MI-SEN: The Extremely Online Senate Race Testing Democrats' Midterm Strategy
MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. — To understand the future of the Democratic Party — maybe even the future of politics writ large — you have to charter a plane or board a ferry and cross some five miles of choppy waters across the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron meets Lake Michigan, to reach Mackinac Island, a roughly 4-square-mile scrap of land shaped like a turtle and wedged between Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. It feels like traveling back in time. There are no cars on the island; horse-drawn taxis clip-clop amid the Victorian architecture. The place seems about as far from the digital cacophony that is politics in 2026 as you could get. Yet one week in late spring, the three millennial candidates in what has become the nation’s most online primary all arrived here by ferry for their first real statewide televised debate amid days of politicking.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. If Democrats lose the general election in November to prospective Republican nominee Mike Rogers, it will be all but impossible for them to reclaim the Senate — and the GOP knows it. Already, the Senate Leadership Fund, the Super PAC aligned with GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has reserved $45 million in ads for Rogers this fall. In hypothetical general election matchups, the margins are thinner than the lilac cotton candy you can buy over at the Sanders Candy and Fudge Shop here.
Beyond control of the Senate, the Michigan primary could help determine what kind of Democratic Party will emerge from the midterms at a time when Democratic voters are furious with the party’s second electoral loss to President Donald Trump and hungry for major change. Two of the Michigan candidates — former public health official Abdul El-Sayed and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow — have called for a change in Democratic leadership. El-Sayed has said he’s the only candidate that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wouldn’t be “OK with winning.” McMorrow called for Schumer to step aside last March. On the other hand, primary candidate Haley Stevens, a U.S. representative, has Schumer’s endorsement and the support of the party establishment in Michigan. They are also debating how to rein in ICE and whether to adopt Medicare for All (El-Sayed backs the latter, while McMorrow and Stevens support a public option approach).
Just this week, leftist candidates backed by progressive New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani won three primaries in New York, unseating Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and delivering a blow to Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. A progressive win in the Michigan primary would compound the pressure on party leadership and indicate that a wave of left populism — a so-called Democratic Tea Party — could prove to be a substantive force, even beyond deep-blue New York. It would also turn the screws on Democrats who appear increasingly out of step with a voting base that has grown skeptical of Israel. It’s an issue that’s particularly important in Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab American voters.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/06/27/michigan-senate-democratic-primary-mackinac-island-00969506
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