4 min read
Michigan’s Senate race turned upside down on Sunday. Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democrat who lost her party primary to Abdul El-Sayed by less than one percentage point in August, walked into a Detroit church beside Republican Mike Rogers, then posted a video endorsing Rogers for the United States Senate two days before Election Day.
“I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” Stevens said in the video. She said El-Sayed had told her she was no longer welcome in his campaign and that she should stay away. “And he’s right,” she said.
Major Takeaways
- Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to Abdul El-Sayed, has endorsed Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race.
- The endorsement landed two days before Election Day, with more than two million Michigan ballots already cast.
- Senior Stevens staff resigned within hours, and top Democrats condemned the move while President Trump praised it.
- El-Sayed dismissed the endorsement as a distraction and kept his focus on the cost of living.
The break between the two Democrats had been building for days. After the August primary, Stevens endorsed El-Sayed and campaigned for him, even as the relationship between the two camps stayed cold. On October 30 she released a long statement demanding that El-Sayed condemn an ad from an outside group backing him, an ad she called antisemitic. His campaign answered by asking her to stay away from a unity event planned for Sunday with Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina.
So on Sunday morning, instead of standing with El-Sayed, Stevens attended a service at Perfecting Church in Detroit with Rogers and his wife. Before the service she told reporters that support for investing in Black owned businesses was part of her thinking, and that it is a policy Rogers plans to take on. In her video she also named the company El-Sayed keeps on the campaign trail. “I do not stand with Hasan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses,” she said, pointing to the streamer whose comments about Israel and Jewish Americans have drawn criticism through the race.
Stevens, who represents a district in the Detroit suburbs in the House, ran in the primary as the choice of much of the party establishment in Washington. On Sunday she recalled what happened when she tried to stand with her party after losing. “I stood with my party, and I was booed off the stage,” she said, standing beside Rogers.
The fallout inside her own office was immediate. Her chief of staff and her communications director both resigned on Sunday. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the endorsement a “despicable betrayal.” Sen. Gary Peters, the retiring Democrat whose seat is on the line, said he was “extremely disappointed.”
Republicans moved just as fast to lift it up. President Donald Trump praised the endorsement, called it “a big move,” and said he had called Stevens to thank her. Rogers said he was honored to have her support and called her decision an act of courage.
El-Sayed, holding his own events in Detroit on Sunday, refused to take the bait. He called the endorsement a distraction and a bit of intrigue, and told reporters, “I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.” His message stayed on the cost of living and the issues he says Michigan families are facing.
The stakes could hardly be higher. The seat is open because Peters is retiring. Republicans hold the Senate by a 53 to 47 margin, and a Republican has not won a Senate race in Michigan since 1994. Control of the chamber could run through this one contest, alongside the Mississippi Senate race Urban City Podcast has been tracking all fall. Voters have not waited for Tuesday either. More than two million Michigan ballots are already in, and the most recent public polling in the race, taken late last week, put El-Sayed at 49 percent and Rogers at 44 percent. One prediction market dropped El-Sayed from 76 percent to 68 percent in the hours after the endorsement posted.
What happens next is the part nobody can call. Stevens made her stand in a Black church in Detroit, in a city both campaigns know they need, and she made it with almost every vote either cast or locked in. Whether her name on the Rogers side moves the last undecided voters is a question only Tuesday can answer. Urban City Podcast has covered this race from the start, including the Detroit unity push that was supposed to bring the party together this weekend, and we will carry the results as they come in on Election Day.
