Left-wing Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is out with an ad featuring a "lifelong Republican" who says he has voted "nine times" for Republican Mike Rogers. The supposed GOP stalwart, Rich Perlberg, is a former newspaper publisher who endorsed John Kerry and Barack Obama for president and has since called for "embracing progressive values" on his Substack page called "White Man's Burden."
In the ad, which El-Sayed began airing on YouTube this week, Perlberg, who is identified only as "Rich," says, "I'm a lifelong Republican. I voted for Mike Rogers nine times. Nine times. But years in Washington changed Mike." He goes on to accuse Rogers of "corruption" and argue that El-Sayed will "put Michigan first."
Perlberg has expressed support for Republicans in the past and ran as a GOP candidate for the State House in 2014. But he's far from the tried-and-true Republican he claims to be in the ad: He endorsed at least two Democrats for president and, more recently, has embraced a slew of liberal candidates and causes.
Perlberg is the former publisher of the local newspaper Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, which endorsed Democrats John Kerry and Barack Obama for president in 2004 and 2008, respectively, the only presidential endorsements the paper had made as of 2018. "Both of those endorsement decisions were ultimately made by Rich Perlberg, who was the paper's publisher and executive editor at the time," wrote Buddy Moorehouse, a former editor at the paper. "Those decisions came back to haunt him in 2014, when he ran for State Representative as a Republican. He got asked that question a lot: How can you call yourself a Republican if you endorsed John Kerry and Barack Obama?"
Perlberg has since championed left-wing causes, including on his Substack page, "White Man's Burden." In a November 2025 piece titled "Embracing progressive values," Perlberg wrote of a "refreshing … chat over coffee in East Lansing" with far-left Democrat William Lawrence, who is running for Congress in Michigan's swingy Seventh Congressional District and has called for "abolishing the institution of marriage."
"Tall, slim, and bearded, Lawrence embraces the challenge he faces as likely the most liberal of the Democrats vying to unseat Tom Barrett, a first-term and largely feckless man," wrote Perlberg. "His 18-point platform is so extensive—make housing affordable, guarantee healthcare, end homelessness, end ICE occupation of our cities, halt needless wars, protect air, water, and climate, and more—that it makes one wonder what will be left to do in his second term." Perlberg concluded the piece by saying he "can only hope" Barrett loses the race. He has contributed at least $450 to Lawrence's campaign.
In other Substack pieces, Perlberg has attacked the "Bible-clutching MAGA crowd" and called Medicare for All, the government-run health care plan backed by El-Sayed, "one of the most patriotic things we can do" as a nation. In a 2021 column, he suggested Republicans who oppose teaching critical race theory in public K-12 schools "think that white children are so fragile that they need to be sheltered from the idea that white people were responsible for slavery." And while he has been widely critical of the Democratic Party, most of that criticism is centered on the argument that the party is too moderate and unwilling to embrace left-wing candidates like El-Sayed.
"In truth the established Democratic Party is either gutless, naive, or in the grasp of big money donors—MAGA lite, if you will," Perlberg wrote in the comment section of a July 13 Jennifer Rubin column headlined "Anti-Democratic Party Hysteria Is out of Sync."
"In Michigan, both of the two Democratic senators have endorsed AIPAC queen Haley Stevens over a true progressive, Abdul El-Sayed," he continued. "The reason? They don't want to jeopardize 'winning' by endorsing a progressive and, worse yet, a Muslim, athough [sic] his history is as middle American as you can get."
El-Sayed's attempt to tout support from Republican voters comes as he struggles with some historically Democratic voting blocs in Michigan, most notably Jews. Rogers has released a number of videos featuring Jewish Democrats who say they'll be voting for him over El-Sayed. The most recent iteration features Taylor Weintraub, whose son was in school at Michigan's Temple Israel in March when an Islamic terrorist attacked it. El-Sayed minimized the attack by saying in regard to the terrorist, whose Hezbollah commander brother was killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon, "Hurt people do hurt people."
"When Abdul El-Sayed said 'hurt people hurt people,' he gave an excuse to someone who wanted to murder children," Weintraub says in the video. "Mike Rogers is here to listen to us and here to help us feel safe."
Reached for comment, Perlberg said he voted for Rogers two times when Rogers ran for State Senate in the 1990s and the seven times he ran for the U.S. House. "Our newspaper also endorsed Mike in all those elections," he said.
El-Sayed's campaign did not provide a response on the record.
In addition to his donor to Lawrence's campaign, Perlberg is a regular contributor to El-Sayed's campaign, giving at least $50 each month, campaign finance records show. Perlberg contributed to Rogers's campaigns from 1999 to 2001 but has donated exclusively to Democrats since then.
Update 5:29 p.m.: This piece has been updated since publication.
