Two days before Election Day, one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country just got turned upside down.
Rep. Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat, endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers on Sunday, breaking with her party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, the man who narrowly beat her in Michigan’s August Democratic primary.
“I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign”
Stevens announced the endorsement in a video posted to X that ran less than two minutes.
“Hey, Michigan, as you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said, according to NBC News. “And he’s right, and that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”
She also took aim at El-Sayed’s ties to controversial political streamer Hasan Piker, who has appeared with El-Sayed at campaign events.
“I do not stand with Hasan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses,” Stevens said. “What our students see, what our children see, and who we are as Michiganders is not hate, and is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now.”
Stevens said she is still “a very proud Democrat.”
How it got here
Just days ago, Stevens had said she would support her party’s ticket and planned to attend a Sunday campaign event in Detroit backing El-Sayed.
Then the feud exploded over an ad from an outside group supporting El-Sayed. The ad linked U.S. support for Israel to higher grocery prices, and Stevens called it antisemitic. She said she expected El-Sayed to condemn it.
“The ad did not invent its argument; it dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words throughout this campaign: that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, healthcare, and child care,” Stevens said in a statement reported by The Hill. “I therefore expect him to apologize for those statements as well.”
El-Sayed said the ad was not produced by his campaign and that he disagreed with its contents. But he also fired back at Stevens on X, saying she “seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.”
NBC News reported Saturday that El-Sayed’s campaign had asked Stevens to no longer attend campaign events, and she was uninvited from the joint Detroit event.
Church with Rogers instead
Instead, Stevens attended a Sunday service at Detroit’s Perfecting Church alongside Rogers, Fox News reported, and then endorsed him.
“I’m honored to have Haley Stevens support today. I’m honored to have earned that vote,” Rogers told reporters outside the church. “This is more a statement about standing together against hate and the future of this state and this country than it is anything else.”
At a press conference standing with Rogers, Stevens acknowledged the blowback. “I’m sorry people are upset,” she said, according to CNBC. “I understand that.”
“At some point, you got to look at who’s standing for country,” she added.
Why it matters
The Associated Press reported that Stevens “stunned party officials” with the move. Rogers, who is backed by President Trump, and El-Sayed are fighting for the seat being left open by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, in a race widely seen as one of the most competitive in the country and one that could help decide which party controls the Senate.
Voters head to the polls Tuesday.