After failing to force Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed to bow to her position on Israel, Democrat Haley Stevens endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent on Sunday, two days before the election.
Over the past week, Stevens and her pro-Israel fiancé made various, escalating attempts to blow up the race. Stevens repeatedly demanded that El-Sayed condemn a random super PAC’s anti-Israel ad and take down his own campaign ad, which includes a clip of former Fox host Tucker Carlson slamming Republican nominee Mike Rogers.
Stevens then announced Friday she would appear at a party unity event at a Detroit church Sunday with El-Sayed and Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, while again trying to force El-Sayed to commit to her views on Israel. El-Sayed released his own statement criticizing Stevens for “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.” Reports soon trickled out that El-Sayed’s campaign would not have Stevens at any of his campaign events, and the candidate confirmed as much. “I don’t want any distractions,” El-Sayed said Saturday.
“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 in a Twitter video Sunday. “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 suggested El-Sayed has been spreading “hate,” even though Rogers and Republicans – including President Donald Trump – have led an openly Islamophobic smear campaign against El-Sayed, who would be America’s first Muslim senator.
The move generated immediate backlash, including mass resignations from her official staff.
Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel said that Stevens’s decision “shows that she has abandoned everything she claims to care about,” and that the party “will not allow these eleventh-hour distractions deter us.”
DNC Black Caucus chair Virgie Rollins said Stevens “has revealed herself to be a sellout who used Black Michiganders for a political stunt.” Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden called the move a “betrayal” of Stevens’s supporters.
Stevens was the Democratic Party establishment’s pick in the Michigan Senate race, and had the public support of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. She narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, despite having $30 million spent on her behalf by the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.
Since the primary, Stevens had not made appearances alongside the Democratic nominee. Whenever she was asked about El-Sayed, she’d deflect, and eventually, begrudgingly, say she was supporting the ticket.
That changed this week. Alongside Stevens throughout all this has been her new fiancé, Jason Turkish, an attorney who has donated thousands to her, as well as a slate of other pro-Israel politicians including Democrat John Fetterman and GOP Senator Susan Collins.
Turkish announced Wednesday he would be voting for Rogers, and proceeded to be featured on several news outlets – including Fox, Tucker Carlson’s former employer – to attack El-Sayed and promote Rogers. He even appeared alongside Rogers and Texas senator Ted Cruz at a campaign event. All the while, as the unity event was breaking down, Turkish was said to have been involved in negotiating terms to ensure his fiancée’s participation – even though he was actively supporting El-Sayed’s opponent.
In conversations with the New York Times on Friday, Stevens told the paper she was still supporting El-Sayed. She suggested that, in early 2025, she and El-Sayed had both committed to supporting each other’s campaign if the other won.
Turkish, for his part, told TMZ, “I don’t think she’s going to be supporting Abdul El-Sayed very much longer.”
Minutes before Stevens endorsed Rogers, the Detroit News reported that Haley Stevens’s “official staff including her longtime chief are resigning from her office this morning.”
In August, Stevens tweeted that “Mike Rogers will be another rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda. We can’t afford to give MAGA another Senate seat in November.”
Apparently, ensuring Congress remains as pro-Israel as Haley Stevens is more important.
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She has lost all respect. Any moral person will continue to support Al Syed. They can’t be swayed by the person who’s character rhymes with switch.
And they say progressives and leftists aren’t team players? We routinely ate crap and voted for their nominees time and time again for years. When the shoe was finally on the other foot, they pull a Fetterman almost immediately right when it matters.