Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan clearly betrayed her party on Sunday with her astonishing last-minute endorsement of Mike Rogers, the Republican running for Senate against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. But what was offensive about her move was the incoherence and unprincipled nature of her rationale. If El-Sayed’s positions bother her, then Rogers’ really should.
In her social media announcement and her joint news conference with Rogers on Sunday, Stevens’ case for kneecapping her Democratic primary rival two days before the election was so vacuous that calling it an argument would be generous. Stevens mentioned three issues in vague terms: El-Sayed saying “that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away”; her stance against “hate”; and her opposition to left-wing livestreamer Hasan Piker, who had joined some of El-Sayed’s campaign events during the primary season. None of these grievances withstands the slightest bit of scrutiny as a reason to endorse Rogers and try to sink El-Sayed’s campaign.
Any notion that Stevens had sincere reservations about hate evaporated when she endorsed Rogers.
El-Sayed asked Stevens not to attend a scheduled unity event with him Sunday because Stevens had laid out a devious set of conditions to force his hand. On Friday morning, two days ahead of their unity rally, she said she would only appear if El-Sayed condemned a controversial ad criticizing Israel put out by the populist Rebellion PAC, which El-Sayed had already said was not affiliated with his campaign and did not represent his views. She also wanted him to apologize for criticizing aid to Israel as contributing to the issues Michiganders face, and to take down an ad in which right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson appears to support El-Sayed’s foreign policy views.
That is, she wanted El-Sayed to spend the final days of his campaign groveling before her and generating negative headlines for himself by disavowing things he had never avowed. No serious political candidate would agree to Haley’s conditions.
On Saturday, El-Sayed distanced himself further from the Rebellion PAC ad by saying he disagreed with its contents. He also said he didn’t want Stevens to join him Sunday because he didn’t “want any distractions.” Framing that development as El-Sayed reneging on unity and not welcoming Stevens into his campaign is the height of cynicism.
There’s plenty of reporting indicating that in endorsing Rogers, Stevens blindsided her party and her own staff. Maybe she made a purely impulsive decision, but there has been consistency to her undercutting behavior over the longer term. Stevens declined to campaign with El-Sayed after a post-primary unity breakfast in early August. She not only avoided publicly supporting him, she also praised Rogers while she questioned El-Sayed’s ability to build a coalition. On CNN last week she sidestepped directly answering a question about whether she supported El-Sayed. A white candidate, she also suggested he was inattentive to the needs of Black voters, despite his outreach efforts. We cannot rule out the possibility, then, that she was always planning to sabotage his campaign.
Stevens said in her social media announcement that “who we are as Michiganders is not hate, and is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now.” But she did not point out a single comment El-Sayed made expressing hate or bigotry toward a group of people — because there is no evidence of one. The entire smear appears to be grounded in a conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
And while I think it was a mistake for El-Sayed to invite Piker to university campus events during the primary to stir excitement among young progressives, he has since repeatedly distanced himself from Piker, condemned various comments Piker made (which were often taken out of context, and which Piker has apologized for) and said Piker doesn’t represent his views.
Any notion that Stevens had sincere reservations about hate evaporated when she endorsed Rogers. Rogers has run one of the most bigoted campaigns in recent memory, using ads to imply that El-Sayed is a violent terrorist. In his messaging and debates, Rogers smeared El-Sayed by falsely claiming that he had been “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood,” an Islamist organization, and describing him as a “risk to our national security.” As he did with President Barack Obama by highlighting his middle name, Hussein, President Donald Trump has whipped up Islamophobia by casting negative attention on El-Sayed’s middle name, Mohamed. The president has also slandered the Senate candidate as a “radical jihadist.” The Republican Party is a bastion of antisemitic white nationalism. Yet Rogers didn’t have to disavow anyone or any position to win Stevens’ support.
In an interview with The Free Press on Sunday night, Stevens said that she supports Rogers because he “loves the country” and speculated that “maybe he can be a [John] McCain-type person or a Lisa Murkowski.” That’s a farfetched idea, considering that Rogers has aligned himself with Trump for multiple Senate campaigns, adopted his 2020 election denialism and worked hand in hand with him on a bigoted campaign.
When asked by a reporter at Sunday’s news conference how she could stand with a Republican candidate who stands firmly against what she believes, she said, “Nothing is perfect.”
The irony here is that establishment Democrats frequently frame progressives and democratic socialists as blowing up the party, but none of the progressives who lost races in recent memory have done anything like what Stevens did: endorse the other party out of spite.
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