Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers (R) will skip Tuesday night’s debate with opponent Abdul El-Sayed (D), citing the moderator’s alleged “favoritism” toward the Democrat. Alyssa Brouillet, the Rogers campaign’s communications director, said in a statement that Michiganders “deserve to see their candidates engage in a healthy, fair…
Page A3From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 16 September 2026
Rogers cites 'bias' to skip debate against a Democrat a right-wing media personality calls 'literally Trumpian.'
As it ran on the front
Mike Rogers's campaign says he skipped Tuesday's debate because the moderator favored Abdul El-Sayed, and that is a claim worth taking at its word for a sentence or two. Comms director Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement that Michiganders "deserve to see their candidates engage in a healthy, fair debate — not one compromised by media bias." Fair enough, except the bias in question would have to explain a race that, by the numbers, has no side to be biased toward. An EPIC-MRA poll released Aug. 31 had El-Sayed up, 43 percent for Rogers. A WDIV-TV/Detroit News survey taken that same week and published Sept. 9 had Rogers up instead, 45.8 percent. Two different pollsters found two different leaders inside two weeks; whatever a biased moderator was supposed to be tilting, it was not the scoreboard.
The other plank of the bias case is that El-Sayed's campaign has an unfair advantage in tone, an appeal a fair moderator would need to check. On Sept. 3, right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson said in an interview with commentator Saagar Enjeti that El-Sayed's campaign is "literally Trumpian" — "America First," he said, describing a Democrat's messaging. That is not what a candidate benefiting from a friendly press environment usually sounds like on the right's own airwaves. If anything it argues the opposite of the campaign's complaint: not that a moderator was tilted toward El-Sayed, but that his message already plays on ground Rogers's side considers its own.…
…(cont) Rogers had a second problem that had nothing to do with any moderator. On Sept. 10, El-Sayed's team released a video game, "Come Home, Mike," with Rogers's face on a cartoon body adrift on a boat — a jab at his trip to the GOP's midterm convention in Dallas rather than Michigan. A campaign that skipped the state for a convention, and is now skipping the debate stage for a moderator, has spent September explaining absences instead of making a case.
El-Sayed showed up Tuesday and made the joke himself: "The elephant was not in the room. The elephant decided that they did not want to be in the room. The elephant cowarded out." The bias complaint may or may not hold up in the next poll. What it cannot do is explain why, in a race decided within a percentage point either direction, only one campaign had someone standing on the stage.
“Guy skips the debate and blames the ref before the game even starts — that's the move when you don't like your odds, and the polls say the odds are a coin flip either way you slice it. Even Tucker Carlson's over there saying the other guy sounds like their own candidate, so who exactly was this moderator supposed to be tilting the room toward? You don't duck a stage because it's biased. You duck it because you don't want to answer anything on it.”
“Look, fairness in debate moderation is a legitimate concern for any campaign, and Mike Rogers's team has every right to raise it — okay, the polls have him basically tied or slightly ahead depending which survey you grab, so I'm not totally sure what bias was supposedly costing him there. Did I say that? That's not the point. The point is optics, and skipping the stage projects confidence. It projects something.”
The receipts
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul-El Sayed (D) took a swipe at his opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), for not attending a debate Tuesday night. "The elephant was not in the room.
· Rogers, El-Sayed deadlocked in Michigan Senate race: Survey from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· Rogers, El-Sayed locked in tight Michigan Senate race: Survey from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· El-Sayed edges Rogers in Michigan Senate poll from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
· El-Sayed hits Rogers on GOP convention appearance in new online game from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· Tucker Carlson: El-Sayed campaign 'literally Trumpian' from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.