‘Despicable’: Haley Stevens blasted by Dems after endorsing Mike Rogers

Well, it’s official. After weeks of publicly questioning Abdul El-Sayed, Congresswoman Haley Stevens has now endorsed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. And she did it less than 48 hours before Election Day .

This is a very shameless display of political opportunism. She didn’t all of a sudden develop some admiration for a man she previously criticized as a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.” What she did with this endorsement is demonstrate how little her words and everything she claims to stand for are worth, because we don’t have to guess what Stevens thought about Mike Rogers. We have the receipts from her own X account.

In August : “Mike Rogers will be another rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”

In June : “Mike Rogers’ record on LGBTQ+ rights is repulsive. He has no business representing Michiganders.”

In April : She called Rogers “MAGA Mike” and described him as “disgraceful,” pointing to controversy surrounding his outreach team’s hiring of students who praised Hitler.

And let me not forget this one, where she said: “Mike Rogers can’t hide his terrible record on abortion rights.”

Now, remember, this is the same Stevens who repeatedly said she would support the Democratic ticket after losing the primary in August. This is the same woman who outspent El-Sayed 12 to 1 and still lost. Her endorsement, after losing, has come with some pretty significant caveats, and no display of public unity on the same stage.

Instead of just saying she doesn’t endorse El-Sayed from the start, she is suggesting an independent ad from Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC criticizing U.S. military aid to Israel and connecting it to Americans’ rising grocery bills is the reason why her support for El-Sayed has collapsed. El-Sayed has repeatedly distanced himself from the ad in question, telling a reporter : “That ad was not made by me and I do not agree with the contents of that ad.”

It seems she never really wanted to support El-Sayed. After Barack Obama’s Oct. 24 rally highlighted Democratic momentum in Michigan, Stevens appeared on CNN the following day, raising questions about El-Sayed’s campaign while sidestepping whether she was fully invested in helping him win.

On Oct. 26, she publicly criticized the PAC ad. At the same time, the El-Sayed campaign explicitly states : Ad not affiliated with campaign or Abdul. Two days later, her fiancé, Jason Turkish, attended a Mike Rogers event alongside Ted Cruz and endorsed Rogers, while Stevens continued telling CNN she planned to vote for El-Sayed.

Then, just two days before a planned joint church appearance with El-Sayed and Congressman Jim Clyburn, Stevens issued a lengthy statement demanding that El-Sayed disavow the ad. Her fiancé subsequently appeared on TMZ, suggesting she could possibly reconsider her endorsement.

El-Sayed’s campaign pushed back , saying he didn’t want her appearance to become a distraction. A statement from his team he released on X said: “Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.”

His statement also reminded voters that AIPAC spent heavily trying to defeat him and supporting Stevens in that primary. Now Stevens has become the topic of conversation instead of the policies and the race.

Even Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the Democratic primary in July, seemed baffled : “I have no idea what the hell Haley Stevens is doing. This is a moment where we have to recognize the stakes.”

Lots of people even in Stevens’s own office are thoroughly confused. Her longtime chief of staff announced his resignation Sunday, saying multiple members of the team had also resigned. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called her decision a “despicable betrayal.”

Stevens is entitled to disagree with El-Sayed, but repeatedly creating headlines that undermine your own party’s nominee days before an election that could decide the balance of power in the Senate is absurd.

The last-minute endorsement of a man you’ve criticized for everything from his abortion record to hiring antisemitic people to having a terrible record on LGBTQ rights is truly wild.

Stevens cannot spend months telling voters that control of the Senate is on the line and that you want to fight for health care reforms and many of the same policies of El-Sayed, then spend the final days publicly undermining the very candidate you need to get those policies to the finish line.

Lindsey Granger is a NewsNation contributor and co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising.” This column is an edited transcription of her on-air commentary.