Michigan Democrats have cut ties with Representative Haley Stevens after she endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers over her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, two days before voters decide a Senate race that could help determine control of the chamber.
State party chair Curtis Hertel announced the break on Sunday, November 1, barely an hour after Stevens released a video endorsing Rogers. “Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future,” Hertel wrote on X, according to NBC News.
Why the rupture matters is straightforward: Michigan’s open Senate seat is one of the closest contests in Tuesday’s midterm elections, and the public split has turned a race Democrats hoped to hold into a showcase of party division on the eve of Election Day. The seat is being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters, and Republicans currently hold a 53-47 Senate majority, with Democrats needing a net gain of four seats to take control.
Stevens appeared alongside Rogers at a service at Perfecting Church in Detroit on Sunday before posting her endorsement video. In the video, she said El-Sayed had made clear she was no longer welcome in his campaign and should stay away. “And he’s right, and that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today,” she said, while insisting she was “still a very proud Democrat.”
Her endorsement followed a bitter primary defeat in August, when El-Sayed beat Stevens by less than a percentage point, according to The Week. Party leaders had arranged a joint unity appearance with Representative Jim Clyburn, but the El-Sayed campaign, through Representative Debbie Dingell, asked Stevens to stay away from its remaining events.
Reports said the fallout was immediate inside the party organisation. Stevens’s photograph was removed from the Michigan Democratic Party website, and sources told The Detroit News that she no longer had access to the party’s voter database, according to reports of the decision. The party has not described a formal expulsion process, NBC News reported, but Hertel’s public declaration left no doubt about her standing.
Staff resign and Democrats condemn the move
Stevens’s own staff moved first. Her chief of staff of eight years, Justin German, announced on Sunday that he and many members of her team had resigned that morning. “We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’ decision to support Mike Rogers,” German wrote, adding that the staff wholeheartedly backed El-Sayed and urging voters to support Democrats up and down the ballot.
National Democrats condemned the endorsement in blunt terms. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had backed Stevens in the primary, called it “a despicable betrayal” and said Senate Democrats were united behind El-Sayed. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the move as an abandonment of Michigan families, according to The Week.
Former Biden adviser Neera Tanden wrote on X that standing with Rogers was “a betrayal of everything Haley Stevens has fought for her entire career” and of the supporters who believed in her. The Young Democrats of Michigan, the party’s official youth wing in the state, went further, calling on Stevens to “resign immediately” and saying she had made the race about herself instead of Michigan.
Hertel, speaking in a television interview, said Stevens “does not speak for that larger community” and accused her of abandoning the values she claimed to hold. In his written statement, he said her decision to campaign with Rogers, whom he described as a loyal vote for President Donald Trump’s agenda, showed she had abandoned everything she claimed to care about.
Stevens has pointed to two reasons for the break. She cited El-Sayed’s ties to left-wing streamer Hasan Piker and a long-running disagreement over Israel, including an outside group’s advertisement linking United States military aid to Israel with grocery prices, which she called antisemitic. El-Sayed has said his campaign did not make the advertisement and that he disagrees with it, the Associated Press reported.
El-Sayed himself dismissed the controversy. He said he was unbothered by the announcement, telling reporters: “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.” His campaign has argued that a vote for Rogers is a vote for Trump, and Al Jazeera reported that his campaign saw a fundraising surge after Stevens crossed party lines.
Trump courts Stevens as Michigan race tightens
Republicans moved just as quickly to embrace Stevens. At a rescheduled rally in Iowa on Sunday, Trump praised her endorsement as “brave” and said he had called her to thank her for doing “the right thing.” Asked whether she should join the Republican Party, he replied: “I’d love to have her.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he had also sent Stevens a note thanking her for her action on Sunday. Trump had earlier praised Stevens on social media, calling her a highly respected Democrat who had been courted by Democrats to help their Michigan campaign against Rogers.
Polls before the split had El-Sayed ahead of Rogers by five to seven points in surveys from CNN and the New York Times and Siena College, according to The Week, although the final New York Times/Siena polls released on Sunday showed Democrats leading in all seven Senate races viewed as most competitive, with five of those leads inside the margin of error.
What remains confirmed is the shape of the Michigan race entering Election Day: El-Sayed remains the Democratic nominee, Rogers remains the Republican nominee, and Stevens, a four-term congresswoman, now sits outside the state party that once backed her. Early voting nationally has already set a record, with 54 million ballots cast before Election Day, according to Agence France-Presse.
What remains unconfirmed is whether the split will move votes. Michigan voters go to the polls on Tuesday, November 3, along with voters across the country in elections for all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats, and the count, not the endorsements, will decide whether Democrats gain the Senate majority they need to check Trump for the rest of his term.
