Democrat Stevens Endorses GOPer Rogers in Michigan Senate Race, Saying El-Sayed Stands for ‘Hate’

Congresswoman Haley Stevens is endorsing the Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, saying Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, is associated with “hate.” Her statement, recorded from inside a vehicle, appeared after she attended a service at a predominantly black Detroit church with Mr. Rogers on Sunday. “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, and he’s right,” Ms. Stevens said in a video posted on X after the church services. “That’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”“I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign. I do not stand with Hasan Piker who gets trafficked on our college campuses,” Ms. Stevens said. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate and it is not what we are getting out of our Democratic nominee right now.” The outgoing congresswoman said she is “still a very proud Democrat,” but the race is for “the conscience of the Senate.”Before the church services began, Ms. Stevens told reporters that the Republican Senate nominee will “take on” the fight for black-owned businesses once he gets to the Senate. Ms. Stevens attended services with Mr. Rogers after she was discouraged from attending a similar event featuring her Democratic colleagues, House lawmakers Jim Clyburn and Debbie Dingell, as well as Dr. El-Sayed. “That is a policy that Mike’s going to take on,” she told reporters inside Perfecting Church, according to a video posted by independent journalist Sam Robinson. Mr. Rogers was standing next to Ms. Stevens as she made the remarks. She briefly grabbed his hand as they walked into the sanctuary. Ms. Stevens and Mr. Rogers sat together in the pews along with Mr. Rogers’ wife and Ms. Stevens’ fiancé, Justin Turkish. The chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, said Ms. Stevens’ decision to endorse Mr. Rogers “shows that she has abandoned everything she claims to care about.”“We reject the attempts by Stevens and bad faith actors to divide our party and undermine our momentum, and will not allow these eleventh-hour distractions deter us,” Mr. Hertel said. Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The primary between the more moderate Ms. Stevens and progressive Dr. El-Sayed was an especially bitter one, though the wounds seemed to heal quickly at first. The two appeared at a unity event together just days after the primary, and Ms. Stevens enthusiastically endorsed him. Ms. Stevens, who dropped out of the running for her congressional post to run for Senate, lost the primary by less than one point. Last Sunday, however, Ms. Stevens declined to use Dr. El-Sayed’s name when asked if she was supporting him. During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms. Stevens said that she was “on the team” to get him elected, although she name-checked other Democrats on the ballot. Last week, Mr. Turkish said in an interview with The Detroit News that he would vote for Mr. Rogers because he believes Dr. El-Sayed is an antisemite. Ms. Stevens later said she was still on Dr. El-Sayed’s side, though she pressed him to denounce an ad produced by pro-Palestinian activist Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC depicting a couple in a supermarket saying they cannot afford bananas or eggs because they have to set money aside to give to Israel “for killing Palestinians” and bombing Gaza.Dr. El-Sayed would only say that his campaign neither made the ad nor was the campaign affiliated with Rebellion PAC. Ms. Stevens said Friday that she expects Dr. El-Sayed “to apologize” for past statements pointing to American support for Israel as a reason why schools and healthcare systems are underfunded. “Abdul promises to get money out of politics. He can begin by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford,” Ms. Stevens said in a statement. She added that out of respect for the black community, she expected him to take down an advertisement featuring “white Christian nationalist Tucker Carlson.”In response, Dr. El-Sayed accused Ms. Stevens of trying to relitigate the primary that she lost in August. “Our campaign is and has always been focused on addressing the most critical challenges Michiganders are facing,” the El-Sayed campaign said Friday. “That should be the priority for all of us right now. So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand.”Ms. Stevens, Dr. El-Sayed, and a host of other Democrats were due to attend a get-out-the-vote event together led by Mr. Clyburn, the elder statesman from South Carolina who served for two decades as the third-most powerful Democrat in the House. On Saturday, Dr. El-Sayed told reporters that he did not want Ms. Stevens in attendance, saying he does not need any “distractions” at this time. An advisor to Mr. Clyburn, Antjuan Seawright, then told the New York Times that Dr. El-Sayed does not have veto power over the guest list. “This is not Abdul’s event,” Mr. Seawright told the Times. “The invitation still stands.” On Saturday, a doyenne of the Democratic party, Ms. Dingell, said that it was her idea to not have Ms. Stevens at the event. “I am the one that talked to Haley, and I am the one that said, ‘This isn’t working,” Ms. Dingell said during an on-air interview with CNN. “The amount of national attention that is being given to this relationship … there’s nothing to be gained by the two of them [being] in the same place.”“We need to be talking about the issues,” Ms. Dingell said.

Democrat Stevens Endorses GOPer Rogers in Michigan Senate Race, Saying El-Sayed Stands for ‘Hate’

Democrat Stevens Endorses GOPer Rogers in Michigan Senate Race, Saying El-Sayed Stands for ‘Hate’

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