DETROIT — Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens told a longtime friend Saturday evening that she planned to attend a church service the next day in Detroit with her formal rival, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. She even texted the top Democrat the church’s address.
The church service, led by Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-South Carolina), one of the country’s most powerful Black lawmakers, was meant to show unity, signal that the acrimony spilling over from a contentious primary had ended and highlight the two campaigning with Black voters, a key voting bloc that backed Stevens in the primary.
Hours later, Stevens chose to attend another church service, this one alongside Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent.
Not only did she hug Rogers on the way in and sit beside him in the pews, but shortly after, she announced a surprise endorsement for the Republican, calling him the best choice for a seat that could decide the Senate’s balance of power.
Stevens had told multiple people close to her she had no plans to endorse Rogers. Her shocking about-face represents the latest twist in one of the nation’s most unpredictable and consequential midterm contests, highlighting the deep-seated animosity Stevens has toward El-Sayed, who defeated her in a combative primary earlier this year. The rift, which revolved around their disagreements over Israel, is deeply personal but also highlights the Democratic Party’s wider fractures over Israel policy, which are expected to reverberate in Congress and the 2028 presidential primary.
Instead of a symbol of unity, the planned stop at Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ became the campaign’s biggest display of discord, a move that national Democrats described as a likely career-ender for Stevens. The head of the Michigan Democratic Party said Sunday that she “is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.”
The open warring between Stevens and El-Sayed began last week when Jason Turkish, Stevens’s fiancé, endorsed Rogers for Senate, telling reporters that the Democrat had refused to moderate his language on Israel. Turkish’s decision set off a scramble inside senior Democratic circles, with multiple top Democrats working to ensure she had no plans to back the Republican.
El-Sayed’s campaign learned that Turkish planned to endorse Rogers ahead of the Wednesday announcement and began scrambling to get people who know Stevens to call her and find out what was going on, according to one person familiar with last week’s behind-the-scenes machinations. El-Sayed’s staff was concerned she would endorse Rogers alongside Turkish because people who knew Stevens said she agreed with her fiancé’s critiques of El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel and its war with Hamas in Gaza.
The Michigan Democratic primary was contentious, and divided the electorate between El-Sayed’s more progressive politics and Stevens’s centrism. The candidate’s positions on Israel were central to the race, with El-Sayed calling the nation’s action in Gaza a “genocide,” a position that infuriated Stevens and has caused some Michigan Democrats to reject El-Sayed’s candidacy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and its affiliated groups spent tens of millions to support Stevens, leading El-Sayed to accuse her of being a shill for the organization.
After El-Sayed won the primary, however, Stevens initially backed the Democrat and received praise from other Democrats for putting the primary behind her. Before and after an interview with The Washington Post the Friday after the primary, Stevens stopped people on the streets of Detroit’s New Center district to encourage them to vote for El-Sayed and called him a “great candidate.”
But as the general election dragged on, Stevens’s statements about El-Sayed grew more strained, and it became clear that the Democrat was struggling to fully get behind him.
The two politicians shared a stubborn streak, with Stevens eager to remind people she had differences with El-Sayed, even as she said she would vote for him, and El-Sayed making few public overtures.
But Stevens reassured people close to her that she would not join her fiancé.
According to a person who worked on Stevens’s campaign, when concerned staffers reached out to Stevens to ask whether she would endorse Rogers, she replied by text, “Omg, why would you think I would do that?!!” Semafor was first to report this exchange.
She also told CNN in a somewhat awkward television appearance after Turkish’s endorsement that they were “a household divided” and that she would “still very much want our Democratic nominee, his name is Abdul, to win this race.” And on Thursday, The Post and other outlets reported that Stevens and El-Sayed would try to bury the acrimony at the church with Clyburn, with El-Sayed telling reporters that the event didn’t happen sooner because of their busy schedules.
But by Friday night, the planned unity event looked iffy, after Stevens issued a statement that demanded El-Sayed apologize for his critiques of U.S. aid to Israel and to explicitly condemn an outside group’s ad purportedly supporting him. El-Sayed’s team has previously distanced itself from the spot, which never ran on television but received more than 7 million views on X.
El-Sayed responded with a statement relitigating Stevens’s primary defeat, and his campaign staff asked Stevens on Friday night not to attend any events with the candidate for the remainder of the campaign, according to two people familiar with the request, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. In an overnight text message to The Post, Stevens declined to talk until after the election, “when we have our democratic Senator-elect (my prediction!).”
A friend of Stevens’s who had seen both the congresswoman and Turkish in recent days said Stevens’s fiancé was “really working her over” to get her to back Rogers, including by telling her that Jewish voters in Michigan supported her during the primary and that “she betrayed them.” Turkish is Jewish; Stevens is Protestant but is reportedly considering converting to Judaism.
In addition to her public statements, Stevens privately assured top Democrats that she would not endorse Rogers. They included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan), Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and others, according to a Democrat familiar with the conversations.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) told The Post that he spoke with Stevens for 25 minutes on Saturday night and she assured him that she would be celebrating with them on election night and that she was committed to the party.
“I’m dumbfounded by this turn of events,” he said. “Something doesn’t compute about this whole sequence of events.”
Former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard, a longtime friend of Stevens’s, had dinner with the congresswoman on Friday night, and she told him that she planned to put out a statement before the church service reaffirming her support for El-Sayed, he said.
“She was planning on being a team player. She was hopeful about it,” Blanchard recalled. Stevens later texted Blanchard — both Saturday and early Sunday morning — confirming where the service was and that she would be there.
“She was happy about going to the church and asked me to join her,” he said, adding that, at some point, her plans changed. “This is not the Haley I know. This is not the Haley I had dinner with on Friday night.”
Stevens did not return requests for comment Sunday. Stevens told Politico that she only told Rogers on Sunday morning that she would endorse him and that she made the decision after her exclusion from El-Sayed’s campaign events. “He has done something incredible,” she said. “He just was clear that I wasn’t a part of it. ”
The Democratic response to Stevens’s endorsement has been swift and brutal, especially considering she said before the primary that Rogers would be a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”
“This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens,” Schumer wrote on X. The powerful Senate Democrat had supported her in the primary against El-Sayed.
“Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” wrote Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat.
Stevens’s endorsement, which came in a video on X during the church service, even caught Republicans, including Rogers’s campaign, off guard.
“We found out in real time,” said Abby Ronson, a Rogers spokesperson, who recalled how the Rogers campaign did not know she planned to back him until the video posted online. The endorsement also blindsided Stevens’s congressional staff. Her chief of staff, Justin German, and several other members of her congressional team resigned in protest, with German saying they were “shocked and heartbroken” by her decision.
Republican were euphoric. The Senate Leadership Fund, the top super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidates, sent reporters a photo of Rogers and Stevens seated together in church and smiling. President Donald Trump called Stevens “brave” and told reporters he would “love” to have her in the Republican Party, while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said he sent the congresswoman a note after her endorsement.
Outside the Detroit church where El-Sayed later appeared, Democratic attorney general nominee Eli Savit said the entire ticket is frustrated they can’t talk about their closing message because the media only wants to discuss Stevens’s defection.
“That’s what’s so disappointing to me about it. I think up and down the ticket, we want to be talking about the issues that are impacting Michiganders,” Savit said.
But there could be a silver lining to ending all the back-and-forth, he said.
“Maybe it does rip the Band-Aid off,” he said, “and we can really focus on who has a better plan to actually make Michiganders’ lives better.”
The post Inside the chaos before Haley Stevens’s shocking Senate endorsement in Michigan appeared first on Washington Post.
