With just five weeks until voters head to the polls on Election Day, conservative political action committees dumped $30 million into the close Senate race in the battleground state of Michigan.
Republican candidate Mike Rogers is barely trailing Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) in the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat, according to most polls. In an effort to boost Rogers’ campaign, the Great Lakes Conservative Fund, a super PAC, has spent $8 million on statewide ads, Axios reported earlier this week.
The Great Lakes Conservative Fund’s ad buy comes shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported that Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund is spending $22.5 million in Michigan, which marked the first time that the Senate Leadership Fund spent money on the Michigan race. The Democratic Senate campaign arm, meanwhile, has spent $22 million in Michigan this year, according to Axios.
Both of Michigan’s Senate seats have been controlled by Democrats since 2001 after Debbie Stabenow defeated Republican Spencer Abraham in the 2000 election. Stabenow announced last year that she was retiring from the Senate at the end of her term in January 2025.
The race between Rogers and Slotkin was moved to a “toss-up” by Cook Political Report in July, joining the Ohio race between Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Bernie Moreno as the only other toss-up in the 2024 Senate elections. Republicans will likely take a seat from Democrats in West Virginia and are favored to win in Montana.
Slotkin warned donors on a call last week that Vice President Kamala Harris is “underwater” in her campaign’s internal polling.
“I’m not feeling my best right now about where we are in Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan. We have her underwater in our polling,” Slotkin said.
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Internal GOP polling has also shown a tightening race between Slotkin and Rogers with the two candidates in a statistical tie, according to Axios.
Rogers told The Daily Wire last month that he’s been visiting churches across Michigan and talking to people of faith, most of whom told him that the economy is the biggest issue heading into the election.
“So many people are literally living paycheck-to-paycheck,” Rogers said. “That is always front-and-center.”