Before Washington turns Michigan’s U.S. Senate race into another national ideological cage fight, voters should ask Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers a much simpler question: What will you do for us?
That question should become the moral center of one of the most consequential Senate races in America. El-Sayed emerged from the Democratic primary with an unmistakable message about economic inequality, affordability and the growing frustration of working people. Rogers, the former congressman, brings experience, a national security résumé and the backing of a Republican Party that will undoubtedly make El-Sayed’s progressive politics a central issue in November.
The machinery of national politics is already descending upon Michigan as President Donald Trump has taken swipes at El-Sayed online.
Millions will be spent. Consultants will manufacture outrage. Television advertisements will tell us whom to fear. Republicans will try to make the election a referendum on socialism and the political left. Democrats will try to make it a referendum on Trump and the direction of the Republican Party.
But Michigan cannot afford an election dominated by Washington’s obsessions because the problems confronting this state are far more intimate.
Think about it. There are families working multiple jobs who still cannot get ahead, young people are wondering whether homeownership will ever be within reach, and seniors are calculating the cost of medicine against groceries and utilities.
Then there are neighborhoods where economic development remains something residents read about rather than experience, including cities like Benton Harbor that have spent generations waiting for the promise of economic renewal to arrive.
And across Michigan, workers are asking what artificial intelligence, automation and the transformation of the automobile industry will mean for the dignity and security of their work, including the introduction of data centers.
Frankly, these are not Democratic or Republican problems. They are the problems facing the state, and they deserve something more serious than another election built around political personalities.
El-Sayed should be required to fully explain how the progressive economic vision that propelled him through the Democratic primary will translate into results for an entire state. Winning a primary is one thing. Governing across ideological, racial, geographic and economic divisions is another.
Rogers deserves the same scrutiny. It will not be enough for him to tell voters what is wrong with El-Sayed. If Republicans believe progressive government is the wrong prescription for Michigan, then they have an obligation to explain their alternative.
What is their plan for workers whose industries are being transformed? What does conservative economic policy offer a family priced out of homeownership? What does it say to communities where poverty has survived Republican and Democratic administrations alike? And what does either candidate intend to do about the widening distance between extraordinary wealth and extraordinary poverty?
Those questions matter because elections should ultimately be about more than power.
Because Michigan knows the cost of economic abandonment, including when factories disappear, neighborhoods are forgotten and political leaders confuse economic statistics with human progress.
That history should give Michiganians little patience for ideological theater. This Senate election presents two dramatically different political visions. Let the candidates’ debate them vigorously.
But the debate in my view should return to the people whose names will never appear on a ballot. The autoworker wondering whether his job will exist a decade from now, the mother in Flint standing in a grocery aisle calculating what she can put back, the college graduate from Michigan State University carrying debt into adulthood, the small business owner struggling to remain open, and the child growing up in a Detroit neighborhood where opportunity remains determined by ZIP code.
This is the constituency that should matter most, not what Washington wants this election to be about.
Bankole Thompson’s columns appear on Mondays and Thursdays in The Detroit News.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Put voters at the center of the Michigan Senate race | Thompson
Reporting by Bankole Thompson / The Detroit News
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By Bankole Thompson | USA TODAY Network
