The U.S. Senate race to replace Democratic Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow will be one of the most consequential in 2024, and the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in Michigan and beyond is quickly becoming a deciding factor.

Recent polling suggests the race will likely come down to Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, although both face primary challengers in August that have lagged in both polling and campaign donations.

In Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has inked well over $2 billion business incentive deals with Chinese companies to make electric vehicle batteries and components, the potential influence of the Chinese Communist Party has become a growing concern for voters that both Slotkin and Rogers are campaigning to address, The Center Square reported.

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“The decisions of Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party will have far greater impact than those of Washington. The hands of the president and Congress are tied; their powers circumscribed by Beijing’s actions on the international stage,” Rogers wrote on his campaign website. “[This] means taking a much closer look at investments, apps, and technology from China and being unafraid to use the powers of government to protect the American people.”

Rogers’ focus on the CCP comes with criticism for Slotkin, who signed five-year nondisclosure agreements with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in 2022 related to a Gotion battery plant in Big Rapids and a CATL project with Ford in Marshall that prevent her from being transparent with taxpayers about the deals. Both Gotion and CATL have strong relationships with the CCP.

Slotkin supported the Inflation Reduction Act, which Ford executives have said could be used to fund the Marshall plant, prompting criticism from lawmakers that some IRA subsidies could wind up in China. After signing the NDAs and the announcement by Ford of its joint venture with CATL, Slotkin received $20,000 in campaign donations from Ford executives, including the board director and members of the Ford family.

“It’s outrageous that @ElissaSlotkin signed a secret agreement to help dole out billions of taxpayer dollars to these Chinese companies,” Rogers recently posted to X.

The findings that Gotion & CATL are involved in the CCP’s use of slave labor & genocide against Uyghurs is deeply concerning.

It’s outrageous that @ElissaSlotkin signed a secret agreement to help dole out billions of taxpayer dollars to these Chinese companies. https://t.co/HTDpDLPakX

— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) June 6, 2024

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Slotkin, who has declined to comment on the NDAs, told The Detroit News in May that the intense public backlash to the deals she helped secure in Big Rapids and Marshall inspired her to introduce legislation to give the federal government more authority to investigate Chinese-backed business deals.

The bill, which won’t impact either of the deals, is intended to provide “an objective way to do a national security review before big purchases by governments of concern” by requiring reviews of transactions that involve more than $1 million or 100 acres.

“Elissa Slotkin is making a desperate attempt to cover for her fellow comrades Curtis Hertel and Kristen McDonald Rivet who sold out Michigan to the Chinese Communist Party. Slotkin’s bill doesn’t actually do anything to stop their sketchy deal. It’s too little, too late,” National Republican Congressional Committee Spokesman Mike Marinella said.

Others in Michigan’s congressional delegation who are backing Rogers in his Senate bid have called on President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security to blacklist Gotion and CATL over ties to “Chinese Communist Party state-sponsored slave labor and the ongoing Uyghur genocide.”

Republican Congressman John Moolenaar, chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP, points to voluminous evidence that both companies source materials from state-owned companies “known for … prolific use of forced labor.”

Other concerns about the Gotion plant from locals and Republican lawmakers include a required 700,000 gallons of water per day, ticks to the Muskegon River watershed, and security risks from the proximity to the cybersecurity center at Ferris State University and the National Guard base in Grayling.

A Moolenaar survey of constituents found more than 90% oppose the deal, which the Whitmer administration subsidized with $715 million in taxpayer funds.

It’s a similar situation with the Ford-CATL deal in Marshall, where $1.75 billion in planned taxpayer subsidies earned it The Center for Economic Accountability’s “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year” award for 2023.

While the $700,000-per-job price tag for the deal Slotkin helped to broker was offensive enough, it was the political groups tied to Whitmer that spent $100,000 in “dark money” to smear local residents who opposed that caught CEA’s attention.

“At the end of the day, the reported use of political consultants to run a smear campaign against skeptical local residents that really set Michigan’s subsidies for Ford’s Marshall battery plant apart from all the other terrible corporate welfare deals across the country,” said CEA president John C. Mozena.

“It’s one thing for politicians to use fuzzy math to throw massive amounts of public money at a giant corporation so they can take credit with voters for so-called ‘job creation;’ we see that all the time,” he said. “This award was nailed down for Michigan when a governor’s political cronies reportedly pushed out campaign-style mailers and robocalls against average, everyday people who dared to exercise their fundamental right to ask their elected officials for straight answers to questions that mattered to their community.”