Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens has said her decision to endorse Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s close US Senate race was in part a response to his opponent Abdul El-Sayed’s “obsessive” fixation on Israel.
“It was obsessive, obsessive, obsessive,” Stevens told the Free Press in an interview published Monday about El-Sayed, her former Democratic primary opponent who she also called out for having “anti-American” positions.
The shock endorsement came two days before the midterm elections, in which Rogers is hoping to become the first Republican elected to the Senate from Michigan since Spencer Abraham in 1994.
El-Sayed has refused to say whether Israel or Iran poses a greater threat to America, and a super PAC backing his candidacy released an ad in the final weeks of the campaign blaming the Jewish state for the high price of groceries in the US.
Stevens added that upon reflection, she “wasn’t being honest” with herself in continuing to support El-Sayed.
“I was like, ‘Wait a moment, what am I doing?” she asked. “God, I wanted to vote for him, but he just kind of said ‘Forget it.’”
El-Sayed had declined to denounce the video ad by Rebellion PAC, created by “Young Turks” host Cenk Uyghur, that showed a couple discussing how they’d have to “put those eggs back” on the grocery store shelf so they could “set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.”
Her fiance, Democratic donor and disability rights attorney Jason Turkish, had also denounced El-Sayed over the ad last week and claimed the candidate was making Jewish Michiganders feel “unsafe.”
“Every time he talks about genocide, Jews get death threats,” Turkish said at the time.
Stevens had also called for El-Sayed to denounce the Rebellion PAC ad, with which a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign said that he was “not affiliated in any way.”
The Democratic congresswoman has defended her endorsement of Rogers as putting the country over her party, suggesting in her Free Press sitdown late Sunday night that he “can be a [Sen. John] McCain-type person or a Lisa Murkowski.”
National and state Democratic leaders called out Stevens for abandoning her support for El-Sayed after she appeared with Rogers at a Detroit church Sunday morning.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) renounced Stevens, whom he had backed in the primary, saying she had perpetrated a “despicable betrayal” by supporting Rogers.
“I’m not going to be best friends with Mike Rogers either,” cautioned Stevens when asked by the Free Press about the endorsement.
“I’m with a lot of other Democrats [against El-Sayed], and we’re all going to want to come back home.”
