HOWELL, Mich. >> Late afternoon at American Legion Devereaux Post 141, an hour northwest of Detroit. Flannel shirts, denim trousers and long-neck beer bottles. The flat-screen televisions are muted, “Judge Judy” on some, taped Red Wings hockey on others. The Republican candidate for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, a veteran whose post this is, arrives accompanied by two U.S. senators.

Two percent of the Senate will exhort 14 voters to help make Mike Rogers their colleague. This is retail politics where small margins matter: Michigan was the most closely divided state in 2016 when it favored Donald Trump by 0.23 percent. In 2020, it was the third-closest (behind Arizona and Georgia) when it favored Joe Biden by 2.8 percent.

Rogers, 61, served in the Army, then became an FBI agent before winning (by 111 votes) a seat in Congress. There he served 7 terms, rising to chair the House Intelligence Committee. His opponent this year, three-term congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, 48, also has a résumé suited to this moment of national security crises: She has held policymaking positions in the Defense and State departments and in President Barack Obama’s National Security Council.

But Michiganders, like most Americans, are less interested in the darkening world than in inflation and immigration. The price of eggs and the porous southern border are seen as symptoms of social fraying.

Michigan’s numerous and largely anti-Israel Muslims are, however, interested in foreign policy. And 145,000 of them voted in 2020, when Biden carried the state by 154,000 votes. This community harbors sympathy for Hamas and fury against the Biden administration. Biden’s vice president worries about this — and it might trickle down the ballot to other Democrats.

In the 1980s, when the domestic auto industry hit hard times, Texans spoke of many arriving “black tag people” — job-seeking migrants with black Michigan license plates. Dark memories make Michigan unhappy about Democrats’ adoration of electric vehicles. In a notably defensive and tendentious ad, Slotkin says:

“I live on a dirt road, nowhere near a charging station. So, I don’t own an electric car. No one should tell us what to buy, and no one is going to mandate anything.”

Last month, Slotkin voted against overturning an Environmental Protection Administration mandate that auto manufacturers reduce their fleet emissions so much that EVs must replace ever-larger portions of gasoline-burning vehicles. Progressive policy is to eliminate such vehicles, not candidly, with legislation passed by democratically accountable representatives after public debate, but by stealthy bureaucratic fiats.

Manufacturing EVs requires fewer autoworkers than manufacturing internal combustion engine vehicles. EVs’ share of Michigan’s car market is 4.7 percent, lower than in 30 other states.

The Rogers-Slotkin race is probably a dead heat (within the margin of polling error) despite Slotkin’s 5-to-1 spending advantage — until now. The national Republican funding apparatus, hitherto focused on other Senate races, recently gave Rogers’s campaign a $30 million infusion. Some of this will finance an ad that will begin raising an issue that is helping Republicans in several Senate races.

The Biden-Harris administration has changed bureaucratic regulations that interpret statutory language forbidding discrimination on the basis of sex, creating a basis for a civil right for transgender women (biological men, born male) to compete in women’s sports. As with EVs, Slotkin has voted against blocking this instance of progressivism promoted by bureaucratic-legerdemain.

It is progressives’ turn to experience a discomfort conservatives know too well. For years, many conservatives placated right-to-life constituents by endorsing extreme antiabortion policies: outlaw abortion, no exceptions; legalize it only during the first six weeks of pregnancy. Then, in 2022, the Supreme Court spoiled the fun by restoring abortion as a state voting issue, and those conservatives found themselves impaled on positions unpopular with majorities.

Now, progressives are experiencing comparable discomfort as conservatives publicize progressives’ fingerprints on the oblique bureaucratic maneuvers used to promote policies unpopular with non-progressives. Furthermore, after the Supreme Court’s decision, Michigan embedded abortion rights in the state constitution, defusing the issue. Politico reports that a July poll of Michigan women “found that majorities across age and party affiliation viewed abortion rights in the state as ‘decided’ rather than ‘still being determined,’” and the issue was “a distant fourth” among Michigan women’s voting motivations.

George Will writes a column for the Washington Post.