SAGINAW, Mich. — When Donald Trump fought his way back to the White House in 2024, he capitalized on simmering economic discontent in political battlegrounds such as Michigan. Now Democrats are trying to harness those same concerns, which have lingered as people across the country lose confidence in the Republican president’s ability to ease the cost of living.
The only question is how to do it. That nationwide challenge is especially urgent in Michigan, where three Democrats are running in the U.S. Senate primary in August.
The candidates — U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and physician Abdul El-Sayed — are making different pitches to voters, and their success or failure will help determine the party’s fortunes in the November midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake.
The party’s chances of winning back control of the Senate will become much harder without retaining the seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
The likely Republican nominee is Mike Rogers, a former congressman seeking a Senate seat for the second time. In 2024, he lost by 19,000 votes to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who moved from the House to the Senate.
Wearing a welding helmet and gloves, Stevens moved in close toward flying sparks as a plumbing apprentice showed off his welding technique at a union training workshop in Saginaw.
Her suburban Detroit district is part of the automobile hub central to Michigan’s economy and workforce. She is building off her relationships with organized labor and campaigning against Trump’s tariff strategy, saying the president is hurting the state’s manufacturing sector and driving up prices across the board.
“He’s been more focused on cutting deals all over the world than cutting deals here in Michigan, and now we have job insecurity and in some cases job loss,” Stevens said in an interview.
Stevens introduced herself to students at their work stations and asked questions about their projects, such as carefully connecting pipes with tightly fitted grooves as an alternative to welding.
At one station, three apprentices showed the congresswoman paper sketches of plumbing construction designs. She told them how important their careers will be as existing infrastructure ages. She promised that she will find the money to hire people to fix it.
“We like that,” said one student.
After the tour, Stevens sat around a table with union leaders. Speaking over whirring machinery, she sympathized with the complexity of providing health care benefits.
Justin Pomerville, the business manager at UA Local 85, said that the “far left” and the “far right” are failing to improve things in politics, a complaint that dovetailed with Stevens’ efforts to pitch herself as a moderate.
“This is why I like walking a day in people’s shoes,” she said.
A crowd of Democrats recently packed into a dimly lit side room of Churchill’s Food & Sprits in downtown Flint. “Jesse’s Girl” played over the speakers as McMorrow’s team shuffled chairs to squeeze in a few more people before she took to the microphone.
The lawmaker has hosted campaign stops at various breweries around the state. Her favorite beer is a blood orange honey ale from the Cheybogan Brewing Co.
She got into politics after Trump’s victory in 2016, and she was first elected in 2018. McMorrow is in the state Senate’s Democratic leadership and has gained national recognition for a few viral moments in recent years, including bringing a Project 2025 prop to the party’s national convention in 2024. She is running with a new motivation this time around for the sake of her 5-year-old daughter.
“Like any parent, I am thinking a lot about what tomorrow looks like,” she said.
One of her goals is expanding a Michigan program that helps mothers with new children by giving them cash grants.
“When something’s working, you expand on it,” McMorrow said in an interview. “I think there’s a huge opportunity where Michigan has done a lot of things right that we can ensure every American benefits from.”
Karen Breasbois, a former farmer, asked McMorrow what she would do about Trump’s tariffs that have hurt soybean operations. McMorrow promised to listen to rural communities, not act like a “missionary” like other Democrats from liberal urban areas.
“We need another Debbie Stabenow,” Breasbois said in an interview, referencing Michigan’s longtime agriculture champion in the U.S. Senate who retired in early 2025. “Mallory, she’s got that spunk.”
El-Sayed, a physician and former county health official, delivered a diagnosis for the cost of living problem at a recent town hall: corporate greed.
About 100 people turned out at a community college in Detroit in late January on a brutally cold night. El-Sayed, who finished far behind the current governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in the 2018 Democratic primary for that office, led the crowd in a chant he uses to begin and end his rallies: “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.”
El-Sayed has long campaigned for Medicare for all, a slogan that champions universal health care. In recent weeks, he has started adding an asterisk, saying that people should be able to obtain additional coverage from their union or employer.
The discussion at the gathering often circled back to the high cost of health care, something he chalks up to corporate entities and their lobbying powers.
“In an era where union membership is near an all-time low and in an era where inequality is near an all-time high, we have to recognize that these two things are not a coincidence, they are one in the same problem,” he said from a small stage where campaign staff and volunteers filmed from multiple angles for social media.
In an interview, El-Sayed said he has been talking about the cost of living for years, while other candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, are just now getting on board with the affordability focus.
Natasha VanGessel, a medical assistant from Royal Oak who sat in one of the first rows at the town hall, has followed El-Sayed since he ran for governor in 2018 and regularly tunes into his podcast, called America Dissected.
“He’s very well thought out, very intelligent,” she said. “And really, I think, has some good ideas.”
