U.S. Senate candidates take questions at Detroit Economic Club

Well, Rup, this has been a really busy day just trying to keep up with these campaigns. And right now, we're in Detroit. We just finished observing a rally and talk with Raphael Warnock and Garland Gilchrist and also with Abdul Al-Sayed. So a lot of people packed in here. You can see the chairs behind me and everything. So this was obviously a big get out the vote. Saw a lot of people leaving with Abdul Al-Sayed lawn signs and everything. But prior to this, we got to hear from both candidates. And I think we have some video of the Detroit Economic Club. This was at the Masonic Temple earlier today. And so they were each questioned for about a half an hour or so about various topics. First, Mike Rogers and then Abdul El-Sayed. And it was a really interesting, substantive conversation. They talked about everything from education to AI. war, the debt, you've got it. So I want you, though, to hear from each of them about what they kind of characterized as some sort of untraditional coalitions that each of them seem to be building in terms of their efforts to get out the vote. We have built coalitions that really are very untraditional for a Republican candidate. We've spent a lot of time here in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac. I think if we're going to get our state right. We have to have everybody included in this forward progress. We can't do it without education. We can't do it without the right kind of framework to encourage building and other things, get our kids interested in the skilled trades, which I think we can. All of that, I think, is on the ballot. So I spent the last two weeks up north. I had rooms of 500 in Iron Mountain, 600 in Escanaba, 1300 in Marquette. Our coalition is going to be anybody who has felt locked out by their politics, and wants those politics to be unlocked for them. I'll also tell you this, right? If you look at polling, I perform better among Republicans, Donald Trump voters, than any Democrat running in a statewide office this year. Why? Because a lot of those folks are sick and tired of being locked out, and we're building a coalition of the locked out against the people doing the locking out. So one of the things that we heard from each of those candidates today was about these sort of untraditional voters. You heard from Abdul El-Sayed, he talked about how he He was up in the UP and a lot of people didn't expect a lot of folks there who may have tended to vote Republican to show up for him. He said he had good crowds and has gotten a lot of support. He's gonna work very hard here in the city of Detroit, where perhaps some black voters, perhaps in the suburbs, Jewish voters may not be as committed or excited about him. But then we heard from Mike Rogers who said, look, I've got Democrats for Mike Rogers. I'm working hard in Detroit as well to build a coalition there with black voters, Jewish voters, typically Democratic voters who he says are coming over to his side. So how does this all play out? It's gonna be very interesting to see over the next two weeks. Root back to you and happy birthday.