Haley Stevens says she regrets ‘original endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed despite winning in midterms

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) stood firm in her last-minute decision to switch and endorse Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers. However, she apologized to her colleagues and people close to her. “As a woman, I have the right to make a decision and to change my mind. I recognize that my decision has consequences,” Stevens said in a statement Wednesday. “All important decisions do. I don’t regret it, but I am truly sorry that it upset some of my colleagues and people I care about personally.”

Stevens addressed her “unwavering” support for Israel — a major point of contention during her failed primary fight against El-Sayed — and said she backed a U.S. ally “that is imperfect and in need of some political reforms of its own.” “As co-chair of the House caucus on antisemitism, endorsing a man who stood with Hasan Piker and his antisemitic bile was always a tough fit for me,” she said, referring to the hugely popular left-wing political commentator and Twitch streamer. “But I’ve been taught my whole political life that at the end of an election, you come together and support the winner, and I hoped I could help him moderate. Instead, he got worse.”

Before the midterms, Stevens shocked the Democratic Party when she announced she had thrown her support behind Rogers, with members of her staff resigning in protest of her decision. Mediaite points out that Stevens backed El-Sayed once he won the Democratic primary against her. That support later cooled as several disputes surfaced in the final stretch of the campaign. In the end, El-Sayed scored a decisive victory over Rogers, winning 52.52 percent of the vote to Rogers’s 45.48 percent, according to The Hill’s election partner Decision Desk HQ.

No turning back for Stevens

Stevens added that she struggled to endorse Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who beat her in the primaries, because of his relationship with Piker, an outspoken critic of Israel. “I regret my original endorsement, because I could have spared the country and my family from these past few days and from attempts to find a cause for an action that is consistent with a lifetime of my beliefs,” she said. “The endorsement was the outlier act. Rescinding it was not.”

“What mattered more was truth over political convenience,” Stevens wrote. “Nothing about this experience has been easy on me or those closest to me. I was elected to do a job, and I am going to finish it. I was elected as a Democrat, and I still believe our party should be big enough for more than one viewpoint. I will keep fighting antisemitism wherever it shows up, in either party, for as long as I am in public life.” The post concluded with congratulations “to everyone who won” and a call to continue talks on “how we build tolerance from viewpoints and embrace one another, especially when we disagree.”

Stevens defended her decision on Sunday night in a tense interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, which fellow Democratic Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell said Stevens’s sudden political U-turn had “probably permanently hurt her.” She also faced massive backlash from senior Democratic figures, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling the endorsement a “despicable betrayal.” At the same time, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel Jr. declared that Stevens was no longer a member of the state party.