Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat with a strong national security background, has defeated former Representative Mike Rogers in the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat, according to The Associated Press.
Her victory keeps the seat in Democratic hands, preventing Republicans from further expanding their new majority. Senator Debbie Stabenow’s retirement at the end of the current Congress set up the competitive race in the key swing state of Michigan.
The contest seemed evenly matched. Mr. Rogers and Ms. Slotkin had represented the same swing region of Central Michigan, in and around Lansing. Both came with national security credentials, he from his time at the F.B.I. and leading the House Intelligence Committee, she from the C.I.A. and national security posts in the White Houses of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Ms. Slotkin, 48 and a three-term lawmaker, led in the polls for much of the contest. She was the latest Democratic woman in Michigan to make a statewide impression after women there captured the governor’s mansion, the attorney general’s post and the office of secretary of state. With Ms. Stabenow, who has held the seat since 2001, a constant companion on the campaign trail, Ms. Slotkin emphasized abortion rights to her advantage.
But as the presidential race tightened in Michigan so did the Senate race, which in its closing weeks turned strikingly personal.
Mr. Rogers, who retired in 2015 after 14 years in the House, had to fend off questions about where he lived in Michigan after returning to the state from Florida to run for Ms. Stabenow’s seat. Ms. Slotkin was burdened by defections from the Democratic Party of many of Michigan’s Arab American and Muslim American voters over the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
But she was able to cobble together enough votes from Michigan’s cities, college campuses and increasingly Democratic suburbs to compensate for those losses. Her House district included Michigan State University, a base of support for all her congressional runs, and she leaned on students again.
Ms. Slotkin came to Congress as part of a small and tight-knit group of centrist Democratic women who were recruited to run for the House in 2018 as a counterweight to President Donald J. Trump. They flipped competitive seats in swing districts, helping their party take control of the chamber. Fluent in Arabic and Swahili, Ms. Slotkin has established herself as one of the top intelligence experts on Capitol Hill.
She gravitated toward national security after the Sept. 11 attacks, going to work as a Middle East analyst for the C.I.A. and ultimately serving three tours in Iraq before going on to work at the National Security Council. She later moved to the Pentagon, where she rose to become an acting assistant secretary of defense.
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