Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens has issued an Election Day defense of her decision to endorse Republican Mike Rogers — and she is not backing down from her verdict on her own party’s Senate nominee.
Stevens says she concluded that Abdul El-Sayed is “not fit to serve in the United States Senate.” Her new statement turns a shocking party defection into a direct warning to Michigan voters just hours before the polls close.
The timing could hardly be more explosive. Stevens lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary to El-Sayed in August, endorsed him afterward, then withdrew that support and backed Rogers two days before the general election.
Now she is explaining why she crossed party lines — and rejecting the idea that the decision was impulsive, personal or made for her by somebody else.
In her Election Day statement, Stevens describes herself as a proud Democrat who still supports abortion rights, organized labor, health care and economic help for working families. She says none of those positions changed when she endorsed a Republican.
What changed, according to Stevens, was her judgment of El-Sayed’s fitness for office.
Stevens says she tried to put the bitter primary behind her. She endorsed El-Sayed and hoped his campaign would build a coalition that included the voters who had supported her.
Instead, she says, her endorsement was welcomed while her supporters and their concerns were largely ignored.
The final break centered on campaign messages Stevens believed crossed a line. She pointed to an outside group’s advertisement that connected grocery prices to American support for Israel, and to an El-Sayed campaign ad that featured conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Stevens also criticized El-Sayed for campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker. She said Piker’s rhetoric about Jewish Americans had been disturbing and argued that El-Sayed showed poor judgment by embracing him.
Those are Stevens’s political judgments, and El-Sayed has disputed the broader attack on his campaign. He condemned remarks Piker made comparing outreach to Jewish voters with canvassing a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood, and Stevens acknowledged that El-Sayed eventually rejected the outside advertisement.
For Stevens, that response came too late. She says she had already been told she was no longer welcome at El-Sayed campaign events.
That prompted the question at the center of her statement: if El-Sayed could not make room for people who backed his primary opponent, how could he represent an entire state full of people who disagree with him?
Stevens also hit back at critics who suggested her fiancé, attorney Jason Turkish, or other people had pushed her toward Rogers. Turkish publicly supported Rogers before Stevens announced her own decision.
She called those suggestions sexist and insisted the choice was hers alone.
Then came her bluntest conclusion. Stevens said endorsing a Republican was no small step, but once she decided El-Sayed was unfit for the Senate, she had to decide who should hold the seat.
She chose Rogers, despite acknowledging major policy disagreements with him, and said she hoped he would serve in the tradition of John McCain by putting country before party.
Stevens first made the endorsement public Sunday after appearing with Rogers at a Detroit church. Her video left no ambiguity about where she stood.
The CBS News account places the announcement at a Detroit church on Sunday, two days before Election Day. Stevens sat beside Rogers during the service and released her endorsement afterward, turning her break with the Democratic nominee into a public campaign event.
Stevens said El-Sayed’s campaign had made clear that she should stay away. She framed the Senate decision as a question of country over party and said her concerns had reached the point where she could no longer support him.
She also drew a boundary around the endorsement. Stevens said she still planned to vote for Democrats in most other races, while casting her Senate ballot for Rogers.
That timeline gave Rogers a dramatic closing argument in the final 48 hours of the race. It also forced Democrats to answer a defection from the woman El-Sayed defeated in August, just as Michigan voters were making their final choice.
The reaction from Democratic leaders was immediate and severe.
The Associated Press reported that Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel declared Stevens was no longer a member of the state party and would not be one in the future. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who supported Stevens in the primary, called her endorsement a betrayal and reaffirmed his support for El-Sayed.
Stevens says that reaction exposed a deeper problem. Instead of asking why a lifelong Democrat reached this point, she argues, party leaders tried to punish dissent and force her out.
Her statement says a party cannot preach inclusion while refusing to tolerate disagreement inside its own ranks. She insists she still believes in the Democratic Party, but says it needs leaders who listen and reject hatred without calculating the political cost.
El-Sayed has tried to move the conversation back to turnout and the issues he wants to emphasize. He told reporters that he did not spend time thinking about Stevens and continued campaigning with prominent Democrats.
The second Associated Press report on the race describes the contest as a major test for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. Former President Barack Obama rallied with El-Sayed and other Democrats in Michigan as the party scrambled to keep the seat.
Rogers, a former FBI agent and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is trying to flip a seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. President Donald Trump has endorsed him.
That makes Stevens’s defection more than a personal feud. Michigan is one of the most closely watched Senate contests in the country, and control of the chamber could turn on races like this one.
A former primary rival endorsing the other party’s nominee would be stunning at any point. Doing it two days before Election Day — then publishing a detailed defense as voters head to the polls — makes it impossible for either campaign to ignore.
Stevens remains a Democrat, even as party leaders say they have cast her out. She acknowledges major policy disagreements with Rogers, yet says the Senate race came down to which candidate she trusted to represent all of Michigan.
Her conclusion is unmistakable: she believes the Democratic nominee failed the test, and she is willing to risk her standing inside her own party to say so.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post JUST IN: Democrat Doubles Down On GOP Senate Endorsement — Declares Her Own Party’s Nominee ‘Not Fit To Serve’ appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
Continue reading...
[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
