Friend,
Some letters are hard to write. This is one of them.
Just before Election Day, Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, announced that he will not take a pro-life stand on abortion.
Mr. Rogers could have made the best of the Dobbs decision, which made abortion a state issue as well as a federal one. Sending it to the states has allowed several states to pass laws protecting unborn children. Abdul El-Sayed wants to eliminate state pro-life laws and make abortion legal in all 50 states. Mike Rogers could have simply said he respects the decision made by Michigan voters—without parroting pro-abortion lines.
While we believe that Abdul El-Sayed would be far worse, CatholicVote cannot endorse a candidate who supports abortion. There will be Catholics who will now say that they cannot vote for either candidate, and we understand and respect that decision.
Many of you gave, knocked on doors, and prayed for his campaign because you trusted that he would stand for the unborn, as he did for years in Congress. I trusted that too.
The priority of life
So let me tell you plainly: I am deeply disappointed, and I know many of you are as well and CatholicVote now will regrettably be suspending our endorsement.
The principles that guide CatholicVote are clear and consistent and also hierarchical. The teaching of the Catholic Church is that the threat of abortion is the preeminent priority because all rights are second to that first right, the right to life.
While many issues are prudential: data centers, tax rates, how best to fund and operate education, this issue is non-negotiable.
The whole picture
But we at CatholicVote still owe you the whole picture, which is now a rather more complicated look at the lesser of two evils.
Rogers' opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, offers Catholic voters no refuge. He is a firm supporter of abortion on demand and abortion expansion, and on issue after issue, from his total support of transgender ideology, his total disregard for parental rights, his opposition to school choice, and his problematic ties to Islamic radicals—to mention just a few—makes clear that his agenda runs directly against what the Church teaches.
As I wrote to you recently, El-Sayed has also responded to fair questions about his judgment with false equivalences that put our own Church at the center of them. Rogers' failure to defend life does not make that alternative any less grave. At the very least, he will not expand access to abortion.
Living out faithful citizenship calls on Catholics to engage in prayer, evaluate each candidate's record with honesty, and occasionally cast a ballot for the candidate who is less flawed.
Go forward bravely,
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