Arya News - Once-Democratic Senate hopeful, who lost the primary to Abdul El-Sayed, shifts support to his Republican opponent on eve of midterm election.
In an unexpected twist, US Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic Michigan primary for the US Senate to Abdul El-Sayed, has endorsed Republican candidate Mike Rogers.
Despite rising tensions between Stevens and El-Sayed in recent days, Stevens shocked party officials on Sunday by throwing her weight behind Rogers. Her endorsement came just two days ahead of Tuesday’s high-stakes US midterm election that will decide which party runs Congress.
“I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the US Senate. Today, I do not belong to Abdul’s campaign,” she said in a video posted on X after attending a church service with Rogers in Detroit, the state’s largest city.
Stevens’s surprise support for US President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate in the tightly contested race comes after she was uninvited to a joint event on the same day with El-Sayed, who defeated her by a slim margin in the August primary.
During an interview on Sunday, the Democratic congresswoman, whose term expires in January, wouldn’t answer whether the rescission of that invitation was what drove her to endorse Rogers.
Instead, Stevens said that doing so was “a weight off [her] shoulders”.
Long-simmering campaign tensions
The decision follows months of fraught relations between the two Democrats over Israel, exposing rifts within the party as it fights to win control of Congress.
Stevens, who received tens of millions of dollars from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has swung between supporting El-Sayed during the campaign and clashing with him over Israel.
El-Sayed is an outspoken critic of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and US military aid to the country.
After campaigning for El-Sayed despite their bitter primary fight, Stevens last week openly condemned the candidate for an advertisement that she described as anti-Semitic.
The advertisement, by an independent group backing El-Sayed, shows a couple limiting their grocery items because they need to save that money for “killing Palestinians”.
El-Sayed said the advertisement was not produced by his campaign and that he disagreed with its message.
Stevens told The New York Times on Friday that she had planned to vote for El-Sayed. But she endorsed Rogers two days later, after being uninvited to a church service with El-Sayed in what was intended as a show of Democratic unity.
El-Sayed was dismissive of Stevens throwing support behind Rogers, saying he was focused instead on the campaign and voters.
Democratic Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, who ran for the US Senate before dropping out ahead of the primaries, told Al Jazeera that Stevens’s endorsement of Rogers will not help Republicans win more votes.
“If anything, I think it’s going to backfire,” she said, maintaining that the move angered Michigan voters.
Democrats have pledged to act as a check on Trump if they win control of Congress, including blocking funding for the US-Israel war on Iran and the president’s tariffs. Michigan’s Senate race is considered key to that effort.
Polls indicate Democrats are likely to win control of the House of Representatives, while the Senate, which Republicans currently lead by a 53-47 majority, is considered a toss-up between the two parties.
Michigan is one of a handful of highly competitive Senate races nationwide. Polling suggests El-Sayed is pulling ahead of Rogers – who is supported by Trump and has denied his 2020 election loss – by about five to seven percentage points in the last week.