Senate candidates spar over affordability, tariffs in three-state debate night

Ossoff calls Collins ‘bigot’ over staffers’ extremist views

With just weeks left in the midterm campaign, candidates in three highly competitive Senate races debated Thursday night, trading personal attacks and clashing over the economy, tariffs, the war in Iran and abortion rights with control of the upper chamber at stake. In Georgia, Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff faced Republican representative Mike Collins. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers debated the state’s open Senate seat in the first of two scheduled debates, in one of this cycle’s most fiercely contested races. In Maine, longtime Republican senator Susan Collins, who is seeking a sixth term, faced Democratic challenger Troy Jackson.

Democrats need to flip four Republican-held Senate seats to win the majority. Affordability was a major topic across all three debates, with voters consistently naming the cost of goods, gas, housing and healthcare as their top concerns in this year’s midterms.

El-Sayed opened the Michigan debate with an affordability question directed at Rogers: “Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries under this guy who’s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp?” Both candidates said they support suspending a fuel tax to ease costs, while El-Sayed argued that the war in Iran, which he said was driving up gas prices, needs to end. El-Sayed also attacked Rogers for growing his personal wealth while serving as a US representative.

Rogers called El-Sayed “bought off” by billionaire George Soros, Hamas and Hezbollah. “We cannot afford Abdul, and we cannot risk his ideology,” Rogers said. Rogers repeatedly sought to tie El-Sayed to Muslim terrorist groups, including Hamas, and suggested government surveillance would only bother someone if he or his family had something to hide. Rogers brought up El-Sayed’s mom and sister, prompting El-Sayed to say at one point that Rogers should just come out and say what he had been dancing around all night. Rogers claimed El-Sayed refused to condemn a terrorist attack in Michigan earlier this year and the 7 October Hamas attacks in Gaza; El-Sayed said he had condemned both. “He wants this to be about anything but his own record,” El-Sayed said. “I’m not somebody who tries to make political theater out of other people’s pain.”

Tariffs drew heated debate in Michigan, which shares hundreds of miles of border with Canada. Rogers publicly backtracked this week on previous support for Trump’s tariffs on the US’s northern neighbor, saying in a campaign ad that “Canada is not our enemy” and that the “tariff war” needed to end now. During the debate, Rogers said he had spoken to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick this week to advocate for a deal between the two countries, describing tariffs in place as “too high and not helpful for us.” El-Sayed said he supports targeted tariffs that protect Michigan manufacturing, but nothing like the “ham-fisted, chaotic, self-serving” tariffs Trump put in place. He accused Rogers of “flip-flopping” on the issue, saying he was only reversing his stance because of “sagging poll numbers.” “He’s doing an ad drinking a Labatt and talking about the Red Wings, pretending like he was not for this the entire time,” El-Sayed said. “Be serious, my guy.”

In Georgia, Ossoff repeatedly asked Collins to justify his support for Trump’s global tariff policies, which the senator said have “crushed Georgia families” and “strangled” economic growth. “Let’s see if he has the courage to explain his votes,” Ossoff said, adding later: “Still have not heard an explanation for the tariffs.” Collins, who is trying to cut into Ossoff’s lead, blamed inflation on Biden administration policies, singling out spending measures his opponent had supported.

A question about data centers sparked a pointed exchange between the two Georgia candidates. “Mike Collins voted to take that money out of your pocket and out of your community and give it instead to data center developers,” Ossoff said. He accused Collins of being a “bigot” who has “hired half the Third Reich” — a reference to the congressman’s history of employing staffers who have expressed white nationalist, antisemitic and extremist views online. “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery,” Ossoff said of the late civil rights leader and long-serving Georgia congressman, “Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists on the country.”

Asked directly about his son-in-law’s social media posts promoting white nationalist and antisemitic views, Collins replied: “You know, Rick, that’s my family. That’s the craziness that Jon Ossoff has been spewing out there.” Collins noted that a New York man had recently been charged after threatening to kill him, and added: “I’ve condemned racism, antisemitism, hate; I don’t care where the source is. And I tell him that too, it’s wrong. We have no place in this world for that.” Collins sought to cast Ossoff as “radical” and an “extremist” whose record in the Senate had left the state “less safe, more expensive and worse off.”

In Maine, where polls show a tight race, Jackson focused his remarks on pocketbook issues, including the sharp spike in heating oil costs and high energy prices. Collins defended her record and argued that Maine had benefited from the $50bn rural health transformation fund that was appended to Trump’s signature tax cut and spending bill, the so-called Big Beautiful bill.

Discussion of gas prices and the war in Iran raised notable tension in the second Maine debate between Jackson and Collins. “She’s the Chairman of Appropriations,” Jackson said. “Money has to come through them for these wars – she still can do something.” Collins, who plans to continue leading the Appropriations committee if re-elected, said she had repeatedly supported war powers resolutions to halt Trump’s military action in Iran. Jackson pushed further, accusing the senator and her husband of profiting from the war. “She could use her leverage to stop this war, but instead they’re making money,” he said, prompting a furious response from Collins, who called the allegation “absolutely outrageous.” “You owe me an apology,” she said.

Both Maine candidates were also pressed to address inconsistencies in their positions on reproductive rights. “Our records have changed,” Jackson said. “Mine has gotten better – hers has gotten worse.” He pointed to Collins’ vote to confirm Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, who helped overturn Roe v Wade in 2022. Collins, one of just two Republican senators who supports abortion rights, has said she does not regret her vote for Kavanaugh, even though she believed he had given her private assurances before his 2018 confirmation that he would not overturn the landmark ruling. Collins sought to turn the issue back on Jackson, noting his past stances: “From 2000 until he ran for the house seat in 2013 was very anti-choice,” she said, accusing him of having held “extremist” views on abortion. “He was for a bill that would not allow abortion when the mother’s life was at risk.” She also pointed to legislation she helped write that sought to codify Roe v Wade nationwide, but the bill never passed the Senate.

The Michigan debate grew so heated that after a 30-second commercial break, moderator Rick Albin said that in his 30 years of hosting debates, he’d never seen the sparring continue during the break, but tonight, it had. At one point El-Sayed asked Rogers: “Did you sell your yachts?” Rogers responded: “I never owned a yacht in Florida, brother.”