Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers
Congresswoman who lost primary to Abdul El-Sayed turns on her party days before the vote, eight-year chief of staff quits and endorses the man who beat her
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Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican Senate candidate, with Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democratic representative, attend a church service on Sunday. Photograph: Jose Juarez/AP
theguardian.com
Haley Stevens snubs fellow Democrat Abdul El-Sayed to back GOP Mike Rogers in Michigan – video
theguardian.com
Days before the midterm election, Michigan congresswoman Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers — a public rebuke of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat who defeated her in the party's primary. Stevens announced the endorsement in a video posted to X, after appearing alongside Rogers at Perfecting Church, a predominantly Black congregation in Detroit.
Stevens had accepted El-Sayed's narrow victory after the primary, but the two had kept feuding ever since, chiefly over support for Israel. The Michigan Democratic party answered her endorsement within hours: chair Curtis Hertel said that by campaigning with Rogers, Stevens "has abandoned everything she claims to care about," and declared that neither she nor other "bad-faith actors" would divide the party with "eleventh-hour distractions."
The first cost fell on her own payroll. Justin German, her chief of staff for eight years, and communications director Logan Basch quit, according to CNN correspondent Manu Raju. German then released a statement on behalf of Stevens's campaign team — endorsing El-Sayed. The staff were "shocked and heartbroken," it said, and the election "too important to sow division or stand on the sidelines."
Fallout continued through Sunday as the party's left closed ranks around the nominee. Bernie Sanders posted that her staff "is right to resign in disgust," and that the Michigan race is "far more important than Haley's fragile ego." He called on everyone to stand together to elect Abdul, defeat Rogers and end the "Republican rubber-stamp control of the Senate." New York mayor Zohran Mamdani said Stevens had "betrayed" working-class voters "by endorsing the very Republican she said she wanted to run against."
The other party extended the welcome. Donald Trump praised Stevens's pivot. Hertel, setting out the case against her choice, said Rogers has "repeatedly sold out Michigan's working class," "wants to pass a national abortion ban," and "has pledged to be a loyal vote for Trump's agenda."
El-Sayed had already disinvited Stevens from the Sunday rally where he addressed the endorsement for the first time. "At the end of the day, I actually don't think about Haley Stevens," he told reporters. "I'm just less interested in the politics of it all than I am in the policy of it all."