El-Sayed Asks Stevens to Stay Off the Platform in Michigan Senate Race
Seven Lights
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Michigan, told Representative Haley Stevens on Saturday that he did not want her at his campaign events. “I don’t want any distractions,” El-Sayed told reporters after a campaign rally, as the New York Times reported. “It seems as though other folks are more interested in making this race about things that it’s not about.”
The two had planned to appear together on Sunday at a church service in Detroit. Representative Debbie Dingell later told CNN that she had spoken with Stevens and told her, “This isn’t working.” Dingell said the tensions between the two were a distraction and that “there’s nothing to be gained by the two of them being in the same place.”
The rupture sets the progressive El-Sayed against the more moderate Stevens, whom he defeated in a bitter primary in August, three days before a general election the party regards as a must-win to retake the Senate. Stevens endorsed El-Sayed shortly after the primary and had planned to campaign with him on Sunday. She had until now avoided appearing in public with her former opponent, whom she has criticized openly for weeks.
Stevens demanded two days before the joint appearance that El-Sayed denounce an outside group’s political advertisement blaming higher prices in part on United States support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Her fiancé, Jason Turkish, has campaigned on behalf of the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed shot back in a statement that noted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent heavily to defeat him in the primary. “Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago,” the statement said. “Let’s all focus on the task at hand: that’s beating Mike Rogers, holding Trump accountable, and getting money out of politics, putting money in pockets, and passing Medicare for All.”
Democrats in the state voiced alarm. Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow told CNN on Friday that she had “no idea” what Stevens was doing in a contest the party regards as essential to winning the Senate. The open feuding has cast the intramural tensions of the party into the spotlight in one of the most consequential races of its campaign for control of the chamber.
Voters in Michigan go to the polls on Tuesday. Stevens has not said whether she will appear at any campaign event before the election, and El-Sayed continued to hold rallies across the state.
Update, Nov. 1 (afternoon): Stevens endorsed Rogers on Sunday, appearing beside him at Perfecting Church in Detroit two days before the election, where she praised his support for Black-owned businesses. In a video posted on X, she said El-Sayed had told her she was no longer welcome in his campaign. “And he’s right, and that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today,” she said. A campaign account for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the move a “despicable betrayal,” while the Michigan Democratic Party said it “stands united and fully behind Abdul El-Sayed.” Stevens’s chief of staff of eight years, Justin German, and her communications director, Logan Basch, left her office after the endorsement, CNN reported; German then released a statement on behalf of the staff endorsing El-Sayed, saying, “We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’ decision to support Mike Rogers.” El-Sayed, in his first public comments since the endorsement, told reporters, “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.” President Trump praised Stevens’s reversal.