Michigan is one of the most contested battleground states in the United States, making it extremely important for both parties to win. Disagreements and animosity between both parties are far from unheard of. But it is quite rare for there to be open, public infighting between party members, especially right before an important election. That’s exactly what happened on Sunday, at an unprecedented level.
Democrat Haley Stevens, Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed’s primary opponent, met with Republican challenger Mike Rogers at the Perfecting Church early Sunday morning. At a press conference outside that church, she said “Abdul made it very clear that I was not welcome in his campaign, that he didn’t need me there, that he didn’t want me there.” She also made a statement on Twitter/X reiterating this to her followers, and by extension, Michigan voters and Democrats as a whole. She went so far as to explicitly endorse Rogers just two days before the election.
To me, this is a baffling decision. When Stevens went on “Anderson Cooper 360°,” she was unable to answer a single question regarding why she decided to flip on her party two days before a midterm. She cast doubt on a midnight conversation she reportedly had with Michigan Democratic Party member Debbie Dingle, who was promised Stevens would be supporting El-Sayed. When Cooper pressed her on the fact that this appears to be more of a personal issue than anything to do with the principles of her fellow Democrats, she was unable to give a coherent response.
In the absence of any clear, believable, self-expressed explanation of Stevens’ 180°, speculation has run rampant. Some have argued that Stevens was influenced by her fiancé, who was the cause of a minor scandal earlier in the midterms when it came out that he was planning to vote for Rogers over disagreements with El-Sayed on Israel. Stevens seems to primarily put the blame on a campaign event from which she claims she was uninvited after more public disagreements with El-Sayed (though she was not uninvited by El-Sayed himself, and this endorsement occurred at the tail end of several more significant policy disputes between the two). Some say this internal fracturing within the Democratic Party between establishment candidates and more progressive ones is due to differing stances on foreign policy concerning Israel. But again, Stevens did not meaningfully articulate her reasoning, so I am not comfortable claiming I know what happened. It could be none of these, or a combination of these and some unknown other factors.
But again, beyond the reasoning why she did what she did, the way she went about it confuses me. Haley Stevens is free to vote for whoever she’d choose, but why claim it’s a personal choice, in the midst of a clear effort to get her endorsement as much political coverage as possible? Why say you are standing up against “hate” that El-Sayed has apparently endorsed — or at the very least, has insufficiently opposed — while backing a candidate who has used Islamophobic attacks against his opponent on the campaign trail? Simply not endorsing Rogers, while revoking her endorsement of El-Sayed (perhaps openly endorsing a third-party protest vote or not voting in the Senate race) was an option, if both candidates are unacceptably hateful. Rogers, to Stevens during the primary, was a “rubber stamp” for Trump. What has changed?
I’m not sure the answer to this. But what I do know is that Haley Stevens’ political career is in the rear-view mirror. Not just because she’s on her way out of Washington D.C., but because of a very simple principle: loyalty. You cannot turn on your own party in the eleventh hour, over what appear to be primarily personal grievances. To turn against her principles and voters over something she herself cannot articulate is unacceptable as a congressperson, ostensibly a servant of the people of Michigan, and by extension, the United States. Governance ought to require honesty and straightforwardness, traits which Stevens has now revealed she lacks. On Tuesday, Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers by a dominant seven percentage points. So my question to Haley Stevens: was it worth it?
