Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in August, endorsed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on Sunday. She did it beside Rogers at Perfecting Church in Detroit, two days before Election Day.
The setting matters. Detroit is a majority-Black city, and the Democratic nominee needs a large Black turnout there to win a race that could help decide control of the Senate. Rogers opened his first Detroit field office on Oct. 18. Sunday was also a Souls to the Polls day, when Black churches take congregants to vote after service.
Stevens had been due at a different Detroit church that same day, at a unity event with El-Sayed and Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. Rep. Debbie Dingell, who helped organize it, asked her to stay away because the dispute had become “way too distracting” for the congregation hosting it. Stevens appeared with Rogers instead.
“We have to stand with country. We can’t stand with hate,” Stevens said at the church. She told CBS News: “when you see hate, when you see us standing with Hasan Piker, and repeated hate, it’s not acceptable.”
The break grew out of an ad by an outside group that linked U.S. military aid to Israel with rising grocery prices. Stevens called the ad antisemitic and demanded that El-Sayed condemn it. El-Sayed answered that he is “a lot more focused on the 9,999,998 that are not the ones who are talking about.” Outside a Souls to the Polls event in Detroit on Sunday, he told reporters: “I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.”
Party leaders reacted within hours. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the move a “despicable betrayal.” Michigan Democratic Party chair Curtis Hertel said Stevens “has abandoned everything she claims to care about.” Her chief of staff, Justin German, and several other staffers resigned in protest. Rogers, who is backed by President Donald Trump, called her “a courageous leader.”
El-Sayed would be the first Muslim U.S. senator if he wins. During the primary, both he and Stevens worked Black churches in Detroit and its suburbs for votes. Now a Republican has stood in one of those pulpits with a Democratic congresswoman at his side, with two days left.
Michigan votes Tuesday.
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