Haley Stevens is highly visible in the wake of her Senate primary loss: meeting with the Dalai Lama, crashing “TMZ Live” with her new fiancee, getting spoofed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
One place she hasn’t been spotted: alongside her former rival Abdul El-Sayed.
Even though the representative quickly endorsed El-Sayed after their bruising Aug. 4 primary, she’s done little to help him since. That absence is becoming more conspicuous in the closing weeks of a crucial Senate contest, as some of her old supporters continue to vocally resist backing him.
In an interview, Stevens said El-Sayed is building a “new coalition” in the race against former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers — and suggested it’s not her place to push some of her more skeptical supporters into joining it.
When asked if she was encouraging her former donors to help El-Sayed, she said she believes her role this election is to “be part of the coordinated campaign, support where I can,” mentioning Michigan House races. When asked again if she would push donors to back him, she responded: “That’s Elissa’s thing,” referring to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who has been fundraising for El-Sayed. “I didn’t win a Senate primary,” she continued. “It’s not like a salty grapes deal or anything.”
Stevens said she’d checked in with El-Sayed’s team but hadn’t met with the candidate himself recently because she’d been traveling.
“There’s changing dynamics, and there’s a new coalition that Abdul has built, and some people are a die-hard part of it, and some people are not. We’re seeing some constituent community pain coming out,” Stevens said, referencing resistance to El-Sayed among some Black and Jewish voters who backed her in the primary.
“Rogers is working the Black community harder and more successfully than we have ever seen a Republican do or at least that I can remember — ever,” Stevens said.
“But we’re also seeing Abdul go up to the UP [Upper Peninsula] and we’re seeing him fill venues in rural Michigan, and it’s very real in terms of this coalition he’s built,” she added.
El-Sayed ran particularly strongly during the primary with young voters and in the state’s large Arab-American community, as well as in some rural, more populist parts of the state and is working hard to expand that coalition in the general election.
Stevens’ remarks come as some of her former backers and financial boosters continue to publicly withhold support from El-Sayed and in some cases openly embrace his Republican rival. The ruptures are most visible among the Jewish and Black communities that largely broke for Stevens, and point to enduring friction within Michigan Democrats’ traditional coalition after a bitter primary that she could be in a unique position to mend.
Debbie Rosenman, the chair of Birmingham-Bloomfield Area Democratic Party Club in Stevens’ backyard and an El-Sayed supporter, said Stevens has been “absent” on the trail and said she was “very concerned” her coalition is not coalescing around El-Sayed.
“I feel that that could change with more of her public support,” Rosenman said.
El-Sayed’s campaign said the former rivals’ teams keep in close touch and noted several Stevens staffers joined the nominee’s team after the primary.
“The Abdul campaign is grateful for Congresswoman Stevens’ immediate and sustained support,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner said in a statement.
El-Sayed has worked to repair relationships with Black and Jewish leaders. He has endorsements from several of them and is campaigning with prominent Democrats from both communities, including former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris and Slotkin, who is Jewish. He has made more than two dozen visits to Black churches and participated in more than 100 events and meetings with Black leaders, according to his campaign. He has hired a liaison to the Jewish community, keeps in regular contact with Jewish leaders and has apologized for his controversial remark after a synagogue attack in West Bloomfield in the spring that “hurt people hurt people.”
“I take very seriously that I’m going to represent a large community of Jewish Michiganders, and I want them to know that I’m committed to their safety and their well being, even if there are points in foreign policy on which we might disagree,” El-Sayed said in an interview.
Not everyone has come around.
David Kramer, Stevens’ primary campaign chair and a vice chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus who introduced Stevens to her fiance, is now working with Nonnegotiable Michigan, a group of Jewish leaders who have pledged to withhold their support from El-Sayed unless he adjusts his approach to Israel.
Kramer, a prominent Democratic fundraiser in the state who has also previously worked with Slotkin and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, told POLITICO he’s not tapping his donor network for the general election and estimated he’s left upward of seven figures on the table that he could have raised to boost El-Sayed.
Brian Hermelin, a normally Democratic donor who backed Stevens in the primary and leads the Jewish Federation of Detroit, co-hosted a fundraiser for Rogers shortly after the primary that raised roughly $200,000.
Rogers’ campaign has attempted to capitalize on those cracks by launching a “Democrats for Mike Rogers” group and making overtures to Jewish and Black voters. Bobby Schostak, a former Michigan GOP chair who is serving as Rogers’ finance chair, estimated the Republican’s campaign has brought in roughly $3 million to $4 million since the primary from “nontraditional Republican donors” across the country, including Democrats.
“The Democratic Party is still divided,” said Democrat Mary Waters, a Black Detroit city councilor who’s met with both El-Sayed and Rogers but remains undecided. “People are still so torn about what it is that they want to do.”
Joe Tate, a Black state representative from Detroit who supported Stevens, acknowledged there has been some lingering apprehension around El-Sayed. But he said Stevens’ endorsement of El-Sayed helped convince him to back the candidate and predicted Democratic voters would largely stand by their party, too.
El-Sayed’s donor network may look different from Stevens’, but he’s still posted big numbers. He raised nearly $33 million from July through September, which included some raised before the Aug. 4 primary, compared to Rogers’ nearly $10 million, and has been outspending Rogers on the airwaves.
Some of El-Sayed’s prominent surrogates have also taken steps to court apprehensive Democrats. Jewish leaders like former Rep. Andy Levin, a former synagogue president who Stevens defeated in a 2022 primary, are holding house parties with voters coordinated by the grassroots group Michigan Jews for Democracy. Slotkin has privately pressed senators and donors to boost El-Sayed’s bid.
That includes hosting a fundraiser for El-Sayed in Washington in late September with donors who she described as initially “skeptical” of the nominee.
“I talked to them about why I thought it was important and how I don’t agree with Abdul on everything … but we agree on the really important things, and that’s putting a check and balance on this president,” Slotkin told POLITICO in a brief hallway interview on Capitol Hill the next day. “And they donated.”
Politics
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