 34 per cent of residents living below the poverty line; owner-occupier housing at 53 per cent; just 14 per cent with a bachelor\u2019s degree or higher. <\/p>\n
It is a startlingly empty place. But any stranger taking a 20-minute walk through its downtown and the main thoroughfare of Saginaw Street will be struck by buildings that hold stories about its former grandeur. The Durant hotel, an exercise in opulence when it opened in 1919, was the social hub for the 50 years of its existence. Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller booked in there during the years when Flint was automatic on the tour schedule. It fell into disrepair following its closure and now operates as an apartment complex. <\/p>\n
The Capitol Theatre, designed in the 1920s to emulate the grand Italian opera house style, has been refurbished. A food emporium is housed in what was the printing press of the Flint Journal. Flint Park is a green area now but in the 1920s, it had its own adventure park. On Saginaw Street there are statues to automobile giants, including Billy Durant, the founder of General Motors before he was squeezed out by the financiers and died, in penury, as the operator of a struggling bowling alley in Flint. <\/p>\n
A vast, fenced-off wasteland represents the site of the Buick City along Hamilton avenue, where 28,000 workers clocked in at its peak. Just a thousand jobs remained when the plant closed in 1999. Its premises featured prominently in Roger & Me, the sardonic, evocative documentary by Flint native Michael Moore chronicling the sad closing years of the factory. Michele Kelly graduated from high school in 1977 so she caught the town in its last wave of manufacturing prosperity.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, everyone was getting jobs, straight from school. As their parents did. Everyone had new cars, stores everywhere. By the time the next generation came along, General Motors was gone and ten years later, it looked like the Third World. It pisses me off because I remember what it could have been like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flint, then, stands a perfect symbol of Donald Trump\u2019s election promise to somehow reverse the epic monumental decline of the car manufacturing industry. But despite his promises of a resurrection, Flint \u2013 and Genesee County \u2013 voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. <\/p>\n
It should be promising territory for El-Sayed. At 41, he comes equipped with a formidable range of accomplishments: a professor of epidemiology and Rhodes scholar who worked at the Detroit health department before running for governor of Michigan in 2018, when he lost to Gretchen Whitmer. He has developed an easy, streetwise media articulacy and turns up for campaigns in regulation jeans and casual tops.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/PMPPLFLA5RE3THMMJ5GUMSORJ4.jpg\")
The Delphi Flint East Plant, once the nation’s largest automotive supplier. Photograph: Bill Pugliano\/Getty Images ![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/YA4FOGX4MD6ASGXFBBXSSXKLSI.jpg\")
Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for US senate in Michigan. Photograph: Kenny Holston\/The New York Times<\/p>\n
Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, is a survivor of his party\u2019s transformation: a former state senator turned US congressman, he ran against Democrat Elisa Slotkin for Michigan\u2019s other senate seat two years ago and fell short by just 20,000 votes. When Gary Peters, who had held this seat for the Democrats for a full decade, announced his retirement, Trump was in office just eight days. But among his flurry of phone calls was a request to Rogers that he should run again.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember Mike Rogers is running for US senate because Donald Trump called him and asked him to. He won\u2019t really break with him on tariffs, on war, because his only pathway to war is through him,\u201d El-Sayed said on television last weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, why does he want that power so bad? Not because he wants to serve as US senator \u2013 he doesn\u2019t have any ideas. He wants that power because the last time he had power he was able to retire and make $14 million as an adviser for the very same corporations he had been regulating as a US congressman. He watched the president make 2.2 billion dollars off the presidency and said: you know what, I gotta get while the getting\u2019s good. And you know who gets got? We do. And all he\u2019s got is to point to me and say … some scary words and it will work. It\u2019s not going to win. Michiganders are too big for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That may be wishful thinking on his part. All polls depict a race on a knife edge: an early October Insider Advantage poll featuring 1,200 voters surveyed had El-Sayed at 48 per cent to Rogers on 46 per cent, with 5 per cent undecided.<\/p>\n
In their highly acrimonious televised debates, Rogers has repeatedly sought to link El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group and emphasised his ties to controversial left-wing influencer Hasan Piker. Attack ads on Michigan localised networks introduce him by his full name \u2013 Abdulrahman Mohammad El-Sayed before declaring him \u201cthe most radical senate candidate in America\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen his ally said America deserved 9\/11, El-Sayed refused to disavow his remarks,\u201d one advert narrates, referencing Piker, before declaring El-Sayed \u201ctoo radical, too dangerous, wrong for Michigan\u201d.<\/p>\n
Over the course of an hour in St Michael\u2019s Church, El-Sayed roams the room, microphone in hand, trying to debunk the myths and stereotypes. He castigated Rogers for corporate-linked wealth and for owning two yachts.<\/p>\n
![\"Democrat](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/HP2NIDAHUGUHMXLKSCLWM77GKA.jpg\")
Democrat US senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaking at a campaign event in Michigan. Photograph: JEFF KOWALSKY \/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n
\u201cWho needs two yachts?\u201d he asks in mock bafflement. He referred to Rogers as a \u201cnon-playing character\u201d and referenced Donald Trump\u2019s accented pronunciation of his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump can\u2019t seem to take my name out of his mouth. It\u2019s funny because he doesn\u2019t even know how to say it. I mean, to be creepy about Abdul?\u201d<\/p>\n
In delivery, he is funny, irreverent and slightly cocky; the northern flipside of the coin to James Talarico\u2019s studied humility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my first time seeing him live,\u201d Melissa Dugan tells me when the rally ends. \u201cBut I did vote for him at the last opportunity I had. Abdul says everything that I am looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dugan and her husband run a small business where they live, in Linden, a 20-minute drive from Flint. With one daughter having just graduated from the University of Michigan and their youngest girl currently studying in Michigan State, the last number of years have been a stretch for the family. In addition to running the business, her husband works in real estate while Melissa has a part-time job. Their daughter\u2019s college financial aid was reduced by 30 per cent this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has made it difficult for us to keep her enrolled. She\u2019s on the dean\u2019s list: she is thriving so we are doing everything we can. We haven\u2019t had health insurance since 2025. Because we can\u2019t afford it. As small business owners we don\u2019t have a company that gives us benefits. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we have to go through the market place and our health was going to cost $8,000 for the year and it didn\u2019t cover anything and had deductibles. So, we self-insure, which means that if something terrible happens, we hope we can afford it. But I can barely afford my groceries and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n
That national cost-of-living crisis, and the sneaking sense that billionaire business interests have subtly hijacked the system has formed a crucial part of El-Sayed\u2019s campaign mission. He has built a formidable funding model despite rejecting corporate and political action committee donations, and one of his vows is to try to wrestle the American electoral system away from the clutches of mega-donor influence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is absolutely insane,\u201d Dugan says of the US health insurance system. \u201cI am all for a socialist government, I am all for Medicare for all. It is ridiculous that as one of the wealthiest countries in the world we don\u2019t have health cover for citizens. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis current administration \u2013 maybe this sounds extreme \u2013 but I really feel part of their goal is just to eliminate much of the lower and middle class. And they will do that by killing us \u2013 by making the cost of living so high that we can\u2019t afford to eat or buy medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n
We speak for a while about Flint. The city was still in a drift state after the vanishing of General Motors when it was hit with the water crisis in 2014, caused by the cost-saving measure to switch the drinking supply to the Flint river as a source, which was quickly and lastingly contaminated by lead pipes. That civic disaster lasted a full five years, ending just before the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The tragedy of Flint is that the people who arrived to make lives and a city there did everything right. They believed, passionately and with confidence, in its future: the proof is there in the surviving architecture and the residential streets that bloomed when Flint\u2019s population climbed as far as 196,000 in the 1960 census. It is home to about 81,000 people now. <\/p>\n
![\"Flint,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/PNLTOVMXDBCGVAER4NL4YANYZI.jpeg\")
Flint, Michigan, in the 1960s ![\"Manufacturing](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Q337YSMVNBBWHL44ICEUDTQKDQ.jpg\")
Manufacturing 1946 Chevrolet cars in Flint in the late 1940s. Photograph: Charles Phelps Cushing\/Classicstock\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
On Saturday afternoon, in gorgeous sunlight, Saginaw Street was completely deserted apart from a lone busker playing guitar and two seniors having a chat on a bench. There are photographs of the same street in Flint\u2019s roaring years: lit up and populated like Sunset Strip and brooking no doubts about its place in the country. Michael Moore\u2019s film drew both lavish praise and considerable pushback for a portrait of a decline that critics felt manipulated the chronology of events to suit the storyline. <\/p>\n
But almost four decades later, the arc of time has validated its broad truth. A once-thriving automotive city was devastated by the reimagining and globalisation of the US industry and the people who still live there have to deal with the aftershocks. There\u2019s something brutal and saddening about its story.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlint is a great town with great people,\u201d Melissa Dugan says. \u201cWhat happened here was none of the citizens\u2019 fault. The system is the problem. And we need huge changes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abdul El-Sayed isn\u2019t the first political aspirant to visit Flint in a campaign year. For decades now, Flint residents have been used to candidates breezing through and issuing passionate words. But El-Sayed is adamant that if he is elected as the first Muslim to sit in the US senate, he will carry Vehicle City with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlint is the canary in the coal mine,\u201d he said, speaking in the church porch to local television crews after the rally was over.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at the failure of our state government to protect just the basics when it came to water. And Flint was also the place that showed the world what a union could do in terms of a sit-down strike. So, when you think about what Michigan is, Flint … and Detroit … they are at the heart of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last of the wasps are dive-bombing through the long line of people waiting outside St Michael\u2019s Catholic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14843,42,43,16621,40,38,41,39,90],"class_list":["post-656371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-democratic-party","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-republican-party","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Supporters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ZMTVP6BG5J7UWA3YVS34C55UFY.jpg\")
Supporters cheer for Democratic senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during a campaign event in Michigan. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images ![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/EZF3G43YBFAHTOXEXCKM43ES64.jpg\")
A Chevy pickup truck on the assembly line of the General Motors Flint assembly plant. Photograph: Bill Pugliano\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Abdul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4JHWGV2CAMR4B2GQM7QJ7DZBRQ.jpg\")
Abdul El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens by just under 14,000 votes \u2013 less than 1 per cent of the overall vote. Photograph: Nic Antaya\/The New York Times<\/p>\n