A Democratic congresswoman has thrown her support behind a Republican in one of the most closely watched races in the US midterm elections, just two days before voters head to the polls. Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary in August, announced on Sunday that she was endorsing Republican Mike Rogers over her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. The decision follows weeks of tension between the two Democrats over Israel and has provoked a backlash within the party as it fights to win control of Congress and limit President Donald Trump’s power.
Stevens is a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who narrowly lost the party’s Senate primary to El-Sayed, a former public health official who could become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate. Despite a bitter primary battle, Stevens promised to support El-Sayed and said as recently as Wednesday that she still wanted him to win. That was despite her fiance, Jason Turkish, a Jewish Democrat and civil rights attorney, announcing that he would vote for Rogers.
Turkish accused El-Sayed of anti-Semitism, saying his rhetoric about Israel and the war in Gaza had made Jewish voters feel unsafe. But on Sunday, Stevens changed her position. The decision followed weeks of tension over Israel that became increasingly public in the final days of the campaign.
Stevens is a strong supporter of Israel, while El-Sayed has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and US military aid to the country. Their differences were also a major issue during the Democratic primary, when a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent tens of millions of dollars to back Stevens. But the latest dispute began last week, when an independent group backing El-Sayed, Rebellion PAC, released an advertisement linking US military aid to Israel to Americans’ struggles with the cost of living.
The ad shows a couple shopping for groceries who decide to put back a carton of eggs because they need to save that money for “killing Palestinians”. Stevens called the ad anti-Semitic and demanded that El-Sayed condemn it. She also accused him of making similar arguments by suggesting that money spent on Israel could instead go towards schools, healthcare and childcare.
El-Sayed said the ad was not produced by his campaign and that he disagreed with its message, adding that Stevens was trying to relitigate their primary rather than focusing on defeating Rogers. The tensions came to a head on Sunday, when Stevens and El-Sayed were supposed to attend a church service together in a show of Democratic unity, but Stevens was uninvited. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.” But Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who helped organise the event, said she was the one who asked Stevens not to attend, telling The that “it had become way too distracting”.
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