This Week on the Hill: Michigan Senate debate, Trump rallies and Obama hits the trail

With just more than two weeks until Election Day, candidates are stepping up their campaigns in a final push to win over voters.

In Michigan, Democratic progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers are set to face off Wednesday in a televised debate, hosted by WXYZ-TV. The two candidates are competing for the open U.S. Senate seat, a contest that will help determine control of the upper chamber.

President Trump will keep up a dynamic travel schedule stumping for GOP candidates, with rallies scheduled in Wichita, Kan., on Monday; Greenville, N.C., on Tuesday; Clemson, S.C., on Wednesday; Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday; Fort Myers, Fla., on Friday; Georgia on Saturday; and Michigan on Oct. 25. Trump is aiming to boost Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), among others.

Former President Obama, meanwhile, will campaign with El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, joining him and other Michigan Democrats at a rally that will also feature Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson. Obama’s visit will kick off the first day of in-person early voting in the Great Lakes State.

He is also expected to travel to Cleveland on Saturday to stump for Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown (D) and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton (D).

And former President Clinton will campaign with Democratic candidate David Jolly, who’s running in the Florida gubernatorial race, on Tuesday in Hollywood, Fla.

El-Sayed and Rogers to face off again: El-Sayed has been leading Rogers in polls by several percentage points, as Democrats are looking to flip control of the Senate.

Trump to boost GOP in midterms: Trump’s campaign trips come as Republicans have been confronting voter frustrations over rising gas and grocery prices.

Obama to travel to Michigan and Ohio: Obama will stump for El-Sayed and Brown, both of whom are competing in tough Senate races.

Clinton to stump for Jolly: Jolly is facing off against Republican Rep. Byron Donalds in the Florida gubernatorial race. Donalds has been endorsed by Trump.

El-Sayed and Rogers to spar on the debate stage Wednesday

El-Sayed and Rogers will face off for the second time.

The two had participated in a debate hosted by Nexstar’s Grand Rapids, Mich., station and NewsNation earlier this month, where they lobbed personal attacks centering on corporate and foreign influence, carpetbagging, Trump and their professional careers.

El-Sayed looked to make the debate a referendum on the president by tying Rogers to Trump. The GOP candidate sought to cast himself as bipartisan while characterizing the Democrat as dishonest. Last month, the Democrat took the debate stage alone after Rogers declined to participate, accusing the host outlet of bias.

A Suffolk University poll released last month found that 47 percent of likely Michigan voters would back El-Sayed and 40 percent said they support Rogers in the November contest. A RealClearPolling average of polls between Sept. 24 and Oct. 14 found that El-Sayed is leading Rogers by 2.6 percentage points.

Rogers, who is endorsed by the president, has sought to walk a tightrope with Trump amid his unpopularity. Rogers called for an end to the trade war with Canada, and he previously called for the conflict in Iran to come to an end.

He has also broken with the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, suggesting in the first debate that actions taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota had gone too far.

Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been stumping for El-Sayed, even transferring $1 million to him in the final push of the race.

Trump is expected to campaign this week in North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, Georgia, Michigan and Florida, urging voters to turn out as Republicans grow increasingly concerned about suffering significant losses on Nov. 3.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election handicapper, shifted the Kansas Senate race to a “toss-up” amid growing voter dissatisfaction with the GOP over the economy.

The group noted in its explanation that it was “hesitant” to shift the race, but “a full-on Republican rescue operation appears underway for” Marshall, who is running for his second term against Democrat Adam Hamilton.

In Iowa, Hinson is running a tough race against Democratic candidate Josh Turek for the Iowa Senate seat. Hinson has publicly tried to separate herself from Trump, calling for an immediate end to the Iran war. Cook Political Report refers to Iowa as “ground zero for backlash to the effect of Trump’s tariffs and Iran War on the agriculture industry.”

And Graham is running against Democratic pediatrician Annie Andrews in the South Carolina Senate race. Graham, however, is seen as the favorite to win in November, with Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) forecasting a 70 percent probability that the GOP senator wins next month.

Obama to stump for Democrats in Michigan and Ohio

Obama is slated to travel to Cleveland to stump for Brown and Acton on Saturday. Brown is trying to unseat Sen. Jon Husted (R), who was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Mike DeWine (R) after JD Vance became vice president, while Acton is up against biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to be the state’s chief executive.

In an endorsement video released by Brown’s campaign this month, Obama praised the former U.S. senator for fighting for working people and encouraging job growth during his presidency.

“This race is going to be close,” the former president said in the video. “It could determine which party controls the Senate and whether Ohioans can count on the people in Washington to be fighting for you.”

He will also travel to Detroit in an effort to boost El-Sayed’s campaign. Winning the Michigan Senate seat could be pivotal to Democrats’ hopes of flipping the upper chamber, where they need to net four seats to take control. DDHQ forecasts Democrats have a narrow, 56 percent probability of winning the upper chamber, compared with a 76 percent chance of winning the House.

After Obama’s 2012 election, El-Sayed wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed that “Obama was not the right choice. He just wasn’t the wrong one.” The Michigan Democrat also named off his disagreements with Obama’s record of deportations and expansion of drone warfare in the Middle East, among other criticisms.

But he had addressed that past criticism in an interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker this month, when he said that he knows “Obama was handed a really difficult set of circumstances, and he did his best.”

El-Sayed also said his campaign and Democratic candidates in 2026 might “push on in different ways than his administration.”

“But it is to say that where we push differently is because we’ve learned from what he’s done and because we stand on the shoulders of giants,” the Michigan Democrat said. “And so, I am so grateful to have been a young man in my 20s with Barack Hussein Obama as president. I would never have seen myself running for office.”

Clinton to campaign for Jolly in Florida

Clinton is slated on Tuesday to stump for Jolly, the Democratic nominee in the Florida gubernatorial race.

Jolly served in the House as a Republican before becoming an independent in 2019, following woes with Trump. He later registered as a Democrat and launched his gubernatorial bid in his new party.

Jolly has previously said he’s not focused on the political divide within the party but rather is seeking solutions to big-ticket issues impacting voters ahead of the midterm elections.

“I’m in a very postpartisan, postideological space. I reject the left-right spectrum. I don’t care about the left-right spectrum. We have big problems that need big solutions. So what I did as a Democrat is amplify the fundamental values in our party, that the economy should work for everybody,” Jolly said on NewsNation’s “Cuomo.”

Several polls have shown Donalds leading Jolly by a wide margin. A Stetson University poll , conducted among 862 likely voters, found that 52 percent would back Donalds, while 41 percent of voters would support Jolly. Three percent said they would back a different candidate, and 5 percent of voters said they were undecided.

Caroline Vakil, Sarah Davis, Julia Mueller and Ryan Mancini contributed.