Michigan senate candidate Mike Rogers takes the lead on GOP door-knocking

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Former Rep. Mike Rogers, aiming to return to Washington as Michigan’s first Republican senator in more than 20 years, is deploying a high-tech independent canvassing effort throughout the must-win state.

It’s even helping other GOP candidates — including Donald Trump — overcome the party’s weak ground game.

“Mike Rogers six months ago didn’t think that he would have a state political party that was functioning, that would get out the vote for him, so he’s got his own operation in place,” Michigan GOP Chair Pete Hoekstra told The Post.

While the Republican National Committee has shifted its resources away from canvassing uncommitted and likely GOP voters in favor of training poll-watchers and attorneys to be election-integrity watchdogs, Rogers and his team are knocking on the doors of low-propensity voters who could make all the difference Election Day — if they show up.

A veteran of Michigan politics, Rogers left the state Senate as majority leader to represent the 8th Congressional District, ending his 2001 to 2015 tenure as House Intelligence Committee chairman.

Now running against Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin to fill retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s seat, the former Army officer and FBI special agent used his own substantial political resources to develop a door-knocking team to rival Dem get-out-the-vote efforts — independently of the GOP.

The campaign started rapping on doors in late May — before the primary — racking up 250,000 knocks so far, Rogers campaign spokesman Chris Gustafson told The Post.

“We hit the ground running right off the bat there. Building out the field team, expanding it to its current size, where it’s just over three dozen staffers on the ground now in Michigan,” he said.

The calendar played a big role in Rogers’ early start in building his get-out-the-vote apparatus: The state’s August primary is late, especially since Michigan starts sending absentee ballots before September’s end.

Jason Roe, a Republican strategist working to elect Tom Barrett in the Wolverine State’s 7th District, told The Post he’s not surprised Rogers has gotten support — including at the former prez’s first rally after the Butler assassination attempt — from the top of the GOP ticket.

“Frankly, I think one of the reasons Trump endorsed Rogers is that he was the only candidate in the field that really had the ability to build a statewide organization. Because he had been in Congress and had all these relationships with political people around the state, he was the only guy that could really stand up a statewide ground operation.”

Barrett faces Democrat Curtis Hertel Jr. in one of the most closely watched and hotly contested Michigan downballot contests this cycle. His campaign also stands to benefit from Rogers’ strong ground-game operation, which Gustafson says has contacted more than 1.75 million voters.

It uses an application called Advantage, which compiles a comprehensive data set and scores each targeted voter on how likely he or she is to vote Republican.

When the Rogers campaign invited The Post to join a door-knocking team in suburban Lansing, it revealed the app shows a map of every neighborhood, with color-coded dots signaling whether the voter is likely Republican, likely Democrat or an independent.

In Michigan, where voters do no register by party affiliation, apps like Advantage assist campaigns in making their best guess of a voter’s leanings.

Gustafson said his team is very confident in the software, which can predict whether voters are Republican based on anything from having an NRA membership to watching the Golf Channel.

By going door to door to gauge and record voters’ inclinations, Republicans have been able to harvest data that will become more robust with each election cycle.

“It’s all a model,” Gustafson said, explaining the targeting technology. “Part of it’s polling, part of it’s data from the field. Put it all together, and it projects an election result. And the Friday before the election in 2016, it projected an 11,000-vote win for Donald Trump. And the margin was 10,704.” (President Biden won the state in 2020.)

Michigan has been tough terrain for Republicans seeking the Senate, and Trump’s name on the ticket is expected to boost Rogers. The former president’s early endorsement didn’t hurt either.

Targeting low-propensity voters is a top priority, and dropping Trump’s name right away makes all the difference with on-the-fence folks.

“I think there’s no better motivator in modern Republican political history for like the low-pro, forgotten people than Donald Trump,” Bill Mackey, the Rogers campaign’s political director, told The Post. “And I think people are coming out explicitly to vote for Trump. I find it hard to believe that they’re not also gonna punch the ticket for Mike.”

Similarly, the campaign hopes its presence will assist other Republicans down the ticket. Gustafson says all of Michigan’s GOP campaigns distribute each other’s literature to strengthen the party across the board.

“This is all coordinated ’cause we’re all trying to win together. Rising tides lift all ships, right? A strong top of the ticket lifts the entire ticket.”