Haley Stevens Endorses Republican Mike Rogers Over Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan Senate Race

Breaking

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for the U.S. Senate on Sunday, Nov. 1, two days before Election Day, rejecting her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. “I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the US Senate. Today, I do not belong to Abdul’s campaign,” Stevens said in a video posted on X, according to the Associated Press.

Stevens appeared alongside Rogers at a Sunday service at Perfecting Church in Detroit, a move that surprised Democratic Party officials. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate, and [that] is not what we are getting out of our Democratic nominee right now,” she said. Outside the church, she praised Rogers’ plans to invest in Black-owned businesses, according to Bridge Michigan. In a statement late Saturday, Stevens wrote, “Whenever anyone tries to set us against each other, we have an obligation to stand up and fight back.”

Details & Background

Stevens narrowly lost the August Democratic primary to El-Sayed and had pledged to support the nominee. Senate Democrats’ campaign arm had backed Stevens in the primary, according to CBS News. The rift deepened last week when she called on El-Sayed to condemn an outside group’s ad linking U.S. military aid to Israel with rising grocery prices, which she described as antisemitic. El-Sayed said the ad “was not made by me” and that he disagrees with its contents. Stevens’ fiancé, Jason Turkish, a Jewish Democrat and civil rights attorney, had already said he would vote for Rogers.

Stevens had been expected to join El-Sayed at a unity event Sunday with Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., but she was asked to stay away. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who helped organize it, told the AP, “I’m the one who pulled it because it had become way too distracting.” The race for the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters is a dead heat, with a late-September Fox News poll showing El-Sayed at 50% and Rogers at 49%. El-Sayed would be the nation’s first Muslim senator. President Donald Trump has endorsed Rogers, and early voting in Michigan began Oct. 24.

Reactions

Rogers praised Stevens on social media. “Representative Haley Stevens is a courageous leader who deserves the respect of every Michigan voter,” he wrote on X. “She has conducted herself with nothing but class since the Democratic primary.” El-Sayed accused Stevens of “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago,” and said Saturday of the canceled unity event, “I would rather not distract from the key issues of this campaign.”

Dingell made clear her frustration with the infighting. “This is not how I was going to spend my weekend before the election, to be perfectly frank,” she said, adding that “it really needs to be about what the issues are that people should be voting about on Tuesday.” She also observed, “Mike Rogers loved every minute of it.” Asked about Turkish’s decision, El-Sayed said, “there are always going to be some folks who have different opinions, and they’re welcome to that.”

Why This Matters to You

Michigan’s Senate race is one of a handful that will decide control of the Senate. A sitting Democratic congresswoman crossing party lines two days before an election is extremely rare, and it could sway moderate Democrats, Jewish voters and suburban voters in Wayne and Oakland counties, where Stevens beat El-Sayed in the primary.

The endorsement also exposes a deep divide inside the Democratic Party over Israel and antisemitism. With Republicans holding a 53-47 Senate majority, every seat matters, and on Tuesday Michigan voters will decide whether to send a progressive firebrand or a former House Intelligence Committee chairman and FBI agent to Washington.