STERLING HEIGHTS, Michigan — The first question for Abdul El-Sayed from media after a get-out-the-vote rally on Saturday was straight to the point: “Is Haley Stevens trying to rat fuck your campaign?”
El-Sayed, who is running in a tight race for Senate against Republican candidate Mike Rogers, dismissed the question, but Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) continued to come up.
“I’ve been very clear that I would rather not distract from the key issues of this campaign,” El-Sayed said, adding that he didn’t think his spat with Stevens was “of relevance” to Michigan voters.
“I don’t want any distractions,” he continued. “It seems as though other folks are more interested in making this race about things that it’s not about. So we’re really focused on talking about Trump’s agenda, why Mike Rogers wants to be a rubber stamp for it.”
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Just three days before Michigan will elect its next senator, Stevens, a pro-Israel Democrat who lost to El-Sayed in the primary, is making herself the main character. As most Democrats have unified behind the progressive candidate, Stevens has gone out of her way to rebuke El-Sayed for his criticism of Israel.
The Democratic Party is experiencing primary déjà vu in the final stretch of a close contest that could determine which party controls the Senate. On Friday, Stevens railed against an ad by an outside group, Rebellion PAC, which tied the U.S.’s relationship with Israel to high costs for Americans, and demanded an apology from El-Sayed for his past comments.
“The ad did not invent its argument; it dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words throughout this campaign,” she said.
El-Sayed’s campaign has not ignored the drama: It has noted it is not affiliated with the ad and on Friday released a statement saying the “priority” should be beating Rogers and that Stevens “seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.” The campaign asked Stevens not to attend campaign events in the final days of the race, Politico first reported and a person familiar with the campaign confirmed to The Washington Sun.
A spokesperson for Stevens did not respond to a request for comment.
Other Democrats watched aghast as the sideshow became the main attraction.
“We had a primary. It’s over. Now we have to come together to make sure Rogers doesn’t win,” a veteran Democratic operative told The Washington Sun. “The stakes are too high and this is an unhelpful distraction at the worst possible time.”
Stevens, whose fiancé earlier in the week said he would vote for Rogers, is out of line with the rest of the party: Everyone from former President Barack Obama to Sen. Elissa Slotkin has embraced El-Sayed as their nominee and campaigned on his behalf, recognizing that the pathway to a majority in the Senate likely goes through Michigan.
“The establishment has pulled out all the stops to help him win since the primary,” Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the centrist group Third Way, told The Washington Sun last week.
Outside an El-Sayed get-out-the-vote rally in Mount Clemens on Saturday, Elizabeth Quintero Burgueno, a social worker and El-Sayed supporter, said Stevens’ statements were a “distraction.”
“She’s trying to be divisive instead of finding ways that we can work together to defeat Trump and to get the things that we’re trying to get as Democrats. She’s choosing to put herself first,” Quintero Burgueno said. “All the other Democrats … everyone’s been making statements saying that we stand behind Abdul, and we’re not going to be doing this antisemitic attack thing again with him anymore.”
The other unsuccessful candidate in the Democratic primary, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, appeared stunned that Stevens was taking such a discordant posture at a crucial time.
“I have no idea what the hell Haley Stevens is doing,” McMorrow told CNN on Friday. “This is a moment where we have to recognize the stakes.”
This contest is crucial for Democrats, and there’s evidence of that in the attention the state is getting. Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, has spent nearly $35 million on the race.
Even Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina), the influential elder statesman, has plans to appear with El-Sayed in Michigan this weekend: El-Sayed and Stevens are expected to attend an event at a church with him on Sunday, though it’s unclear who will ultimately appear.
The invitation “still stands,” Antjuan Seawright, Clyburn’s political adviser told The Sun on Saturday.
At his first public event on Saturday at an art gallery in Mount Clemens to rally people to knock on doors, El-Sayed did not mention Stevens at all. Instead, he focused on the Trump administration and the rising costs of gas, groceries and health care. He asked the crowd to look beyond differences when volunteers knock doors today.
“I know that right now our politics is real ugly,” he told the crowded room. “But it turns out that when you have somebody in front of you and you can have a conversation looking into the whites of their eyes, that you tend to, even if you disagree, see the best in them. It’ll leave you uplifted about what our politics can be.”
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