Democrats Fracture Over Michigan Senate Race After Cross-Party Endorsement

An earthquake rocked Michigan’s Democratic Party 48 hours before polls close on Nov. 3 when the loser of the Democratic Senate primary broke ranks and endorsed Republican Mike Rogers.

After a contentious Aug. 4 primary battle with progressive populist Abdul El-Sayed, who ultimately won by a 0.9-percentage-point margin, Stevens initially endorsed her left-wing opponent and committed to backing Democrats up and down the ballot across the Great Lakes State, saying that Rogers would “be another rubber stamp for [President] Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”

But after appearing with El-Sayed at a state party breakfast on Aug. 6, Stevens remained absent from the campaign trail.

In a Nov. 2 statement on social media, she criticized El-Sayed’s campaigning with left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, as well as an ad his uncle, Cenk Uygur, placed blaming U.S. military aid to Israel for rising consumer prices in Michigan. Although Stevens welcomed El-Sayed’s decision to reject the ad’s rhetoric, she noted how, at that point, she was no longer welcome at his campaign events.

“That experience raised a bigger question,” she said. “If a candidate cannot make room for people who supported his primary opponent, how will he represent an entire state filled with people who disagree with him?”

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A Bitter Primary Battle

Some Democrats, including Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), took issue with El-Sayed’s strong criticisms of U.S. support for Israel. After the primary, Dingell endorsed El-Sayed.

The contest became the third most expensive U.S. Senate primary on record, according to an analysis by AdImpact, with $63.9 million spent on behalf of Stevens compared to $7.3 million spent for El-Sayed.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated groups spent close to $30 million on the race on behalf of Stevens, The Associated Press reported on July 19, making it AIPAC’s largest investment in a single race.

What Changed Stevens’s Mind

Everything came to a head over a Rebellion PAC ad run on Oct. 28 in support of El-Sayed, which Stevens said was anti-Semitic and blamed the Jews for America’s economic woes. El-Sayed said his campaign was not affiliated, and Stevens said she’d appear with El-Sayed alongside Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) at a black church in Detroit on Nov. 1 for an “expected condemnation” of the ad.

El-Sayed then disinvited Stevens and accused her of “relitigating” their primary over her statement about the ad. Soon after, Stevens appeared alongside Rogers at a different Detroit church on Sunday, where she endorsed the Republican she had previously criticized as “the worst kind of politician.”

“I think he loves the country,” Stevens said, describing her reasoning for endorsing Rogers, in an interview with The Free Press.

Stevens accused El-Sayed of “getting angrier and angrier,” and not wanting her near his campaign in an interview with CNN. When asked what had changed between her conversation with Dingell the night before she endorsed Rogers, she said, “Nothing with me changed … I still love my whole party a whole lot.”

Despite endorsing Rogers, Stevens told CNN, “Republicans have shown that they are really focused on letting Trump be the dictator, and that’s not what the Democratic Party is.”

When Detroit Metro Times reported in April that Rogers’s student outreach team included a person who defended the leaked Young Republicans group chat, where members had praised Hitler, Stevens called it “disgraceful” amid the rise in anti-Semitism.

However, she was also unhappy with what she described to The Free Press as indifference from El-Sayed toward Jewish members of the Democratic Party’s coalition following the Rebellion PAC ad.

On Nov. 2, she also recounted feeling “shut out” after she initially endorsed El-Sayed.

“The endorsement was welcomed; the people behind it seemed to be forgotten,” she said. “There was little effort to listen to the voters who supported me or bridge the real disagreements our primary had exposed.”

Democrats, Republicans Respond

Democratic Party leaders from Lansing to Washington criticized Stevens’s endorsement of the Republican candidate, calling into question her political future.

Stevens is no longer a member of the Michigan Democratic Party, party chair Curtis Hertel said. Stevens’s other Democratic primary opponent, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, called the endorsement of Rogers a “sad, desperate attempt to be relevant” in the final days of the race.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called Stevens’s actions a “despicable betrayal,” and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Stevens of choosing to “dangerously betray Michigan families’ healthcare, freedoms, and future with her horrific endorsement of Mike Rogers.”

Justin German, who served as Stevens’s chief of staff for eight years, announced that he and many others on the congresswoman’s team had resigned and were “wholeheartedly supporting” El-Sayed.

Aaron Dusso, associate professor of political science at Indiana University-Indianapolis, told The Epoch Times: “It’s not clear what Stevens had to gain by doing this. Her political career is now over.”

“Even if she became a Republican, her prospects are dim because the history of party switchers is one where they never gain much power or prominence in the new party,” he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans praised Stevens for breaking from her party, which comes in a year when Democrats are desperate to hold onto the Michigan Senate seat in their efforts to retake the Senate majority. President Donald Trump called her endorsement of Rogers “brave” and invited her to join the GOP.

Stevens received a standing ovation from Jewish community members at the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah Annual Dinner in Detroit Sunday evening.

Fiancé Backs Rogers

Multiple Michigan Democrats have also claimed her fiancé, Michigan lawyer Jason Turkish, may have been responsible for convincing Stevens to change her mind Sunday morning.

Stevens initially promised she was still backing Democrats across the ballot, including El-Sayed, after her fiancé’s endorsement of Rogers.

Former Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard told State Affairs that he had dinner with the couple on Friday, and that Stevens’s fiancé had repeatedly admonished her for endorsing El-Sayed in August.

In her Nov. 2 statement, Stevens condemned suggestions that her fiancé made the decision for her.

“Think about what that says,” she said. “A woman can serve in Congress, run statewide, and fight for her convictions, and still be told that when she makes a choice people dislike, someone else must be pulling the strings.”

Stevens added that it was “sexism dressed up as political analysis.”

In an interview with FOX 2 Detroit, Dingell said Stevens told her the night before by phone that any speculation over a Rogers endorsement was a rumor. The two texted early Sunday morning and Stevens had not seemed to change her mind, Dingell said.

Jordan Acker, regent for the University of Michigan and longtime friend of Stevens, said the congresswoman had told him just before 9 a.m. on Sunday that she “intended to remain silent” on Rogers. He said he was left puzzled, wondering “what changed in the two hours that followed.”

On Sunday, Stevens said El-Sayed had disinvited her from the event with Clyburn and had interpreted that as a message to stay away.

However, Joshua Koss, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University, told The Epoch Times he thought Stevens struggled to articulate why she had changed her mind in her earlier interview on CNN.

“For someone who has torched her political future within the party, I would typically expect a more clear roadmap presented for her intentions,” he said.

Koss said Stevens switch “almost certainly seems to be personally motivated, whether it’s previously undisclosed convictions, personal relationships, or feeling increasingly slighted in some capacity.”

Potential Impact on the Race

Stevens received strong support from many Jewish and black Democrats during the August primary, winning Detroit’s Wayne County by a more than 5-percentage-point margin. The county also has one of the largest Arab American communities in the United States, concentrated in Dearborn.

Based on how Stevens had conditioned her support for El-Sayed before revoking it on Sunday, she may have been trying to sway the vote of these demographics, but the strategy may not pay off based on those groups’ “traditional voting patterns,” Koss said.

In September, more than 500 people identifying themselves as Michigan Jewish leaders or voters co-signed a letter by Michigan Jews for Democracy urging fellow Jewish Michiganders to back El-Sayed despite many having “reservations.”

“While Mike Rogers may be courting Jewish support to win in November, he embraces a far-right political agenda which we believe makes Jews and all Americans less safe,” the group wrote.

A competing “Nonnegotiable Michigan” petition, backed by the progressive Zioness Action Fund, was more critical of El-Sayed and outlined pro-Jewish positions for candidates seeking the Jewish vote. And another group of Jews backed a petition by the Michigan Jews Against Extremism in support of Mike Rogers.

Koss argued that if the Stevens defection was a Rogers hail-mary to build a “Democrats for Rogers” coalition in the final 48 hours of the race, it might backfire.

“Almost the entire party apparatus, including figures who seem reticent to support Abdul, almost immediately coalesced around him and condemned Stevens’s decision,” he said.

“While it’s late, I think this probably will energize a previously less engaged part of the Democratic voter base because this is seen as such an alarming betrayal.”

El-Sayed’s campaign reported on Nov. 2 that it had shattered its previous single-day fundraising record by collecting $2.4 million since Stevens endorsed Rogers. The campaign cited an average contribution of $36.74 from more than 65,000 donors, and said more than 29,000 were first-time donors.

“I’ve been at many, many, many events. I was at an NAACP event in Ann Arbor, a disability event, a UAW event. I’ve been everywhere, and I think that this is backfiring,” Dingell told CNN.

“There have been more walk-ins at the end of the day lines on the last day of early voting. People in the black community are really angry about who speaks for them—that they’re not going to have other people speak for them,” she said.

Stevens did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.