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The Michigan Democratic Party kicked Rep. Haley Stevens out of its ranks Sunday, after she endorsed Michigan’s GOP Senate nominee, Mike Rogers — over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who defeated her in the primary.
“Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future,” the state party’s chair, Curtis Hertel, said in a post Sunday on X.
Hertel announced the decision just over an hour after Stevens released an endorsement video for Rogers. That video followed days of public friction with El-Sayed, much of it over the candidate’s stance on Israel, the same issue that made their primary bitter and divisive.
In her endorsement video, Stevens insisted she was “still a very proud Democrat.”
“I’m just letting you know where I am,” she said.
Michigan’s Senate race is seen as close, and polls suggest El-Sayed does not have the same level of support that other statewide Democratic candidates in Michigan do. While Democrats could achieve their goal of retaking the Senate via several scenarios, nearly all of the most plausible ones require them to win in Michigan.
Stevens’s endorsement enraged Democrats across Michigan — and the country — who have been encouraging her and El-Sayed to present a united front.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called the decision by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) to endorse former congressman Mike Rogers, a Republican, in a crucial Senate race in her state “a despicable betrayal.”
Stevens endorsed Rogers on Sunday over Abdul El-Sayed, the former Wayne County public health official who narrowly defeated Stevens in August in the Democratic primary. Stevens supported El-Sayed after the primary, but the two have clashed publicly in the days ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“Senate Democrats are united in our support for Abdul El-Sayed, because we know he will fight for the economic interests of working families in Michigan, unlike Mike Rogers, who is a tool of Donald Trump and billionaire donors,” Schumer wrote on X.
Schumer backed Stevens in the Democratic primary but immediately endorsed El-Sayed after he won, despite differences between the two men on Israel and other issues. Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with Schumer, has committed or spent more than $43 million on ads in the race since Labor Day — more than in any other Senate contest except for Ohio and Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.
Alaska election officials face two lawsuits over absentee-in-person voting sites in rural communities that plaintiffs say did not open as advertised ahead of Tuesday’s election, creating a potential barrier to the ballot in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.
The dispute comes as Alaska’s contest between Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola has drawn national attention over a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and federal and state investigations into whether he was recruited to confuse voters. The Senate race could help determine control of the chamber.
Midnight Sun Independence Fund and the Alaska Democratic Party filed similar lawsuits accusing the Division of Elections of failing to open designated absentee-in-person voting sites. The filing says that several locations, including many in rural Alaska Native communities, did not operate during the first week of early voting, which began Oct. 19. Some voters in the affected communities would face costly travel by plane or boat to reach another voting site, the suits say.
Carol Beecher, the Division of Elections director, said in an Oct. 26 letter to state Sen. Bill Wielechowski (D-Anchorage), who first flagged the 18 sites, that 12 of the 18 locations had told the state they were open, while three had declined to operate, and three had not responded.
A hearing in the Midnight Sun case is scheduled for Monday. “We’re just trying to get them open, no matter what it is,” said Eric Croft, chair of the Alaska Democratic Party.
If there was just one person who might decide control of Congress this fall, they would look a lot like Jen Hernandez.
Hernandez, an independent who has voted for Republicans, Democrats and third-party candidates, was undecided in late September when she spoke to The Washington Post about her choices in the midterm elections.
She lives in Colorado’s battleground 8th Congressional District, where Rep. Gabe Evans (R) is facing off against Democrat Manny Rutinel, a former state lawmaker. This swing district voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and then Donald Trump in 2024, when Evans unseated a Democratic incumbent by less than one percentage point.
People like Hernandez — a married, Mexican American millennial without a college degree who lives in a small city — are disproportionately important to determining House control, a Post analysis earlier this year found.
So who is she going to vote for?
Hernandez said she liked Evans’s support for the oil and gas industry — her husband works as a rig manager — but favored Rutinel’s stances on health care, immigration and the economy.
After careful consideration, she decided she’s voting Democratic.
Many in the district, which stretches from Denver’s northern suburbs to her home in the meatpacking hub of Greeley, appear to be inching in the same direction.
On Oct. 23, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted the race from a “toss-up” to one that “leans Democratic,” signaling that Rutinel has a slight edge.
Our reporters heard Republicans, who are bracing for crushing defeats on Tuesday, presenting the midterm elections as an existential crisis. Across the country on Saturday, GOP candidates and their allies tried to warn voters that Democratic victories would usher in far-left extremism.
Here are three examples:
- “This race is about defending our state and our country. It’s also about safeguarding our way of life,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate in a surprising toss-up race, said in a rally at Fort Worth. “So, I’m not exaggerating when I say, we lose Texas, we lose America.”
- “We are no longer going to be arguing about marginal tax rates, we’re not going to be debating shades of difference in foreign policy and regulation,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said while rallying for Republicans in Michigan. “We’re going to be talking about whether we’re going to maintain the republic, the very foundations of America. We’re going to go down this dark, dangerous road to communism.”
- “Are you ready to protect Ohio from the spread of communism? Because that’s what this election is about,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, said in a Lorain County campaign stop. “It’s communism versus common sense.”
A record 7.4 million Texans voted early in the midterms, giving Democrats an apparent lead in turnout and forcing Republicans to rely more heavily on independents to win key races, analysts say.
Texas voters don’t register with a party. Analysts extrapolate party affiliation from records showing which primary they voted in, with those who skip the primary considered independent.
More Democrats voted early than Republicans in urban counties. More Republicans voted in the state’s suburban and rural areas. But the number of independents outpaced both parties.
“Democrats lead in Texas’s big counties. Republicans lead everywhere else. Independents decide it,” nonpartisan Houston area-based early voting expert Steven David said in his analysis.
David said 54 percent of independents need to vote Republican for the GOP to break even with Democrats, and that’s unlikely. Usually they’re evenly split between the parties, he said.
A number of factors, he said, make it difficult to predict voter behavior: enthusiastic first-time and sporadic left-leaning voters and disaffected right-leaning voters staying home, splitting their ticket or skipping certain races.
Most independent early voters didn’t vote in 2024, nearly half are Latino, and many are young and female, Tom Bonnier, a polling analyst at Target Smart, noted on X.
That doesn’t guarantee Democrats victory in the crucial U.S. Senate race, he said. “Dems start in a big hole in [Texas]. To me this shows the race is in play.”
Additional Coverage
- October 31, 2026
Texas Republicans sweating over low turnout in early voting
Forget the Alamo.
Ken Paxton, the Republican Texas attorney general running for U.S. Senate, no longer appears to have plans to host a closing rally at the famed San Antonio battle site known as the “Shrine of Texas Liberty.”
Paxton’s campaign initially planned to end its “Come and Take It” tour at the Alamo on Monday night, but it published an event page saying Paxton would instead spend Monday evening roughly 300 miles away, in Allen, Texas.
Paxton will still swing by San Antonio on Sunday evening, though the event is slated to be roughly 15 miles north of the Alamo.
His campaign has been guarded about the details of the Alamo rally and did not respond to a query on whether it would ever take place. The Alamo Trust’s rules of reverence prohibit “events or gatherings that include advocacy around public policy, are political in nature, or involve fundraising activities not affiliated with the Alamo.”
The site of a fateful battle where the Anglo Texians lost to the Mexican army during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo holds a colossal place in the Texas psyche. The command to “Remember the Alamo” has become a rallying cry to persevere against impossible odds.
Paxton is in a highly competitive race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who has for months led slightly in polls and vastly in fundraising. Paxton’s campaign has been hampered by past allegations of criminal misconduct and personal indiscretion, including an impeachment in the state House over alleged bribery. He was acquitted in the state Senate and has maintained his innocence.
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