Former Rep. Justin Amash said Monday that he had not voted for either Abdul El-Sayed or former Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race. Still, he argued that El-Sayed would be “far less dangerous in practice than Rogers.”
Rogers, a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump, is running against Democrat El-Sayed in a closely watched contest.
Amash said he disagrees with both candidates and believes neither particularly likes him. He also said he does not vote for the “lesser of two evils,” but supports a candidate only when he genuinely wants that person in office. He has already cast his ballot, he added, and voted for neither candidate. Even so, Amash said, he believes Rogers would pose a much greater danger in the Senate.
To explain his view, Amash compared El-Sayed with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has endorsed El-Sayed and shares many of his policy positions. Amash said he considers some of Sanders’s proposals deeply harmful, but argued that the structure of government makes it difficult for Sanders to enact and enforce them.
Rogers, by contrast, could have significant influence on issues where a single lawmaker’s vote may matter, Amash said. He pointed to war powers, surveillance, privacy, free speech, criminal justice, and government oversight. In those areas, Amash argued, Rogers presents a greater threat to individual liberty and the Constitution than Sanders, whom he considers better than the typical member of Congress on those issues.
Amash said he expects El-Sayed to follow a path similar to Sanders on policy, making him the less dangerous choice in practice. He stressed that he was not calling El-Sayed a good candidate, but comparing which of the two would be better overall.
The campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Amash served in the House from 2011 to 2021 and voted to impeach Trump in 2019. He spent most of his time in Congress as a Republican, changed his affiliation to independent in 2019, and became a Libertarian the following year. Rogers defeated Amash in the 2024 Republican Senate primary, then lost the general election to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.
Rep. Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat who lost this year’s Senate primary to El-Sayed, endorsed Rogers on Sunday.
