Haley Stevens Slammed for Statement Suggesting She's Willing to Sabotage Midterms to Halt Progressive Surge
"If a progressive candidate was actively trying to pin an establishment nominee days before the election the way Stevens is with Abdul right now, they’d be exiled from political life."
In the final days of the US Senate campaign in Michigan, Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is leading in polls, winning praise for taking President Donald Trump and his Republican opponent to task with incisive humor, and providing a clear closing message in evocative ads.
But his former Democratic primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), said Friday that while she reiterated this week her decision to support El-Sayed in next Tuesday's election—a plan not shared by her fiancé, who publicly announced he would vote for Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers—she was demanding concessions from the Democratic candidate, in a statement that sought to tie him to a recent online ad by an outside group.
Stevens said she would campaign with El-Sayed this weekend alongside Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), but demanded that he apologize for comments he has made about Israel on the campaign trail. El-Sayed, like a growing majority of Americans, is deeply critical of US support for Israel's military, to which it sends billions of dollars in aid annually. Since Israel began attacking Gaza in October 2023, the Biden and Trump administrations have sent $21 billion in military aid to Israel.
The congresswoman demanded that El-Sayed apologize for suggesting "that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, healthcare, and childcare."
"Abdul promises to get money out of politics," she said. "He can begin by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford."
Journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News said Stevens was essentially asking El-Sayed to lie to voters.
"The US government itself, in its official explanation, says that we launched the war on Iran in significant part to defend Israel," said Grim. "Marco Rubio said it out loud too. It's obvious. So it would be a lie not to include Israel in any explanation for why life in Michigan is less affordable now."
The war on Iran has sent gas prices soaring, with Americans paying an additional
$101 billion on gasoline since the war started, or an average of $856 per household.
Stevens also said she expected El-Sayed to "formally" condemn a recent ad by Rebellion PAC, led by Cenk Uygur of the left-wing network The Young Turks, and suggested that she was only agreeing to campaign with the candidate because she had received assurances of the condemnation.
El-Sayed's campaign has already emphasized that "no one speaks for Abdul but himself," and that he had nothing to do with the ad, for which the PAC spent just $4,000 for social media and digital placement. The ad shows a couple talking about having to cut grocery spending because of the billions of dollars the US provides to Israel in military aid.
The video makes no mention of Jewish people, but was quickly denounced as "antisemitic" by groups including the Anti-Defamation League—which has frequently attacked progressive politicians who are critical of US support for Israel and defend Palestinian rights—and a group of rabbis and Jewish voters called Nonnegotiable Michigan.
Throughout El-Sayed's primary and general election campaign, pro-Israel lawmakers and groups that back corporate Democrats have claimed his candidacy threatens Jewish people in Michigan; attacked him for campaigning with popular streamer Hasan Piker, a vehement critic of Israel; and accused him of not sufficiently denouncing terrorism.
On Friday, critics said Stevens was renewing attacks that she had waged during the primary, when El-Sayed denounced the pro-Israel congresswomen for taking millions of dollars from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The powerful lobby group and other outside groups poured at least $50 million into the Michigan primary race in an effort to boost Stevens. The congresswoman spent months attacking El-Sayed for campaigning with Piker.
Julian Andreone of Drop Site News suggested that judging from Stevens' statement just days before the crucial election in a swing state, "she wants him to lose because she is more subservient to her pro-Israel donors than she is loyal to her constituents and country."
"If a progressive candidate was actively trying to pin an establishment nominee days before the election the way Stevens is with Abdul right now, they’d be exiled from political life," he said.
The Michigan race could determine which party holds control of the Senate—and whether Democrats are able to rein in Trump in the last two years of his presidency.
At The Nation, Jeet Heer wrote that with Trump's approval rating at an historic low and Republicans tasked with convincing voters that the party is looking out for their interests—despite supporting an illegal, price-hiking war and healthcare cuts—Stevens had offered the GOP "one glimmer of hope" that corporate Democrats seem "addicted to self-sabotage."
"In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has been dogged by the sore-loser behavior of centrist Democrats who can’t abide the fact he won the primary," wrote Heer. "In particular, his defeated rival Haley Stevens keeps trying to extract political concessions from El-Sayed rather than letting him unite the party against Republican Mike Rogers."
Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News emphasized that while the congresswoman was happy to condemn a fellow Democrat who "has nothing to do with an ad that isn’t racist," she has ignored "the endless actual racist abuse the candidate has had to endure."
"I have never seen so many Democrats attempt to ratfuck their own candidate in the final stretch of a campaign," said history professor Keith Orejel of Wilmington College. "Absolutely insanity."
