The wife of Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers is at gas stations in Detroit handing out $10 gas gift cards while begging people to vote for her husband. This is an illegal, desperate, and ironic move given that the spiking gas prices were directly caused by President Trump’s Iran war, which Rogers has supported wholeheartedly.
The Michigan Chronicle’s Sam Robinson spotted Rogers’s wife handing out the gift cards on Tuesday.
“[We’re just] talking to some folks that are struggling with this gas crisis. We’re all struggling with incredibly high gas prices,” she said. “And Mike knows this.” The $10 amount—a measly margin for someone trying to fill up their tank—is supposed to represent how much people would save with Rogers’s proposal to suspend the state gas tax.
This is straight-up bribery, and it has not been well received by those to Rogers’s left.
“Legalities aside, this is so ham-handed and cringy it cannot be the brainchild of any political professional,” Michigan political strategist Jeff Timmer wrote. “It screams ‘placating the panicked candidate and/or spouse’. Parks and Recreation Leslie Knope city council campaign optics.”
“$10????? Weak ass shit not even getting them to the westside and back,” a Detroit-based X account chimed in.
Gas in Michigan is $4.57 per gallon right now, nearly 25 cents above the national average. That high price is directly due to the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and the Strait of Hormuz is closed because Trump and Israel started bombing Iran eight months ago. And yet Rogers—and virtually every other Republican running for Congress next month—cannot bring himself to solidly oppose the war, even as the majority of Americans do.
Most polls have Rogers slightly trailing his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed.