Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens just walked into a Detroit church with Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers and then publicly endorsed him two days before the election. Stevens lost the August primary to Abdul El-Sayed but carried Detroit with roughly 62 percent of the vote to his 34 percent, winning the Black-majority city and strong support among Black voters statewide while El-Sayed scraped by on progressive and Arab-American turnout elsewhere. That primary result made clear where her base stood. Now she is standing with the Republican.
Stevens said El-Sayed’s campaign told her she was no longer welcome and that she should stay away. She agreed. In a video after the Perfecting Church service she declared she does not belong in El-Sayed’s campaign, does not stand with figures such as Hasan Piker who campaigned for him, and is therefore endorsing Rogers. The appearance itself was at a prominent Black church; plans for a Democratic unity event with El-Sayed and Jim Clyburn had already collapsed over disputes involving Israel and an outside ad Stevens called antisemitic. Her fiancé had already signaled he would vote for Rogers for similar reasons.
This is not a quiet policy difference. It is an open rejection of the Democratic nominee by the candidate who performed best with the very voters Democrats need in Michigan. Detroit and Wayne County remain the firewall for any Democratic statewide win. Stevens won those areas decisively in the primary. El-Sayed did not. By appearing with Rogers and endorsing him on the eve of the election she is telling those voters, and anyone paying attention, that the progressive direction of the ticket is a bridge too far on Israel, antisemitism, and campaign associations. Whether that moves numbers in a tight race for Senate control remains to be seen, but the fracture is now public, photographed, and on the record.
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