Pro-Israel Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Republican Rogers in Michigan US Senate race

Michigan pro-Israel Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, for US Senate on Sunday, telling reporters, “We can’t stand with hate.”

The surprise move two days before Election Day further exacerbated the growing fracture between Zionist Jewish communities and the Democratic Party, as El-Sayed’s critical rhetoric on Israel has alienated many Jewish voters in a state that could decide control of the chamber.

Jewish Democrat leaders were among the voices attacking Stevens, who ran against El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for the seat, following her announcement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a despicable betrayal.”

President Donald Trump, on his social network Truth Social, celebrated Stevens’ endorsement as “bravery.”

The endorsement capped a whirlwind week for Stevens, whose Jewish fiancée, Democratic megadonor Jason Turkish, announced days earlier he would also be supporting Rogers. Until Sunday, Stevens had publicly claimed to be in El-Sayed’s camp and had been scheduled to attend a get-out-the-vote Detroit church event Sunday with him and Black Democratic leaders.

El-Sayed refuses to condemn ad blaming Israel for grocery prices sparking conflict

But on Friday, she publicly urged El-Sayed to repudiate an outside PAC ad that had blamed Israel for the rising price of groceries as a condition of appearing with his campaign. When El-Sayed refused, instead calling out the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC’s spending heavily in favor of Stevens in the primary, cracks between their camps spilled out into the open.

By Sunday, it was an earlier antisemitism-related grievance Stevens referenced in rescinding her endorsement of the Democratic candidate. She named El-Sayed’s spring campaign appearances with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker on college campuses as a key reason why she was switching her endorsement.

“I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign. I do not stand with Hasan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses,” the congresswoman said in a video message announcing her Rogers endorsement, saying that “education is on the ballot.”

Appearing later in a brief press conference with Rogers, she again referenced the streamer: “We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.”

Rogers, standing next to Stevens, invoked darker messaging when referencing the PAC ad.

“Blaming a certain group of people for your problems, that sounds like 1933,” he said. “And it has consequences for those communities. Jewish Democrats are calling me, afraid for their children to stay in the state of Michigan.”

Piker, on social media, called Stevens “a self interested striver who’s weirdly obsessed with Israel and has been paid handsomely for this strange obsession.” El-Sayed has distanced himself multiple times from Piker since they campaigned together in the primary, including this week after Piker compared a heavily Jewish Michigan suburb to “a KKK neighborhood.”

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment to the Stevens-Turkish camp was not immediately returned. Stevens, who represents a heavily Jewish district in suburban Detroit, told The New York Times this weekend that she was considering converting to Judaism for their wedding.

El-Sayed, in his own press conference Sunday, dismissed Stevens’ move and preemptively warned reporters not to ask him about it. “At the end of the day I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he said.

He did, however, push back on the idea that a Rogers endorsement was standing against hate.

“If you are somebody who believes that we should stand up to hate, and you have watched this last campaign, I think we probably would not want to support Mike Rogers and Donald Trump and JD Vance,” he said. The GOP’s messaging against El-Sayed has been criticized for leaning heavily into stoking fears about Islam.

Stevens' staff push back against endorsement

Stevens insisted she was “still a very proud Democrat.” Yet many of her staff, including her chief of staff, resigned en masse following her move Sunday. Arik Wolk, Stevens’ former campaign spokesperson, wrote on X that her endorsement was “ridiculous and pathetic.”

Some Jewish Democrats also heavily criticized Stevens on Sunday, saying she was hurting the party and the country. “Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” moderate Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish and who has hit the campaign trail with El-Sayed, wrote on X.

J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that did not endorse El-Sayed, said Stevens was “weaponizing real fears about rising antisemitism to further her own grievances.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, an organizing body for Jewish interests in the Democratic Party, had pointedly not endorsed El-Sayed during the campaign. Yet following Stevens’ announcement, its CEO Halie Soifer wrote, “A vote for any Republican in 2026 is a vote for Donald Trump.”