{"id":93743,"date":"2026-11-02T16:49:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T16:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/93743\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T16:49:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T16:49:20","slug":"michigan-senate-haley-stevens-endorsement-of-mike-rogers-over-abdul-el-sayed-is-a-heel-turn-for-the-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/93743\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan Senate: Haley Stevens’ endorsement of Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed is a heel turn for the ages."},"content":{"rendered":"

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The first thing to know about the Democrat-on-Democrat catastrophe engulfing the Michigan Senate election is that it didn\u2019t have to happen. The second thing to know is that there\u2019s a lot of blame to go around.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Rep. Haley Stevens pulled a heel turn for the ages. Stevens, a pro-Israel centrist who narrowly lost the Democratic primary<\/a> to progressive Abdul El-Sayed, was slated to appear at a \u201cunity rally\u201d on the last weekend before Election Day. Instead, she pulled out\u2014and went to church with El-Sayed\u2019s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers. A formal Rogers endorsement followed<\/a>, completing the betrayal. Now, in a tight race that\u2019s crucial to Democrats\u2019 hopes of retaking the Senate and grinding Donald Trump\u2019s agenda to a halt, a candidate who got almost half of the primary vote is supporting the Republican.<\/p>\n

There are a few ways in which this disaster could\u2019ve been avoided. If Democratic Sen. Gary Peters\u2014who in congressional terms is but a 67-year-old whippersnapper\u2014had sought reelection, the messy primary that set up Stevens\u2019 about-face never would\u2019ve happened. The same thing is probably true had either Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who lives in Traverse City, Michigan, decided to run for Peters\u2019 seat. Once they passed, the state\u2019s Democratic primary voters could have picked a compromise candidate in Mallory McMorrow, a (now-proven<\/a>) team player who is more centrist than El-Sayed and more progressive than Stevens. After McMorrow dropped out, Stevens and El-Sayed could have pulled their punches instead of sparring nastily over the Israeli government\u2019s actions in Gaza and Stevens\u2019 support from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group. And once the primary ended, the pair could have buried the hatchet permanently rather than letting the tensions simmer into the general election. In short, everything in the race has broken toward conflict rather than comity.<\/p>\n

Michigan wasn\u2019t the only bare-knuckled race in a primary season that served as an extended proxy fight between the Democratic Party\u2019s center-left establishment and its progressive insurgency. The Senate contest in Florida<\/a>, several House races in New York<\/a>, and the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin<\/a> all got heated. A few other primaries even yielded sore losers; in Texas, Rep. Jasmine Crockett has refused to campaign with fellow Democrat James Talarico after he beat her. Yet even Crockett says she \u201cWOULDN\u2019T, EVER<\/a>\u201d endorse Talarico\u2019s Republican opponent, so something has clearly gone uniquely sideways in Michigan.<\/p>\n

What went wrong? Who\u2019s to blame? And is anyone entirely innocent? Stevens is obviously the headline villain, the architect of a hard-to-find-precedent-for defection that is indefensible on both substance and timing. But the difficult reality is that the blame doesn\u2019t rest with her alone. At the heart of this disaster is a spectacularly poor match of political egos, an issue that promotes intransigence over compromise, and, in El-Sayed, a nominee who failed a critical test.<\/p>\n

Stevens<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the person who\u2019s most at fault for Sunday\u2019s explosion: the one who actually pulled the pin out of the grenade. Despite continuing to describe herself as \u201ca very proud Democrat,\u201d Stevens has arguably done more damage to her party\u2019s nominee than Republicans have. It\u2019s certainly possible that El-Sayed will win, and that Democrats could retake the Senate even if he doesn\u2019t. But winning Michigan in what\u2019s shaping up to be a blue-wave election shouldn\u2019t be this hard, and retaking the Senate without it would require Democrats to vastly overperform<\/a> in much more Republican-friendly states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Stevens has betrayed more than just her party: She\u2019d previously argued that a Rogers win would imperil a suite of issues she professed to care about. After losing the primary, she full-throatedly endorsed El-Sayed<\/a> and argued that Rogers would \u201ckeep rubber-stamping Donald Trump\u2019s harmful agenda of higher prices, manufacturing jobs lost nationwide, corruption and abuses of power\u201d while helping \u201cban abortion, gut health care, and roll back workers\u2019 rights and voting rights.\u201d The only thing that\u2019s changed since then is the candidate Stevens supports.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the matter of her rationale. Stevens\u2019 defection followed a war of words over a pro-El-Sayed ad, which argued that groceries have become unaffordable because the U.S. sends weapons to Israel<\/a>. Stevens criticized the ad as antisemitic and demanded El-Sayed condemn it. (More on that in a moment.) But if bigotry were really her concern, she wouldn\u2019t be throwing in with Rogers, a candidate who built his campaign around Islamophobia<\/a>. Rogers has accused El-Sayed of adhering to a \u201cradical Islamic agenda\u201d and of backing the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist group the Democrat has repeatedly denounced. Stevens is also, by her own prior admission, helping a president who mocks El-Sayed\u2019s name (\u201cTo me, he\u2019s Mohammed, and he\u2019s a radical jihadist,\u201d Trump said last month<\/a>) and fearmongers that his victory would \u201cinvite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas<\/a>.\u201d On Sunday, Stevens characterized her flip-flop as \u201ca personal and private decision\u201d in the middle of a press conference talking about it, which made the whole thing look more petty than principled.<\/p>\n

\"Abdul<\/p>\n

Abdul El-Sayed.
\nSalwan Georges\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

El-Sayed<\/p>\n

His culpability is more complicated, but it really does take two to tango. Stevens chose to pull her switcheroo, yet El-Sayed has done a bunch of tactically questionable things that seem to have made that outcome more likely\u2014and could make it more politically damaging, too.<\/p>\n

One of those questionable choices has been to associate himself with controversial figures. During the primary, El-Sayed campaigned with Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who has said that the U.S. \u201cdeserved 9\/11\u201d<\/a>. El-Sayed spent months refusing to distance himself from Piker, deriding questions about their joint appearances as \u201cgotcha politics<\/a>.\u201d And although El-Sayed ultimately did condemn those remarks and others (including Piker\u2019s claim that Jewish Americans, or Jewish American institutions, being too pro-Israel could lead people to \u201ctake action\u201d against<\/a> them), some Democrats already had concerns about El-Sayed\u2019s approach to antisemitism. In March, El-Sayed responded to an attack against a Detroit-area synagogue by saying that \u201churt people hurt people<\/a>,\u201d which sounded to some like a justification for the violence. (El-Sayed later apologized.) \u201cI\u2019m just sick of the people he stands with,\u201d Stevens told Anderson Cooper on CNN on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Self-defeating prickliness also seems to have shaped El-Sayed\u2019s response to the ad Stevens criticized before endorsing Rogers. It\u2019s true that the ad didn\u2019t come from El-Sayed\u2019s campaign; a left-wing commentator named Cenk Uygur, who happens to be Piker\u2019s uncle, posted it online<\/a>. But even as he distanced himself, El-Sayed also released a statement accusing Stevens of \u201crelitigating\u201d their primary that pointedly noted her millions in AIPAC support<\/a> and disinvited Stevens<\/a> from Sunday\u2019s unity appearance, which national Democrats helped broker in a bid to squash their beef.<\/p>\n

El-Sayed\u2019s defensiveness, as he runs to be the nation\u2019s first Muslim senator, is understandable. His opponent has put El-Sayed\u2019s religion and ethnicity at the center of his attacks, yet El-Sayed is the one who\u2019s continually asked to disavow bigotry. It must be exhausting. And it\u2019s a challenge for a candidate whose rise was fueled by a combative approach to entrenched power, an approach many of his supporters appreciate. But politics is often unfair and rarely easy, and the job of the candidate is to win. That\u2019s particularly true in an election where Democrats have repeatedly (and accurately) told supporters that their would-be Senate takeover is an essential bulwark against Trump\u2019s authoritarian impulses. In that context, it\u2019s not unfair for Democrats to ask El-Sayed to make sacrifices in the name of winning\u2014and it\u2019s not always clear that he has been willing to.<\/p>\n

Before the August primary, El-Sayed predicted a double-digit victory<\/a> against Stevens, only to end up winning by less than a point. A nominee laser-focused on the general election might have been chastened, hastening to court the 47.6 percent of Democrats<\/a> who\u2019d backed his opponent. Yet even now, polls suggest El-Sayed is leaving votes on the table. He currently leads Rogers by an average of 5 points<\/a>, while the Democratic nominee for Michigan governor leads her Republican opponent by almost 9<\/a>. As my colleague Aymann Ismail has reported, El-Sayed has struggled to convince some core Democratic constituencies<\/a>, including Black Michiganders, that he will improve their lives.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s possible that nothing could have kept Stevens inside the tent. Some of her criticisms\u2014like going on CNN to accuse El-Sayed of getting \u201cangrier and angrier\u201d\u2014aren\u2019t things politicians say if they\u2019re open to appeasement. Stevens has also refused to explain her apparently spur-of-the-moment decision to switch sides; as of Saturday, she was still telling fellow Democrats that she supported El-Sayed. Maybe getting engaged to a Democratic donor who also recently pledged to vote for Rogers<\/a> caused a (literal) change of heart. Maybe Stevens snapped after spending another week butting heads with the rival who foiled her Senate dreams. Or maybe she\u2019s been promised a job after she leaves Congress in January in exchange for changing jerseys. (On Sunday, Trump praised Stevens\u2019 \u201cbravery<\/a>,\u201d and House Speaker Mike Johnson said he\u2019d encouraged her to \u201ckeep speaking the truth.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The losers of competitive primaries\u2014and their supporters\u2014always face pressure to back their party\u2019s nominee, and lately that pressure has fallen hardest on the left. During the previous three presidential elections, more moderate Democrats urged progressives to shelve their objections and get on board with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris in the interest of beating Trump. Stevens\u2019 desertion isn\u2019t a great sign that the party\u2019s more centrist losers are willing to return the favor. Still, many moderate Democrats\u2014including erstwhile Stevens supporters, congressional staffers, and House colleagues\u2014have condemned the Rogers endorsement<\/a>, meaning Stevens\u2019 exit may not bring many voters along. So far, El-Sayed has chosen to downplay it. \u201cThis race was never about me. It was never even about Mike Rogers. It\u2019s certainly not about Haley Stevens,\u201d he said on MS NOW on Sunday night<\/a>. \u201cThis race is about the people in the state of Michigan, the people that I\u2019ve gotten to get to know in their churches and synagogues, in their basements, in their living rooms, talking about what they need and deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Haley Stevens Just Did Something Unforgivable. But She\u2019s Not the Only One Responsible for Democrats\u2019 Michigan Mess.
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Yet if there\u2019s any race in which the \u201cvote blue no matter who\u201d calculus could flop, it\u2019s this one. The tension at the heart of the primary\u2014and the feud between El-Sayed and Stevens\u2014is less a policy disagreement than a moral one. Debates over healthcare have a moral valence, but there\u2019s room to compromise between, say, expanding Obamacare and passing \u201cMedicare for All.\u201d By contrast, there isn\u2019t much of a middle ground between thinking Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (as El-Sayed does<\/a>) and believing that it isn\u2019t (per Stevens<\/a>). It\u2019s certainly Stevens\u2019 right to decide that her support for Israel outweighs her desire to see a Democrat win her state\u2019s Senate race, just as it\u2019s El-Sayed\u2019s right to say good riddance to a Democrat who feels that way. But part of the job of being a party\u2019s nominee is uniting as many of that party\u2019s supporters behind you as possible. The reasons for El-Sayed\u2019s failure to do that may be a matter of debate, but he will bear the consequences all the same. On Tuesday, it could cost his entire party.<\/p>\n

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