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Nov 2, 2026
Stevens Backs Rogers as Michigan Democrats’ Rift Spills Into Senate Race
Haley Stevens frames her decision as a response to what she says is an unacceptable turn in Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign, while other accounts place the rupture in a long-running dispute over Israel and warn that it could complicate a pivotal Senate contest.
Haley Stevens’ decision to endorse Republican Mike Rogers has turned a strained post-primary relationship with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed into an unusually public split just before a closely contested Michigan election.
Stevens, a former Democratic primary candidate, appeared with Rogers at a Detroit church and then announced her support in a video. She said, “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” arguing that the Democratic nominee’s message did not reflect Michigan values: “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate.”1 Stevens said El-Sayed had told her she was no longer welcome in his campaign.
Accounts of the dispute agree that tensions had been building, but they emphasize different causes. Reporting on the Democratic side describes a clash over an outside liberal group’s advertisement that blamed Israel for high food prices. Stevens, a strong supporter of Israel, wanted El-Sayed to denounce it; El-Sayed criticized the ad and said he was not involved in its content.1
Another account presents the episode as the collapse of an attempted party truce. It says Stevens had been due to appear with El-Sayed before the campaign formally disinvited her, while Representative Debbie Dingell characterized their planned joint appearance as counterproductive: “There’s nothing to be gained by the two of them being in the same place.”2 That framing treats the endorsement less as an isolated declaration than as the endpoint of a primary feud that party leaders had struggled to contain.
Right-leaning coverage has cast the development in sharper party-conflict terms, describing Stevens as having been “thrown out” of the Democratic Party and portraying the endorsement as a Democratic “civil war.”34 The reported facts, however, center on Stevens’ break with El-Sayed’s campaign rather than any documented formal expulsion from the party.
The stakes extend beyond the personalities involved. Michigan’s Senate race is regarded as one of the contests likely to shape control of the chamber, making Stevens’ late intervention a potentially consequential test of whether a high-profile internal dispute affects turnout or persuades voters across party lines.1