Schumer calls Stevens’s Rogers endorsement ‘a despicable betrayal’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) ripped Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) over her eleventh hour endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in the competitive Michigan Senate contest.

“This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens,” Schumer wrote Sunday on the social platform X, reiterating his support for Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the race.

Schumer’s remarks are particularly notable because he backed Stevens in the nasty Democratic primary against El-Sayed. The Senate Democrat threw his support behind El-Sayed after he narrowly beat Stevens in August.

“Senate Democrats are united in our support for Abdul El-Sayed, because we know he will fight for the economic interests of working families in Michigan, unlike Mike Rogers, who is a tool of Donald Trump and billionaire donors,” the New York Democrat said.

Stevens shocked Democrats Sunday when she appeared alongside Rogers, a former House Republican, at a church in Detroit and issued an endorsement. She previously called Rogers a “rubber stamp” for President Trump.

“As you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign, and that I should stay away. And he’s right,” she said in a video posted to social media Sunday. “And that’s why I am endorsing my Rogers for the United States Senate today.”

Stevens was initially set to attend a campaign event alongside El-Sayed with Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Sunday, but the Senate Democratic nominee disinvited her from the event amid heightened tensions between the pair.

Stevens, on Friday, took to social media to say she would appear alongisde El-Sayed for the first time since her primary loss at the Sunday event, but expected an apology from him over his response to a controversial ad. El-Sayed accused Stevens of relitigating their primary .

Schumer joins a chorus of other Democrats that have criticized Stevens over her newfound support for Rogers.

“Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel wrote on X Sunday.

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D) also condemned Stevens’s endorsement.

“Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” she wrote on social media.