HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — Representative Haley Stevens, the Michigan Democrat, shook the state’s Senate race Sunday when she pulled her endorsement from her party’s nominee and gave it to his Republican opponent. With the dust settled and the GOP’s Mike Rogers laying in it, she’s standing tall, but alone, in the Great Lakes State.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rogers by seven points, brushing off the eleventh-hour punch Stevens threw at her former primary opponent. The political ploy, made by a liberal lawmaker now banished from the Michigan Democratic Party, leaves her without any clear path forward to continue her career.
She defended herself on Wednesday as a principled politician unwilling to tolerate El-Sayed’s passionate criticism of Israel, one of the U.S.’s greatest Middle Eastern allies. El-Sayed, Stevens said, only grew more extreme in his rhetoric as the race continued, making it a simple choice for her to pull her support.
“As a student of history, I decided that standing up for what I believe mattered more,” she wrote in a lengthy X post. “What mattered more was truth over political convenience.”
Her conviction could cost her the chance of ever returning to Congress, at least while the nation remains hyper-polarized. Her record bars her from becoming a Republican, and she’d be a punching bag for both parties as an independent.
Stevens stuck up for herself after a bruising Senate race, but she’ll find few friends on Capitol Hill willing to help her out of the political arena.
Do you have questions, concerns or tips? Send them to Ray at rjlewis@sbgtv.com.