How an attempt at Democratic unity in Michigan imploded

As recently as Saturday night, the prospect of Democrat Haley Stevens endorsing Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race had seemed implausible.

Stevens issued a statement praising Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed for saying he disagreed with a controversial advertisement that blamed the high cost of living in Michigan on the United States’ aid to Israel. Despite a week of speculation about her withdrawing an endorsement for El-Sayed, her primary rival, she repeatedly said that she would do no such thing.

When staffers reached out last week to urge her not to endorse Rogers, Stevens replied in a text message, according to a person who saw the message: “Omg why would you think I would do that??!!”

As recently as midnight Saturday, she told a key ally that she was sticking with El-Sayed. Then on Sunday morning, things changed.

She appeared at a Black church in Detroit with Rogers and then announced her change of heart to reporters gathered outside and on social media.

Her move stunned the political world — including Stevens’ friends, colleagues and even her own congressional staffers, most of whom found out about her decision on social media and promptly quit, according to a statement from her chief of staff and people familiar with the matter.

The question that could decide Michigan’s Senate race — and potentially, with it, which party will have majority control of the chamber for the last two years of Donald Trump’s presidency — is whether Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers will change votes or amount to more than political melodrama.

There have long been signs of discontent with El-Sayed within the Democratic coalition. Stevens was strongest in the August primary with Black and Jewish Democrats, some of whom have balked at supporting El-Sayed, a Muslim who is a strident critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza and an advocate for ending foreign aid for Israel’s military.

Prior to Stevens’ defection, CNN’s most recent poll of the Michigan Senate race had El-Sayed leading Rogers by seven points – with 95% support from Democratic likely voters. Already, Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers is becoming something of a rally-around-the-flag moment for Democratic leaders — uniting a coalition in the race’s final days around a shared sense of the stakes at hand.

Among the Democratic leaders who denounced Stevens and strongly backed El-Sayed were two of his most powerful intra-party critics: Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who tacitly supported Stevens in the primary, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who just days ago said El-Sayed’s views on Israel were “wrong” and “more than concerning.”

Schumer accused Stevens of a “despicable betrayal.”

“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 .

Schumer added that Democrats “are equally united in our total revulsion at the racist, Islamophobic, and over-the-top false attacks on Abdul by Republicans.”

Pelosi, meanwhile, said on social media that El-Sayed “must win,” and that Stevens “has chosen to dangerously betray Michigan families’ healthcare, freedoms and future with her horrific endorsement of Mike Rogers.”

As Stevens and Rogers spoke to reporters outside the church after the service, an individual in the crowd shouted: “Haley’s a traitor!”

Stevens, whose phone appeared to be off on Sunday, did not respond to requests for comment.

An El-Sayed campaign spokeswoman said he had raised $1.2 million in the hours after Stevens endorsed Rogers — his second-largest total in a single day since winning the primary.

Shortly after their primary, which El-Sayed won by less than a percentage point, the two hugged at a state party unity breakfast. But they had not campaigned together in months – or spoken directly during that time, as CNN reported last week.

Democrats attempted to negotiate a joint appearance Sunday at a Black church in Detroit alongside South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, one of the party’s most influential figures. The goal was to shore up Black support for El-Sayed.

One longtime Michigan Democratic operative said many older Black voters tend to cast their ballots on Election Day, rather than voting early, “because of a well-earned higher skepticism of absentee voting.” Those votes could be an essential piece of the Democratic coalition El-Sayed is trying to hold together.

Stevens said in a statement Friday morning that Clyburn, who endorsed and campaigned with her in the primary, had invited her to the church — and that she would be attending, marking the first time she would appear jointly with El-Sayed on the campaign trail.

However, she also issued a list of demands for El-Sayed — including attempting to pressure him into denouncing an outside group’s new advertisement that blamed the United States’ foreign aid for Israel for Americans’ struggles with high costs. The ad features two people in a grocery store suggesting they can’t afford basic goods due to the aid. It echoed what El-Sayed has often said on the campaign trail about Israel, even as he distanced himself from the ad.

El-Sayed responded in a statement Friday night that Stevens “seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.”

It became clear that the joint appearance wouldn’t happen late Friday, when CNN and other outlets reported that El-Sayed’s campaign had asked Stevens to skip all campaign events in the race’s closing days. Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell said on CNN that she was the one who delivered the message to Stevens.

Still, on Saturday, El-Sayed denounced the ad, and Stevens issued a statement praising him for doing so — developments that made her decision Sunday more of a head-scratcher to many Democrats close to her. Dingell told CNN Sunday that Stevens had reassured her overnight that she wasn’t switching sides.

Standing next to Rogers on Sunday, Stevens mentioned four times that El-Sayed’s campaign had excluded her from his events. She pointed to it again in her endorsement video posted on X, noting El-Sayed “had said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he’s right.”

“My vote for Senate is going to be with Mike Rogers, and I will tell you why. Because we have to stand with country. We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker,” she said.

Party officials moved swiftly on Sunday to publicly condemn Stevens and criticize her focus on being uninvited. But they privately said there was blame to go around — notably for El-Sayed.

“He acted like he won the primary in a landslide, but he didn’t,” one longtime Democratic official told CNN. “Abdul gave himself his own October surprise.”

El-Sayed went ahead Sunday with the event. After asking reporters to focus on questions about issues facing people in his state rather than “two folks who aren’t here right now,” El-Sayed was asked if he believed Stevens had betrayed his party by backing Rogers.

“At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he said, standing next to Clyburn. “I think about, like I said, the 9,999,998 people who are not those two. Because you know what? I’m just less interested in the politics of it all than I am in the policy of it all.”

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

A deeply emotional argument for many in the Democratic Party became particularly personal for El-Sayed and Stevens, both of whom are known for not listening much to advisers and following their own instincts.

Stevens was backed in the primary by tens of millions of dollars in spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — a flashpoint between her and El-Sayed, who denounced AIPAC and the influence of money in politics at nearly every campaign event. El-Sayed was criticized for campaigning with Piker, the stridently pro-Palestinian live-streamer with a long history of controversial comments about Jews, including comparing Jewish residents who oppose El-Sayed to members of the Ku Klux Klan, remarks widely denounced as antisemitic. AIPAC on X reshared Stevens’ video on Sunday endorsing Rogers.

During the primary, El-Sayed portrayed Stevens as an AIPAC puppet and called her “the least capable candidate in America.”

“Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” Stevens responded on X days before the August 4 election .

As AIPAC’s allied groups boosted her campaign, the animosity grew too. El-Sayed’s multiple shots at Stevens as being a puppet angered her and made her dig in. Meanwhile, she was rankled by his repeated refusal to affirm that Israel had a right to exist as a Jewish state and his statements that it was committing genocide in Gaza and that funding to the country was hurting Michiganders.

Many of Stevens’ Democratic critics on Sunday blamed Stevens’ fiancé, Michigan lawyer Jason Turkish, who endorsed Rogers last week and did media interviews criticizing El-Sayed as uncommitted to Jewish safety.

One former Stevens staffer noted Sunday that after she and Turkish became engaged in May — something they kept private until after the August primary — Stevens grew more focused on defending Israel and AIPAC, even as the Democratic Party and US public opinion as a whole has become more skeptical of Israel. In the ex-staffer’s view, she was speaking less about the message she’d run on and won with before: growing Michigan’s economy and protecting manufacturing.

The topic often came up while preparing for interviews or donor calls, the staffer said. Preparing for a June interview, Stevens pressed aides on why she should avoid defending AIPAC when she had done so in a 2022 House primary against former Rep. Andy Levin and won.

Speculation about Turkish’s influence burst into the open on Sunday, as Democrats — many of whom had either spoken to Stevens recently or been briefed by people who had — suggested he was playing an outsized role for a candidate’s partner.

Former Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild, who in 2023 was Stevens’ roommate in Washington and whose children regularly text with Stevens, said she was “terribly sad and disappointed” by her friend’s “appalling” move.

“If this is because of her new relationship (about which many of us were so happy for her after she lost the primary), all I can say is that any woman who abandons her friends when a new guy comes along is no friend at all,” Wild said.

Stevens’ mother, Maria Marcotte, a retired advertising executive, told CNN in a statement that her daughter’s fiancé had nothing to do with the change of heart — and that Marcotte herself had also voted for Rogers.

“Haley is her own woman. She always has been. Suggesting a man made her decision for her is insulting to her, and it is insulting to me as her mother,” Marcotte said.

She pointed to episodes in which progressive pro-Palestinian activists hounded Stevens during the primary campaign.

“Abdul should not have thrown her out of the campaign for speaking her truth,” she said. “Haley made this choice herself, with her eyes open, the way she has made every hard choice in her life. And I know Haley will support whoever wins this election, because that is who she is. I have never been prouder of her.”

The anger between the two rivals kept growing from a distance after El-Sayed won the primary.

El-Sayed grouped Stevens in with all those he decided he didn’t need to build his coalition after his primary victory. Stevens would tell people that she thought he was running a weird and losing campaign, but that she didn’t feel it was her obligation to fix it.

Rogers aides, aware that his path to victory largely depended on a Democratic civil war, restrained themselves to spreading word of discontent and convincing themselves they weren’t just fantasizing that they could get her all the way to endorsing.

Then came the grocery-store ad that rekindled the tension. It was released by a group linked to Cenk Uygur, co-creator of The Young Turks and — in a twist practically designed to create acrimony — Piker’s uncle.

As Stevens demanded he denounce Uygur’s ad, El-Sayed returned to name-checking AIPAC in his statement criticizing Stevens, something Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel, a Stevens primary backer who has raised concerns about Jewish safety, asked him to stop doing before she endorsed him. Nessel told CNN in October that El-Sayed had agreed to her request.

Stevens’ defection threatened to worsen El-Sayed’s standing with Jewish voters. Rogers has already predicted publicly that he could win as much as half the Jewish vote on Tuesday.

“It feels like over the last eight weeks, Dr. El-Sayed has become more egregious in the language he’s been using,” said Rabbi Aaron Starr, the president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis and a leader of the “Nonnegotiable” group of Jewish leaders. That group calls on El-Sayed to do more about concerns regarding Jewish safety and to affirm Jewish sovereignty in Israel. Starr and other Jewish leaders held a call Sunday afternoon to discuss the endorsement flip.

But Stevens was also damaged with key allies.

Dingell, long a peacemaker within the state party, chided Stevens’ “continued efforts to get attention.”

“Unfortunately, she’s seriously hurt herself,” Dingell told CNN.

Curtis Hertel, the chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, effectively booted Stevens from it. He wrote on social media: “Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.”

Many Democrats in the state felt that for most of the preceding year, Stevens was viable in the Senate race largely because she’d cornered Schumer into effectively backing her. Into the spring, complaints circulated about what a lackluster primary campaign she was running, how much she was struggling on the stump, and how she was lashing out against those who wouldn’t support her.

Despite her eventual strength with African American voters, Black church leaders were angry about her efforts to push for early endorsements. Chokwe Pitchford, a 27-year-old district commissioner from Benton Harbor and seen as a local rising star, told a story that he says encapsulated the kind of experience other Michigan Democrats he knows had: One morning, he discovered a graphic online from Stevens saying he’d endorsed her, even though as he posted in response, they’d never spoken.

“Instead of reaching out and apologizing, I had people from around the state calling from unknown numbers saying my political career is over if I don’t take that down,” Pitchford told CNN. “Some of us tried to ring this alarm bell a year ago; there was a problem here.”

Indeed, the most robust praise for Stevens on Sunday was coming from Republicans.

“Haley said what few people are willing to say. She showed great and almost unprecedented loyalty to the Great People of Michigan with what she did,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Todd reported from Detroit. CNN’s Dana Bash, Manu Raju, Nicky Robertson and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

就在上周六晚上，民主党人海莉·史蒂文斯在密歇根州参议员竞选中支持共和党人迈克·罗杰斯的可能性似乎还不大。

史蒂文斯发表声明，赞扬民主党候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德，因为他表示不同意一则引发争议的广告。该广告将密歇根州的高生活成本归咎于美国对以色列的援助。尽管此前一周外界猜测她会撤回对初选对手埃尔-赛义德的支持，但她一再表示不会这样做。

据一位看过短信的人透露，上周工作人员联系史蒂文斯，敦促她不要支持罗杰斯时，史蒂文斯在短信中回复道：“我的天哪，你们为什么会认为我会那样做？？！！”

就在周六午夜，她还告诉一位重要盟友，她会继续支持埃尔-赛义德。然而到了周日早上，情况发生了变化。

她与罗杰斯一起出现在底特律的一座黑人教堂，然后向聚集在教堂外的记者和社交媒体宣布了她改变主意的消息。

她的举动震惊了政界——包括史蒂文斯的朋友、同事，甚至她自己的国会工作人员，据她的幕僚长和知情人士的声明称，他们中的大多数人都是在社交媒体上得知她的决定后立即辞职的。

决定密歇根州参议院选举结果——以及可能决定唐纳德·特朗普总统任期最后两年哪个党派将控制参议院——的问题是：史蒂文斯对罗杰斯的支持是否会改变选票，或者仅仅是一场政治闹剧。

民主党联盟内部对埃尔-赛义德的不满由来已久。史蒂文斯在8月的党内初选中最受黑人和犹太裔民主党人欢迎，而这些人中有些不愿支持埃尔-赛义德。埃尔-赛义德是一位穆斯林，他强烈批评以色列在加沙的行动，并主张停止对以色列军方的援助。

在史蒂文斯倒戈之前，CNN最近一次针对密歇根州参议员竞选的民调显示，埃尔-赛义德领先罗杰斯7个百分点，在民主党潜在选民中支持率高达95%。史蒂文斯对罗杰斯的支持，已经成为民主党领导人团结一致的契机，在竞选的最后阶段，各方力量因对这场选举利害关系的共同认识而凝聚起来。

在谴责史蒂文斯并强烈支持埃尔-赛义德的民主党领导人中，有两位是他在党内最有影响力的批评者：参议院民主党领袖查克·舒默，他在初选中默许支持史蒂文斯；以及前众议院议长南希·佩洛西，她几天前还表示埃尔-赛义德对以色列的看法是“错误的”和“令人担忧的”。

舒默指责史蒂文斯犯下了“卑鄙的背叛”。

“参议院民主党人团结一致支持阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德，因为我们知道他会为密歇根州工薪家庭的经济利益而战，不像迈克·罗杰斯，他是唐纳德·特朗普和亿万富翁捐助者的工具，”这位纽约民主党人说。

舒默补充说，民主党人“同样一致地对共和党人针对阿卜杜勒的种族主义、仇视伊斯兰教和过激的虚假攻击感到彻底厌恶”。

与此同时，佩洛西在社交媒体上表示，埃尔-赛义德“必须获胜”，而史蒂文斯“选择以她对迈克·罗杰斯的可怕支持，危险地背叛了密歇根州家庭的医疗保健、自由和未来”。

礼拜结束后，史蒂文斯和罗杰斯在教堂外接受记者采访时，人群中有人喊道：“黑莉是叛徒！”

史蒂文斯周日似乎手机关机，没有回应置评请求。

埃尔-赛义德竞选团队的一位女发言人表示，在史蒂文斯公开支持罗杰斯后的几个小时内，他筹集了 120 万美元——这是他自赢得初选以来单日筹款额第二高。

在初选结束后不久，埃尔-赛义德以不到一个百分点的微弱优势获胜，两人在州党团结早餐会上拥抱。但据CNN上周报道，他们已经几个月没有一起参加竞选活动，也没有直接交谈过。

民主党人试图安排埃尔-赛义德周日与南卡罗来纳州众议员吉姆·克莱伯恩（该党最具影响力的人物之一）一同在底特律的一座黑人教堂露面。此举旨在巩固黑人对埃尔-赛义德的支持。

一位长期在密歇根州从事民主党工作的人士表示，许多年长的黑人选民倾向于在选举日当天投票，而不是提前投票，“因为他们对缺席投票抱有较高的怀疑态度，这是有充分理由的”。这些选票可能是埃尔-赛义德试图维系的民主党联盟的重要组成部分。

史蒂文斯周五上午发表声明称，在初选中支持她并与她一起竞选的克莱伯恩邀请她去教堂——她将出席，这将是她第一次与埃尔-赛义德一起出现在竞选活动中。

然而，她也向埃尔-赛义德提出了一系列要求，其中包括试图迫使他谴责一个外部团体的新广告。该广告将美国人生活成本高昂归咎于美国对以色列的援助。广告中，两个人在杂货店里暗示，由于援助，他们买不起基本生活用品。这与埃尔-赛义德在竞选期间经常发表的关于以色列的言论如出一辙，尽管他本人已与该广告划清界限。

埃尔-赛义德周五晚间发表声明回应称，史蒂文斯“似乎执意要重新审理三个月前结束的初选”。

周五晚些时候，CNN和其他媒体报道称，埃尔-赛义德的竞选团队已要求史蒂文斯在竞选最后阶段不要参加所有竞选活动，这清楚地表明两人共同露面的计划无法实现。密歇根州民主党众议员黛比·丁格尔在CNN上表示，是她向史蒂文斯传达了这一信息。

然而，周六，埃尔-赛义德谴责了这则广告，史蒂文斯也发表声明赞扬他的做法——这些事态发展让许多与她关系密切的民主党人对她周日的决定更加摸不着头脑。丁格尔周日告诉CNN，史蒂文斯连夜向她保证，她不会改变立场。

周日，史蒂文斯站在罗杰斯旁边，四次提到埃尔-赛义德的竞选活动将她排除在外。她在X网站上发布的背书视频中再次提及此事，指出埃尔-赛义德“说过我不再受他的竞选活动欢迎，我应该远离。他说得对。”

“我将投票支持迈克·罗杰斯竞选参议员，我会告诉你为什么。因为我们必须与国家站在一起。我们不能与仇恨为伍。我们不能与哈桑·皮克为伍，”她说。

周日，党内官员迅速公开谴责史蒂文斯，并批评她只关注自己是否被邀请。但他们私下表示，责任不在少数，尤其是埃尔-赛义德。

一位资深的民主党官员告诉CNN：“他表现得好像自己以压倒性优势赢得了初选，但事实并非如此。阿卜杜勒自食其果。”

埃尔-赛义德周日如期举行了活动。他要求记者们关注他所在州民众面临的问题，而不是“两个现在不在场的人”。随后，有人问他是否认为史蒂文斯支持罗杰斯背叛了他的党派。

“说到底，我其实根本不会去想海莉·史蒂文斯，”他站在克莱伯恩旁边说道。“就像我刚才说的，我会想到那9999998个不是她们俩的人。因为你知道吗？我对政治本身的兴趣远不如对政策本身的兴趣。”

朱莉娅·德马雷·尼金森/美联社

对于民主党内的许多人来说，这是一场充满情感的争论，而对于埃尔-赛义德和史蒂文斯来说，这场争论则变得格外私人化，因为他们两人都以不听取顾问意见、坚持己见而闻名。

在初选中，史蒂文斯获得了美国以色列公共事务委员会（AIPAC）数千万美元的竞选资金支持——这成为她与埃尔-赛义德之间的一个冲突点。埃尔-赛义德几乎在每一场竞选活动中都谴责AIPAC以及金钱对政治的影响。埃尔-赛义德因与皮克尔（Piker）一同竞选而受到批评。皮克尔是一位立场鲜明的亲巴勒斯坦直播主播，长期以来发表过许多针对犹太人的争议性言论，包括将反对埃尔-赛义德的犹太居民比作三K党成员，这些言论被广泛谴责为反犹太主义。AIPAC on X于周日转发了史蒂文斯支持罗杰斯的视频。

在初选期间，埃尔-赛义德将史蒂文斯描绘成美国以色列公共事务委员会（AIPAC）的傀儡，并称她是“美国最无能的候选人”。

“美国每个人都明白你想把所有问题都归咎于美国犹太人，”史蒂文斯在 8 月 4 日大选前 X 天回应道。

随着美国以色列公共事务委员会（AIPAC）的盟友团体支持她的竞选活动，双方的敌意也日益加剧。埃尔-赛义德多次抨击史蒂文斯是傀儡，这激怒了她，让她更加坚定地支持他。与此同时，埃尔-赛义德一再拒绝承认以色列作为犹太国家拥有生存权，并声称以色列在加沙进行种族灭绝，以及对以色列的资助损害了密歇根州人民的利益，这些都令她感到愤怒。

周日，史蒂文斯的许多民主党批评者将矛头指向史蒂文斯的未婚夫、密歇根州律师杰森·土耳其，他上周支持了罗杰斯，并接受媒体采访，批评埃尔-赛义德对犹太人的安全漠不关心。

一位史蒂文斯的前幕僚周日指出，自从她和图尔基在五月份订婚后——直到八月份的党内初选之后才公开此事——史蒂文斯便更加专注于捍卫以色列和美以公共事务委员会（AIPAC），即便民主党和美国公众舆论整体上对以色列的态度已日趋怀疑。这位前幕僚认为，她不再像以前那样强调并赢得选举的竞选纲领：发展密歇根州经济和保护制造业。

这位工作人员表示，在准备面试或与捐赠者通话时，这个话题经常被提及。在准备六月份的一次面试时，史蒂文斯向助手们追问，既然她在2022年众议院初选中曾为美国以色列公共事务委员会（AIPAC）辩护并最终获胜，为何现在却要避免为AIPAC辩护。

周日，有关土耳其人影响力的猜测公开化，因为许多民主党人——他们中的许多人最近要么与史蒂文斯交谈过，要么听取了与史蒂文斯交谈过的人的简报——暗示他在一位候选人的伴侣竞选中扮演了过分重要的角色。

宾夕法尼亚州前众议员苏珊·怀尔德 (Susan Wild) 曾于 2023 年在华盛顿与史蒂文斯 (Stevens) 同住，她的孩子也经常与史蒂文斯发短信。怀尔德表示，她对朋友“令人震惊”的举动感到“非常难过和失望”。

“如果这是因为她有了新恋情（在她初选落败后，我们很多人都为她感到高兴），那我只能说，任何一个女人如果因为有了新男友就抛弃朋友，那她根本就不是朋友，”威尔德说道。

史蒂文斯的母亲玛丽亚·马科特是一位退休的广告主管，她在给 CNN 的一份声明中表示，她女儿的未婚夫与她改变主意无关——而且马科特本人也投票给了罗杰斯。

“海莉是个独立自主的女人，她一直都是。暗示是男人替她做了决定，是对她的侮辱，​​也是对我这个母亲的侮辱，”马科特说。

她指出，在初选期间，一些进步的亲巴勒斯坦活动人士曾对史蒂文斯穷追猛打。

“阿卜杜勒不应该因为她说出真心话就把她踢出竞选团队，”她说。“海莉是自己做出这个选择的，她睁大了眼睛，就像她人生中每一个艰难的抉择一样。我知道海莉会支持任何赢得这次选举的人，因为这就是她。我从未像现在这样为她感到骄傲。”

在埃尔-赛义德赢得初选后，两位竞争对手之间的愤怒情绪持续升级。

埃尔-赛义德将史蒂文斯归入他初选获胜后认为无需依靠来组建联盟的所有人之列。史蒂文斯会告诉别人，她认为他的竞选策略很奇怪，而且注定失败，但她觉得自己没有义务去改变现状。

罗杰斯的助手们意识到，他的胜利之路很大程度上取决于民主党内部的内战，因此他们克制自己，只散布不满的言论，并说服自己，他们并非只是在幻想，他们能够让她一路支持他。

随后，一则超市广告再次点燃了紧张局势。该广告由一个与“年轻的土耳其人”联合创始人岑克·乌伊古尔有关联的团体发布，而令人意想不到的是，乌伊古尔正是皮克的叔叔——这种安排几乎就是为了挑起争端。

史蒂文斯要求埃尔-赛义德谴责乌伊古尔的广告后，埃尔-赛义德在批评史蒂文斯的声明中再次提及美国以色列公共事务委员会（AIPAC）。密歇根州总检察长达娜·内塞尔是史蒂文斯的初选支持者，她曾对犹太人的安全表示担忧。内塞尔在正式支持史蒂文斯之前，要求埃尔-赛义德停止这种做法。内塞尔在10月份告诉CNN，埃尔-赛义德已经同意了她的要求。

史蒂文斯的倒戈可能会进一步削弱埃尔-赛义德在犹太选民中的支持率。罗杰斯此前已公开预测，他周二可能会赢得多达一半的犹太选票。

“感觉过去八周，埃尔-赛义德博士的言辞越来越过激，”密歇根州拉比委员会主席、犹太领袖团体“不容谈判”（Nonnegotiable）的领导人之一亚伦·斯塔尔拉比说道。该团体呼吁埃尔-赛义德更多地关注犹太人的安全问题，并维护犹太人在以色列的主权。斯塔尔和其他犹太领袖于周日下午举行电话会议，讨论了这一立场转变。

但史蒂文斯也因此与一些重要盟友的关系受损。

丁格尔长期以来一直是该州党内的和平缔造者，他斥责史蒂文斯“不断试图引起关注”。

“不幸的是，她伤得很重，”丁格尔告诉 CNN。

密歇根州民主党主席柯蒂斯·赫特尔实际上已经将史蒂文斯逐出了该党。他在社交媒体上写道：“史蒂文斯议员目前不是密歇根州民主党的成员，将来也不会是。”

该州许多民主党人认为，在过去一年的大部分时间里，史蒂文斯之所以能在参议院竞选中保持竞争力，主要是因为她迫使舒默实际上支持了她。然而到了春天，关于她竞选初选表现平平、演讲举步维艰以及她如何攻击不支持她的人的抱怨声开始四起。

尽管她最终在非裔美国选民中获得了强大的支持，但黑人教会领袖们对她争取早期背书的做法感到愤怒。来自本顿港的27岁地区专员乔克韦·皮奇福德被视为当地一颗冉冉升起的新星，他讲述了一个故事，他认为这个故事概括了他认识的其他密歇根州民主党人的类似经历：一天早上，他发现网上有一张史蒂文斯发布的图片，声称他已经支持了她，但正如他回复的那样，他们从未交谈过。

皮奇福德告诉CNN：“他们非但没有主动道歉，反而接到来自全州各地的陌生来电，威胁我说如果我不撤下那条信息，我的政治生涯就完了。我们当中有些人一年前就试图发出警告；这里面肯定有问题。”

事实上，周日对史蒂文斯最热烈的赞扬来自共和党人。

“黑莉说出了很少有人愿意说的话。她所做的一切，展现了对密歇根州伟大人民的极大且几乎前所未有的忠诚，”特朗普在Truth Social上写道。

托德从底特律报道。CNN的达娜·巴什、马努·拉朱、尼基·罗伯逊和杰夫·泽莱尼也对本报道做出了贡献。