{"id":226986,"date":"2026-10-09T09:39:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-midterms-key-takeaways-from-senate-debates-in-michigan-georgia-and-maine-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T09:39:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:39:41","slug":"us-midterms-key-takeaways-from-senate-debates-in-michigan-georgia-and-maine-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-midterms-key-takeaways-from-senate-debates-in-michigan-georgia-and-maine-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"US midterms: key takeaways from Senate debates in Michigan, Georgia and Maine – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Candidates traded personal attacks and clashed over a range of issues in closely watched US Senate debates on Thursday, with control of Congress at stake
With just weeks left in the contentious midterm election campaign, candidates in a trio of highly-competitive Senate races debated Thursday night, clashing over the economy, tariffs, the Iran war and abortion rights, with control of the upper chamber at stake.
In Georgia, incumbent Democratic senator Jon Ossoff faced GOP representative Mike Collins. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul Al-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers debated over the state\u2019s open Senate seat. And in Maine, longtime senator Susan Collins met Democratic challenger Troy Jackson. Democrats<\/a> need to flip four Republican-held Senate seats to win the majority.
Here are the key takeaways from the battleground state debates.
Affordability was a major topic across all three debates on Thursday night, as voters consistently name the cost of goods, gas, housing and healthcare as their top concerns in this year\u2019s midterms.
\u201cCan you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries under this guy who\u2019s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp?\u201d El-Sayed asked during the Michigan debate, the first of two in one of this cycle\u2019s most fiercely contested races.
Both Rogers and El-Sayed said they support suspending a fuel tax to alleviate costs, while El-Sayed argued that the Iran war, which was driving up gas prices, needs to end. El-Sayed attacked Rogers for growing his personal wealth while in office as a US representative.
Rogers called El-Sayed \u201cbought off\u201d by billionaire George Soros, Hamas and Hezbollah. \u201cWe cannot afford Abdul, and we cannot risk his ideology,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n

In Georgia, Ossoff repeatedly asked Collins to justify his support for Trump\u2019s global tariff policies, which the senator said have \u201ccrushed Georgia families\u201d and \u201cstrangled\u201d economic growth.
\u201cLet\u2019s see if he has the courage to explain his votes,\u201d Ossoff said, adding later: \u201cStill have not heard an explanation for the tariffs.\u201d
Collins, who is trying to cut into Ossoff\u2019s lead, blamed inflation on Biden administration policies, singling out spending measures that his opponent had supported.
Later 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\u2019s signature tax cut and spending bill, the so-called Big Beautiful bill.
In the Georgia debate, a question about data centers erupted into a pointed, personal exchange between Ossoff and Collins.
\u201cMike Collins voted to take that money out of your pocket and out of your community and give it instead to data center developers,\u201d Ossoff said.
He then accused Collins of being a \u201cbigot\u201d who has \u201chired half the Third Reich\u201d \u2013 a reference to the congressman\u2019s history of employing staffers <\/a>who have expressed white nationalist, antisemitic, and extremist views online.
\u201cIf John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery,\u201d Ossoff said of the late civil rights icon and long-serving Georgia congressman, \u201cMike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists on the country.\u201d
Collins was asked directly about his son-in-law\u2019s social media posts<\/a> promoting white nationalist and antisemitic views.
\u201cYou know, Rick, that\u2019s my family,\u201d Collins replied. \u201cThat\u2019s the craziness that Jon Ossoff has been spewing out there.\u201d Collins noted that a New York man had recently been charged<\/a> after threatening to kill him, and added: \u201cI\u2019ve condemned racism, antisemitism, hate; I don\u2019t care where the source is. And I tell him that too, it\u2019s wrong. We have no place in this world for that.\u201d
Collins, meanwhile, sought to cast Ossoff as \u201cradical\u201d and an \u201cextremist\u201d whose record in the Senate had left the state \u201cless safe, more expensive and worse off\u201d.
Tariffs were also a topic of heated debate in Michigan, which shares hundreds of miles of border with Canada.
This week, Rogers publicly backtracked on previous support for Trump\u2019s tariffs on the US\u2019s northern neighbor<\/a>, saying in a campaign ad that \u201cCanada is not our enemy\u201d and that the \u201ctariff war\u201d needed to end now.
During Thursday night\u2019s debate, Rogers said he had spoken to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, this week to advocate for a deal between the two countries. There are tariffs in place that are \u201ctoo high and not helpful for us\u201d, Rogers said.
El-Sayed said he supports targeted, logical tariffs that protect Michigan manufacturing, but nothing like the \u201cham-fisted, chaotic, self-serving\u201d tariffs Trump put in place. He called out Rogers for \u201cflip-flopping\u201d on the issue, saying he was only reversing his stance because of \u201csagging poll numbers\u201d.
\u201cHe\u2019s doing an ad drinking a Labatt and talking about the Red Wings, pretending like he was not for this the entire time,\u201d El-Sayed said. \u201cBe serious, my guy.\u201d
In Maine, discussions about gas prices and the war in Iran raised notable tension in the second debate<\/a> between Jackson and Collins, who is seeking a sixth term in her seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s the Chairman of Appropriations,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cMoney has to come through them for these wars \u2013 she still can do something.\u201d
Collins, who plans to continue leading the Appropriations committee if re-elected, said she had repeatedly supported war powers resolutions to halt Trump\u2019s military action in Iran.
But 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\u2019re making money,\u201d he said, prompting a furious response from Collins, who called the allegation \u201cabsolutely outrageous\u201d.
\u201cYou owe me an apology,\u201d she said.
In Maine, both candidates were also pressed to address inconsistencies in their positions on reproductive rights, a crucial issue for voters in the state.
\u201cOur records have changed,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cMine has gotten better \u2013 hers has gotten worse.\u201d
He pointed to Collins\u2019 vote to confirm supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, who helped overturn Roe v Wade in 2022<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

Collins sought to turn the issue back on her opponent, noting his past stances on abortion that have left many voters wary.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom 2000 until he ran for the house seat in 2013 was very anti-choice,\u201d she said, accusing Jackson of having held \u201cextremist\u201d views on abortion. \u201cHe was for a bill that would not allow abortion when the mother\u2019s life was at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also pointed to legislation she helped write that sought to \u201ccodify Roe v Wade nationwide,\u201d but the bill never made it passed the Senate.
In Michigan, Rogers repeatedly attacked El-Sayed by attempting to tie him 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\u2019s mom and sister, prompting El-Sayed to say at one point that Rogers should just come out and say what he\u2019s been dancing around all night, after Rogers\u2019 repeated references to terrorist groups.
\u201cHe wants this to be about anything but his own record,\u201d El-Sayed said.
Rogers claimed El-Sayed refused to condemn a terrorist attack in Michigan earlier this year and the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks in Gaza, although El-Sayed said he had condemned both.
But, El-Sayed added: \u201cI\u2019m not somebody who tries to make political theater out of other people\u2019s pain.\u201d
He also retorted to Rogers: \u201cDid you sell your yachts?\u201d Rogers responded: \u201cI never owned a yacht in Florida, brother.\u201d
After a 30-second commercial break, moderator Rick Albin said that in his 30 years of hosting debates, he\u2019d never seen the sparring continue during the break, but tonight, it had.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Candidates traded personal attacks and clashed over a range of issues in closely watched US Senate debates on Thursday, with control of Congress at stakeWith just weeks left in the contentious midterm election campaign, candidates in a trio of highly-competitive Senate races debated Thursday night, clashing over the economy, tariffs, the Iran war and abortion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}