Michigan Democrats Brace for Rare Competitive US Senate Primary
Only two of 40 primaries in party history have been decided by less than 16 points
While Democrats look to net enough U.S. Senate seats in the 2026 midterms to pry back control of the chamber, one of the few states where the GOP has a chance to flip a seat in their own right is Michigan, where incumbent Gary Peters is retiring at the end of his second term.
Barring a late entry into the Republican field, former U.S. Representative Mike Rogers is poised to be nominated for the office for the second consecutive cycle. Rogers narrowly lost the 2024 election by just 0.34 points to U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin with Donald Trump carrying the state at the top of the ticket.
Michigan Democrats, meanwhile, are in the midst of a fierce nomination fight between U.S. Representative Haley Stevens, State Senator Mallory McMorrow, and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
Polling has not shown any candidate receiving one-third of the vote this year with all three candidates raising several million dollars for their respective campaigns.
Michigan Republicans have lost 10 consecutive U.S. Senate elections since 1996 and have few qualms that their eventual counterpart on the ballot will have spent a small fortune just to get to the general election while Rogers cruises to the nomination.
Hosting a competitive U.S. Senate primary fight is unfamiliar territory for the Michigan Democratic Party.
Looking back across the 40 primaries for the office in the state since 1916, an astounding 27 primaries were won by the nominee without any opposition (67.5 percent).
Democratic candidates winning primaries without any other candidate on the ballot over the decades are:
- 1916: State Insurance Commissioner John Winship (Note: Winship declined the nomination a few weeks after the August 29th primary and that September the state central committee selected Lansing businessman Lawrence Price to replace him on the November ballot)
- 1922: Former Governor Woodbridge Ferris
- 1924: University of Michigan Department of Engineering Dean Mortimer Cooley
- 1928 special and general: Battle Creek Mayor John Bailey
- 1930: Former Bay City Mayor and two-term U.S. Representative Thomas Weadock of Detroit
- 1942: U.S. Senator Prentiss Brown
- 1946: Detroit Attorney James Lee
- 1948: Former five-term U.S. Representative Frank Hook
- 1952 special: Appointed U.S. Senator Blair Moody
- 1960: U.S. Senator Patrick McNamara
- 1964, 1970: U.S. Senator Philip Hart
- 1972: Long-serving state Attorney General Frank Kelley
- 1982, 1988: U.S. Senator Don Riegle
- 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, 2008: U.S. Senator Carl Levin
- 2000, 2006, 2012, 2018: Two-term U.S. Representative Debbie Stabenow
- 2014, 2020: Three-term U.S. Representative Gary Peters
Of the 13 Democratic U.S. Senate primaries that were contested, only two resulted in competitive races decided by single digits – 1936 and 1994.
Four Democratic candidates were on the ballot during the 1936 wave that saw the party expand their seats in the nation’s upper legislative chamber from 70 to 75 including flipping the Wolverine State.
Four-term U.S. Representative Prentiss Brown eked out a 2.2-point victory with 36.3 percent of the vote over Louis Ward of Pontiac, a former business representative of radio priest Charles Coughlin.[Ward ran in the general election under the “Third Party” banner and received 4.4 percent of the November vote].
Detroit Common pleas Court Judge Ralph Liddy won 20.9 percent in the primary and University of Michigan phonetics professor John Muyskens received 8.7 percent.
In 1994 – the most recent U.S. Senate contest won by a Republican in the state (Spencer Abraham) – a party-tying record six Democrats faced off in the August primary for Senator Riegel’s open seat.
Nine-term U.S. Representative Bob Carr won the nomination with just 24.0 percent – 0.9 percentage points ahead of three-term State Senator Lana Pollack.
Three other candidates landed in double-digits that cycle: former Lansing City Councilor Joel Ferguson (19.8 percent), Detroit attorney and former two-term State Representative and four-term U.S. Representative William Brodhead (14.4 percent), and four-term State Senator John Kelly (11.0 percent). Three-term Macomb County prosecutor Carl Marlinga (7.7 percent) rounded out the field.
Overall, Democrats have won nomination to the U.S. Senate by an average of 78.0 points across the 40 primaries since 1916 and by an average of 32.4 points in contested races.
Republicans have nominated candidates to the office by an average of 52.3 points (including 14 running unopposed) and by an average of 23.7 points in contested races with seven of those decided by single digits.
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– “Bob” Griffin of the Landrum-Griffin Act fame is the most the recent Republican to have won and served in *this* (Class 2) seat.
– Democratic or Independent victories in R-held seats in AK, MT, NE, IA, TX, OH, and FL – in addition to the ‘low-hanging fruits’ NC and ME – arguably would go a long way towards offsetting a loss in this state and the increasingly heterodox voting patterns of Senator J Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
Were MI to use the instant runoff vote mechanism legislator McMorrow would arguably have the inside track to win the nomination in the cumulative balloting. Under the current “first-past-post” voting, will her core support be larger than either the choice of the hardcore left (El-Sayed) or the choice of the establishment (Stevens) ?