{"id":949,"date":"2026-11-02T16:39:30","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T20:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=949"},"modified":"2026-11-02T16:39:30","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T20:39:30","slug":"democrat-haley-stevens-endorses-gop-candidate-for-us-senate-mike-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=949","title":{"rendered":"Democrat Haley Stevens Endorses GOP Candidate for US Senate, Mike Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve studied politics for most of fifty years, and actively participated as a Democrat for most of the last 25. I worked in Kentucky politics right after retiring from the Army ran for the Virginia state legislature twice since 2019. I\u2019ve never seen anything like the Haley Stevens<\/u><\/a>\u00a0endorsement of\u00a0Mike Rogers<\/u><\/a>\u00a0for US Senate in Michigan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Losing primary candidates have a few options with respect to how they play the general election. Most throw their support to the winner and ask their supporters to do the same because this is the best way to keep their position in the Party. This matters, because the Party (both the administrative establishment and its voters) has a lot of say over who gets future nominations and support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After contentious primaries, a candidate may and often does profess support for the winner but doesn\u2019t do a lot of work to get their supporters to show up and help the general election candidate win. They don\u2019t appear at campaign events or help them raise money (for example by sharing donor lists or making calls on the winner\u2019s behalf).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\u00a0Abdul El-Sayed<\/u><\/a>\u00a0won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan, it appeared that Stevens would follow the second path. She conceded and congratulated El Sayed, but didn\u2019t seem to take an active role in helping him win. This sort of makes sense after a fairly bitter primary during which El Sayed criticized Stevens strongly for her position on aid to Israel and her willingness to accept corporate political action committee (PAC) money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now she has decided to endorse Mike Rogers, the GOP nominee, two days before Election Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Virginia, this amounts to formal resignation from Democratic Party committees, and I can\u2019t imagine that significant numbers of Michigan Democrats would welcome someone who endorsed a Republican who consistently votes against protecting reproductive health care rights for women and supports fetal personhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Stevens cited \u201cgrowing anger\u201d from the El Sayed campaign as her reason for her decision, but this makes little sense given that she\u2019d said the day before that she looked forward to appearing with him at a church service and later campaign event on November 1, the day she broke from the party. Instead, she attended a service at a black church in Detroit instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It looks to me like her decision has much to do with her position on Israel and influence from her fianc\u00e9, Jason Turkish.<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Jason Turkish, the fianc\u00e9 of former Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens, accused the party’s Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of escalating rhetoric that makes Jewish people unsafe, deepening an intraparty feud days before the midterms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immediate fight centers partly on a digital advertisement produced by <\/em>Rebellion PAC<\/em><\/a>, an outside group supporting El-Sayed that describes itself as a movement that rejects \u201cthe corporate-driven status quo\u201d and stands \u201cagainst the establishment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advertisement<\/em><\/a> shows a couple grocery shopping and talking about putting back a carton of eggs because \u201cwe have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians,\u201d before criticizing U.S. military assistance to Israel in its war in Gaza. Stevens, a U.S. Representative who lost to El-Sayed in the August primary, characterized the advertisement as antisemitic and called on him to condemn it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I am not a fan of this ad because I think it muddles the message by failing to clearly connect the high cost of groceries to taxpayer funds sent to Israel. But it points out a key issue: that the US supports genocide in Gaza with taxpayer funds, and I\u2019m not surprised that the Zionist crowd tries to frame this as anti-semitism rather than anti-genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turkish has pushed the \u201cEl Sayed is a terrorist with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood\u201d narrative and endorsed Rogers on October 28. Further, Stevens is apparently converting to Judaism as their wedding approaches. And apparently,\u00a0some of Stevens\u2019 close circle have become concerned about her relationship with Turkish<\/u><\/a>. It\u2019s important to be careful about characterizing others\u2019 relationships, but former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard,\u00a0in an interview with Gongwer News Service<\/u><\/a>\u00a0(paywall), described Turkish pressuring Stevens at dinner to support Rogers, saying: \u201cHe was working her over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of El Sayed\u2019s criticism of Stevens focused on her acceptance of millions of dollars in campaign funding from the\u00a0American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)<\/a>, which is Israel\u2019s key lobbying organization in the US. El Sayed has pointed out many times that he believe the US should be spending taxpayer dollars on feeding American children, not bombing Palestinian children. He did not condemn the Rebellion PAC ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this makes me wonder if AIPAC leaders believe El Sayed is poised to win and wanted a hail mary endorsement from Stevens to see if they could get Rogers over the finish line in a very close election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also makes me wonder if AIPAC and the GOP promised her something in return, and what that might be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve studied politics for most of fifty years, and actively participated as a Democrat for most of the last 25. I worked in Kentucky politics right after retiring from the Army ran for the Virginia state legislature twice since 2019. I\u2019ve never seen anything like the Haley Stevens\u00a0endorsement of\u00a0Mike Rogers\u00a0for US Senate in Michigan. Losing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[372,102],"tags":[89,361,394,396],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-midterms","category-elections","tag-democratic-party","tag-elections","tag-haley-stevens","tag-us-senate"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}