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Republican Michigan Senate candidate and former Rep. Mike Rogers said the Democratic Party’s recent embrace of socialist candidates is evidence that the party has moved “so far to the left” that everyday Americans are now starting to “wake up” and notice.
“Welcome to the modern Democratic Party,” Rogers told Fox News Digital. “This is not your dad’s Democratic Party. It’s not your grandmother’s Democratic Party. This thing has veered so far to the left, and Michigan is at the epicenter of that.”
Following New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary victory, which shook the Democratic Party, three more socialist and progressive candidates emerged victorious in Democratic primaries.
Mamdani-backed Democratic Socialists of America members Darializa Avila Chevalier and state Rep. Claire Valdez, as well as progressive Brad Lander, prevailed in their Democratic primaries this week. The candidates have campaigned on platforms centered on abolishing ICE, universal healthcare, affordability and criticism of Israel.
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The winning candidates have raised renewed concerns about where the future of the Democratic Party is headed. Rogers said the Democratic Party has neglected working-class and middle-class Americans, leaving more people in Michigan questioning whether they should build their futures in the state or look for opportunities elsewhere.
“I think that the Democratic Party walked away from working and middle-class Americans a decade ago, and in Michigan, people are starting to wake up to this notion that we can’t continue to do this and expect our kids to stay,” he said.
Rogers said Michigan has its own worries about socialism and called the ideas from far-left figures in Michigan “a little bit terrifying.”
“Matter of fact, I think all three of the Democrats who are running for the nomination are out of step already, and it’s only gonna get worse,” he said. “This really will be about crazy versus common sense in the state of Michigan.”
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has campaigned on many of the same policies as New York City’s winning candidates. The progressive has also faced criticism for opposing the current U.S. partnership with Israel over humanitarian concerns during the war in Gaza and for campaigning with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, who has called Hamas “the lesser of two evils” and said the U.S. “deserved 9/11.”
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However, Rogers said voters are rejecting the Democratic Party’s shift, pointing to Graham Platner’s Senate primary victory in Maine and accusing Michigan Democrats of “flirting” with socialism.
New York’s socialist sweep came just weeks after another closely watched race in Maine, where Graham Platner won the party’s nomination despite multiple controversies, including inflammatory Reddit posts, a Nazi-linked chest tattoo, reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women while married, and allegations from former girlfriends involving rape fantasies, heavy drinking and violent behavior.
“But people see a guy in Maine, Nazi tattoo, communist in 2019 espousing,” Rogers said. “You see the candidates in our race who are flirting with all that Democrat socialism. That’s why our message is resonating, and that’s why we’re doing as well as we are on the ground.”
Rogers is running in Michigan’s Republican Senate primary, while El-Sayed will face fellow progressive state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., in the Democratic primary. Both primaries will be held on Aug. 4 to determine who will fill the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters.
Rogers said Michigan Democrats are promoting “shared misery” and predicted “the rest of the country is going to be as confused as we are about who they are and what they want to do.”
“What these three Democrats are talking about, shared misery,” he said. “We’re gonna share our misery with everybody in the state. Not selling well, so we look forward to November and let them hash it out between now and then about who the Democrats are.”
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Michigan depends on manufacturing jobs, Rogers said, arguing a socialist environment “doesn’t allow those jobs to grow” and instead “makes a lot less of them.” He said Sanders’ win in Michigan’s 2016 Democratic presidential primary is evidence that “there is a faction of Democrats that are willing to give up on the free-market idea of an American economy and aren’t really happy with America.”
But Rogers said voters he has spoken with no longer trust Democrats’ promises to lower costs, saying they are “ready for change” after years of Democratic control in the state and that “everything bad that’s happened to us has really happened in that time frame.”
Rogers also blamed Democratic leadership for weaker school rankings, slow wage growth, manufacturing job losses and higher utility bills, saying those issues can be “traced back to what Democrat policies did to us in the state.”
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Highlighting his own campaign, Rogers said his “optimism” and focus on affordability, jobs and education is helping him beat his Democratic opponents in recent polls.
“Our positive, issue-centered campaign for Michigan is working, and that’s why in the last six polls or so we’ve been ahead of our Democrat opponents,” he said.
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