Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate Democrat who represents suburban Detroit, entered the race for Senate in Michigan on Tuesday, casting herself as a proud native daughter pushing back against Trumpian chaos.
“The same groceries cost more each month, housing’s more expensive than ever,” said Ms. Stevens in her announcement video, as images of President Trump and his close adviser, Elon Musk, flash across the screen. “What the heck are they doing?”
Ms. Stevens, who joined Congress in 2019 after flipping a Republican-held seat, represents affluent, vote-rich Oakland County, a onetime Republican stronghold that is now a vital Democratic bastion.
She is the latest Democrat to join an increasingly crowded and competitive primary race to succeed Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat who is retiring. The open-seat contest, in one of the most closely divided states in the country, is likely to be a marquee race in 2026, as Democrats strain to regain control of the Senate.
Ms. Stevens, a strong fund-raiser who is the chair of the center-left New Democrat Coalition Action Fund, will be seen as a centrist in the primary contest. A former chief of staff for the Obama administration’s auto task force, she is leaning into her support for manufacturing and the auto industry. And, speaking in her distinctive Michigan accent, she opened her announcement video by telling the story of her first car.
“That used Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, it meant more to me than just freedom,” Ms. Stevens said. “It meant I had a piece of Michigan. You know, the Michigan that helped build this country. The Michigan that shaped me. It’s not just what I sound like. It’s who I am.”
In Congress, Ms. Stevens has been a vocal supporter of Israel, and she has received considerable backing from major pro-Israel groups including AIPAC’s political arm, which has spent heavily in Democratic primaries. Support from that group, a lightning rod in some Democratic circles, helped Ms. Stevens defeat former Representative Andy Levin, the more liberal candidate, in a primary in 2022.
Debates over Israel and the war in Gaza tore apart the Democratic Party over the last year and a half, and some Democrats worry that such issues will be particularly divisive in the party’s primary for Senate in Michigan.
The Middle East is an especially sensitive subject in the state, which is home to significant Arab American, Muslim and Jewish communities.
Other Democrats believe that the primary contests next year will be defined above all by debates over how to fight back against the Trump administration. In her announcement video, Ms. Stevens emphasized pushing back against Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
“His chaos and reckless tariffs are putting tens of thousands of Michigan jobs at risk,” she said.
Ms. Stevens’s primary opponents include State Senator Mallory McMorrow, also of Oakland County, who is pressing a message of generational change, and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official from Ann Arbor and a progressive who has the support of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
On the Republican side, former Representative Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost Michigan’s Senate race last fall to Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, has announced that he is running again.
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
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