GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers clashed repeatedly right here Tuesday over who would finest characterize their purple state within the first debate of their hotly contested Senate race.
The tone throughout their hourlong debate, hosted by NBC affiliate WOOD, was largely civil. But there have been a number of hostile moments, with each candidates accusing the opposite of mendacity about and misrepresenting their information.
Rogers, noting Slotkin’s background as a CIA analyst, mentioned he was “not even positive she might go the polygraph take a look at [for] the CIA anymore.”
And after Rogers accused Slotkin of “huffing on the microphone” throughout a very contentious trade about China, she fired again.
“It’s simply unhappy {that a} man who considers himself a nationwide safety man can’t see that we have to work collectively on this problem — not lie, repeatedly,” Slotkin mentioned. “Let’s get to work, man.”
The debate, the primary of two scheduled within the closing weeks of the race, comes as mail-in balloting is underway in Michigan. Slotkin and Rogers are competing for the seat opening with the retirement of longtime Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Recent polls have discovered Slotkin main, however inside the margin of error.
Both candidates solid themselves Tuesday as sufficiently bipartisan for a swing state that is among the premier battlegrounds on this 12 months’s race for the presidency and management of the Senate.
“We’re a really purple state — a number of Democrats, a number of Republicans,” Slotkin mentioned. “I used to be voted the 14th most bipartisan member of Congress.”
Rogers, who served within the House for 14 years, mentioned he “will search for each alternative to be bipartisan.”
Their sharpest disagreements centered on issues of international coverage and nationwide safety, economics and abortion.
“He was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee within the run-up to the Iraq War,” Slotkin mentioned of Rogers. “There was no higher supporter. There was no higher fist-pumper than Mike Rogers in main us into that struggle.”
Rogers responded by questioning Slotkin’s integrity.
“That info that was given to Congress was based mostly on the CIA on the time that my opponent was within the CIA doing analytical work,” Rogers mentioned. “And hear, I get it, the CIA has deception coaching. My opponent clearly went by means of that. But you’re supposed to make use of that towards your adversaries, not Michigan voters.”
Slotkin, in accordance with her marketing campaign, didn’t be a part of the CIA till late 2003, after the Iraq invasion.
Asked whether or not she would help Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal to supply $25,000 in down cost help for first-time homebuyers, Slotkin punted, saying she would “wish to see the small print of that program.”
Rogers turned her reply into a possibility to query her bipartisan bona fides, noting how regularly she has voted in accordance with President Joe Biden and Harris’ agenda.
“My opponent has voted 100% with the Biden-Harris agenda — 100% — and if you concentrate on what meaning, that implies that she’s more likely to go in and vote for this $25,000 [proposal] and each different scheme that can solely enhance the price of housing,” Rogers mentioned.
Another tense second got here throughout an trade about Medicare and Social Security.
“He voted to lift the retirement age,” Slotkin mentioned, referring to Rogers’ votes on conservative House budgets. “That’s in his document. It’s public. I’m undecided he remembers. He’s been down in Florida for a number of years, however your document once you vote in Congress is public.”
Rogers responded with a shot at Slotkin’s “very rich household.”
“We got here from a middle-class household right here in Michigan,” he mentioned. “We counted on Social Security. We depend on Medicare. My father had most cancers. I had most cancers once I was 19. These points are huge they usually’re private, and I’ll do all the things to guard Medicare and Social Security.”
Both Slotkin and Rogers have sought to border the opposite as a carpetbagger out of contact with Michigan values. Democrats spotlight how Rogers, after he left Congress a decade in the past, moved to Cape Coral, Florida, the place, till he returned to Michigan to organize his Senate bid, he lived in a house valued at almost $1.7 million. More just lately, native media protection has centered on how Rogers isn’t dwelling on the deal with the place he’s registered to vote — a scenario that his marketing campaign attributes to a township’s delay in connecting his newly constructed house to a municipal sewer system.
Republicans be aware that Slotkin returned to Michigan seven years in the past — after jobs within the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations — to run for workplace.
Slotkin made one other Florida-related jab towards the top of the talk, when each candidates had been requested about how Michigan voters in 2022 codified abortion rights within the state structure.
Rogers acknowledged that Michiganders “voted overwhelmingly to make abortion authorized and part of the state structure of Michigan” and vowed he would “do nothing once I return to Washington, D.C. … that might change” that.
Slotkin countered by noting that Rogers had typically voted for laws to outlaw abortion in Congress — and that he wasn’t a Michigan resident when the 2022 poll measure handed.
“To me,” Slotkin mentioned, “each single time he was casting a kind of votes, he was saying one thing very specific. He was saying to girls he doesn’t belief you to make your individual choices about your individual household planning each single time.
“I used to be right here in Michigan, and I voted ‘sure’ on Proposition 3,” Slotkin added. “You had been in Florida. You voted in Florida. You weren’t right here.”