Michigan, Georgia GOP Senate candidates have feet held to the fire

In the Thursday, Oct. 8 debates, Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate showed they will have a tough time winning if they can’t shake off their deep loyalty to Donald Trump and, in Georgia, their ties to known fascists and neo nazis.

The Georgia Democrat, Jon Ossoff, running against the Republican, Mike Collins, repeatedly challenged Collins for his open ties to extreme right white nationalists and neo nazis.

Ossoff accused Republican Rep. Mike Collins of “personal bigotry” by surrounding himself with people linked to white nationalists and people online who push Nazi imagery. “You hired half the Third Reich to staff your office,” he told Collins, who seemed to squirm at the remarks. “You have brought dishonor to the state of Georgia.”

At no point did Collins specifically deny that he had connections to white nationalists and white supremacists.

Collins hired an online supporter of several white nationalist groups to work in his office. “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, you would be grabbing a billy club,” Ossoff declared.

John Lewis, the iconic civil rights activist who rose to hold office in the U.S. Congress, was beaten almost to death by Alabama cops on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in a march that helped launch the modern-day civil rights movement.

In Michigan last night, the Democrat, Abdul El-Sayed, called his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on the carpet for his record in support of almost everything the Trump administration has forced on the people of the country. He said that Rogers has strongly backed all the policies, the war on Iran, the tariffs, the immigration policies, and more that have contributed to the high prices people are facing every day.

Going on the defensive, Rogers tried to disassociate himself from some Trump policies, including immigration. He said of the ICE attacks on immigrants and their supporters that “there are things that could have been done differently.”

Dr. El-Sayed scoffed at that, saying that ICE agents were murdering people all over the country, and he asked Rogers, “What would you do differently regarding that?”

Visibly uncomfortable, Rogers said of the immigration policy, “It has to change.” On the war in Iran, he also said simply, “It has to come to an end.”

Activists in Michigan are saying that in Iran, in particular, Rogers is extremely hypocritical. He has been a supporter of the war on Iran since the beginning and has been calling for attacks on Iran for years, even before the current conflict began.

At no point during the discussion on immigration policy or the war on Iran did he specify what should have been done differently. 

Rogers also said that “the tariffs against Canada have to come to an end, it’s time now for that to happen.”

Rogers’ mentor, Trump, has accused El-Sayed of being a supporter of terrorism who sides against Israel “every chance he gets.” Rogers tried to put El-Sayed on the spot over his opposition to genocide in Gaza, and he demanded of El-Sayed that he tell the audience. “Which is a bigger threat to the U.S., Israel or Iran?” El-Sayed characteristically did not flinch and responded by saying both countries, at different times, posed a threat, and accusing one or the other of being worse did not serve the interests of making peace in the region.

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