Michigan Senate rivals clash over 9/11 records

Michigan’s U.S. Senate race has turned sharply toward the legacy of Sept. 11, with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers trading attacks over old comments, campaign ties and congressional votes on benefits for first responders and survivors.

At a Friday town hall in Lansing, El-Sayed opened with a moment of silence marking 25 years since the terrorist attacks, speaking to a room of college students, many of whom were not alive in 2001. He then criticized Rogers, a former congressman who represented Michigan from 2001 to 2015, for votes against the 2010 James Zadroga Act, which provided medical treatment and financial aid to 9/11 first responders and survivors.

“Rather than vote to make sure that the brave first responders who ran into the rubble that day to save lives, rather to make sure that they had healthcare, he voted not once but twice against giving them healthcare,” El-Sayed said.

Rogers supported financial aid for victims soon after the attacks, CBS News reported, but opposed the Zadroga Act. At the time, he argued the aid should be funded annually and warned the bill “jeopardizes the financial health of the United States,” The Hill reported then. The Guardian reported that the legislation helped treat and monitor 40,000 people who worked in toxic conditions after the attacks and covered care for more than 50 types of cancer linked to Ground Zero exposure.

Rogers rejected El-Sayed’s criticism. “The insinuation that I do not support the victims or their families is patently false,” he wrote on X, saying he had advocated for an annual $150 million appropriation to support survivors and victims’ families.

The dispute follows Republican efforts to link El-Sayed to Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who campaigned with him during the Democratic primary and said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11.” Piker later said the remarks were inappropriate and that he “should’ve used more precise and better use of the language there.” The Guardian reported that Piker apologized and described the comments as a poor attempt at satire. El-Sayed has called the comments “dumb” and has since distanced himself from Piker.

El-Sayed’s own past comments have also drawn scrutiny. In 2021, he said, “9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people.” Republicans have argued the remark shows he is too extreme. El-Sayed has repeatedly condemned the attacks, saying Friday that “nothing can justify the murder of innocent civilians.”

At a Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Vice President JD Vance said Democrats “can find sympathy for the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11.” Rogers, speaking at the same convention, framed the Michigan race as a fight over “the soul of our country” and said El-Sayed and Piker “attack America,” “excuse extremism” and “treat our country like it’s the villain.”

El-Sayed supporters and Muslim advocacy groups have called efforts to associate him with the attacks Islamophobic. Tyler Mitchell, a Democratic voter in Michigan and Afghanistan War veteran, said Republicans are targeting El-Sayed because he is Muslim. “They look at him, because he’s a Muslim, so they target that with the rhetoric about being dangerous,” Mitchell said. “It’s disrespectful to people’s intellect.”

GOP groups supporting Rogers have run at least three ads referencing 9/11 and Piker’s comments. The Senate Leadership Fund, the leading super PAC for Senate Republicans, has announced more than $45 million in Michigan ad reservations this fall.

The Guardian also reported that Rogers voted against other measures involving funding or protections for veterans, first responders or their pensions in 2002, 2011, 2013 and 2014. Rogers’ campaign responded to the outlet by saying, “Any attempt to distract from Abdul making Hasan the centerpiece of his campaign is incredibly disrespectful to the thousands of Americans who lost their lives that day.”