DETROIT, Michigan — Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for the United States Senate on Sunday, November 1, breaking publicly with her own party's nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, less than 48 hours before Michigan voters decide one of the closest Senate races in the country on Tuesday, November 3.
Source: NPR via WHRO
"As you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away, and he's right," Stevens said in a video posted to social media on Sunday. "And that's why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the U.S. Senate today."
A Sunday morning that rewrote the final weekend
The endorsement followed a surprise joint appearance on Sunday morning at Perfecting Church on Detroit's east side, where Stevens attended a service with Rogers at about 11:20 a.m. and told reporters she supports investing in Black-owned businesses — "and that's the policy Mike's going to take on," she said, according to Detroit News reporting summarised by Kalshi News. Rogers stood beside her and said he was honoured to have her support.
Source: Kalshi News summary of Detroit News reporting
Stevens had originally been scheduled to attend a different Detroit church event on Sunday alongside El-Sayed and Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina — a planned show of party unity ahead of the election. That event went ahead without her. El-Sayed, speaking to reporters outside a "Souls to the Polls" event at Northend Church of God in Christ in Detroit, dismissed the endorsement. "None of this matters," he said. "You know what matters. You can go, like, 15 minutes that way, or 15 minutes that way, or 15 minutes that way. And there are families who are preparing to send their kids to schools tomorrow that look like they did 50 years ago. They're worried about what they're going to feed their kids for lunch. They're worried that if one of their kids gets sick, they're not going to be able to pay the bills."
Awaaz Punjab reported on Sunday morning, before this endorsement, that El-Sayed had asked Stevens to stay away from his final campaign events after a Friday clash over Israel and an outside political ad. The endorsement of the Republican nominee is a major new escalation of that split, not a repeat of it. Read the earlier report: El-Sayed tells Stevens to stay away
How the split built up, step by step
Stevens narrowly lost the August 4 Democratic primary to El-Sayed, 48.5 percent to 47.5 percent, and initially endorsed him and said for months that she was supporting the Democratic ticket, NPR reported. The public break widened last week when her fiancé, Jason Turkish, said he planned to vote for Rogers, citing El-Sayed's rhetoric on Israel. Stevens then demanded that El-Sayed condemn an outside group's advertisement — produced by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, according to NPR — that linked United States military aid to Israel with high grocery prices. "The ad tells Michigan families they cannot afford groceries because their money has to be set aside 'for killing Palestinians,' and it blames our close ally Israel for everything Michiganders cannot afford," Stevens wrote, characterising the ad as antisemitic. El-Sayed's campaign said he had nothing to do with the ad, that he disagreed with its contents, and accused Stevens of relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.
Source: CBS News reporting via US Times Mirror
In her endorsement video Stevens also said she does "not stand with Hasan Piker," the streamer El-Sayed campaigned with during the primary. After Piker implied in August that Jews' support for Israel puts them at risk of personal violence, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from the controversy, saying Piker did not speak for the campaign, but stopped short of disavowing him, NPR reported. Stevens had criticised El-Sayed for not doing enough to reassure the Jewish and Black voters who had supported her in the primary, and on Friday she set a condition for joining the Sunday unity event: that El-Sayed reject the ad and apologise for rhetoric she considered inflammatory and offensive.
Democratic leaders close ranks behind El-Sayed
The reaction from Democratic leaders was immediate and blunt. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the endorsement a "despicable betrayal," NPR reported, and said in a statement: "Senate Democrats are united in our support for Abdul El-Sayed, because we know he will fight for the economic interests of working families in Michigan, unlike Mike Rogers, who is a tool of Donald Trump and billionaire donors." Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel said Stevens' decision to campaign with Rogers — "a man who has repeatedly sold out Michigan's working class, wants to pass a national abortion ban, and has pledged to be a loyal vote for Trump's agenda" — showed she had abandoned everything she claims to care about. Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan said voters "want leaders focused on making their lives more affordable" and criticised Stevens' "continued efforts to get attention." Within Stevens' own office, her communications director's email auto-reply said on Sunday that he was no longer working for the Stevens office, NPR reported, and Kalshi News, citing CNN, reported that her chief of staff also quit after the endorsement.
Source: NPR via WHRO; CBS News via US Times Mirror
Rogers, a former Republican congressman endorsed by President Donald Trump, is contesting the seat held by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. He had praised Stevens on Friday for calling on El-Sayed to denounce the ad and for raising concerns voiced by Michigan Jewish voters, writing: "Representative Haley Stevens is a courageous leader who deserves the respect of every Michigan voter. She has conducted herself with nothing but class since the Democratic primary, a primary where a majority of voters did not vote for her party's nominee."
Why Michigan matters — including to Punjabi readers
Michigan is one of a handful of states that will decide whether Republicans keep their 53–47 Senate majority or Democrats take control for the final two years of President Trump's second term, and this race has been rated a toss-up through the autumn. Metro Detroit and cities such as Hamtramck, Troy and Sterling Heights are home to large South Asian and Punjabi communities, and Michigan's early voting — which ended on Sunday with more than two million ballots already cast, according to figures summarised by Kalshi News — has been closely watched as a measure of turnout in exactly those suburbs. Prediction-market traders reacted within hours on Sunday: El-Sayed's price on Kalshi fell from about 76 percent at noon to 68 percent after the endorsement, while Rogers rose to 32 percent — a market move, not a poll, and not a prediction of the result.
Source: Kalshi News
What happens next
Polls open across Michigan on Tuesday, November 3, and the result — expected on Tuesday night and into Wednesday — will be one of the first called in the fight for the Senate. El-Sayed spent Sunday urging voters to focus on schools, food prices and health-care bills; Rogers spent it with a Democratic congresswoman at his side in Detroit. Whether Stevens' voters follow her across party lines is now one of the central unanswered questions of the final 48 hours.