On Wednesday, Rep. Haley Stevens went on CNN and said, “I still very much want our Democratic nominee, his name is Abdul, to win this race.” On Saturday night, according to Josh Marshall at TPM, she was still telling Democratic power players she would vote for Abdul El-Sayed.
On Sunday morning she went to church in Detroit with Mike Rogers, the Republican running against El-Sayed for Michigan’s open Senate seat, while El-Sayed held a unity event across town. About an hour later her campaign account posted: “That’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”
Haley Stevens should be banished from politics. This is disgusting behavior and I am disgusted every time she tries to make it about my religion.
There is something wrong with this woman.
— Keith Kurson (@keithlaugh.love) November 1, 2026 at 9:04 AM
I’m Jewish. She isn’t. And every step of the way, she has made this about my religion. I want to walk through who she just endorsed, what the two candidates have each been asked to answer for, and who this endorsement actually serves, because I don’t think it’s me.
Nobody asked me??
Stevens says this is about Jewish safety. Her stated reason for the break is an ad. Rebellion PAC, the group fronted by Cenk Uygur, spent about $1,000 running a spot online in which a couple can’t afford groceries because of money set aside “for killing Palestinians.” It’s a gross ad. El-Sayed’s campaign didn’t make it, and El-Sayed said, “I do not agree with the contents of that ad.” For Stevens, that wasn’t enough.
Her fiancé, Jason Turkish, announced a vote for Rogers last week at a Republican Jewish Coalition event. This weekend Stevens told the New York Times she’s considering converting to Judaism. I mean this sincerely: mazel tov. It still doesn’t make me her prop.
What I see is Haley Stevens and Mike Rogers, two Christians, using Jews as a hand puppet so she can say she’s leaving her party for us. I’m right here. Nobody asked me.
Who she just endorsed on… LGBTQ people
If this is about protecting a minority from people who would hurt them, it’s worth looking at how Mike Rogers has treated a different one.
- In 2006 he voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He has also called being gay a “lifestyle choice”, said the right to same-sex marriage “has never existed,” and compared it to polygamy.
- In 2007 he voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have made it illegal to fire someone for being gay.
- In 2010 he voted against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
- In 2024 he signed a pledge to ban trans athletes from women’s sports and said, “Biological men should not be competing with our daughters, period.”
- His 2026 faith coalition includes Linda Lee Tarver, who called LGBTQ protections a “godless, demonic, satanic and wicked agenda of the devil.”
Last month a JTA reporter asked Rogers whether Republican attacks on immigrants and LGBTQ people are comparable to antisemitism. He said, “I don’t equate them at all.”
I do.
Who she just endorsed on… Jews
Rogers has put Jewish fear at the center of his campaign. At a kosher barbecue in Oak Park, he said Jewish students at the University of Michigan hiding their Stars of David “sounds a lot like 1933.” In that same JTA interview, he said El-Sayed is “anti-Jew.” On the anniversary of October 7, he said El-Sayed “only spreads antisemitism.”
In April, his campaign announced a student outreach team. One of its members had defended the leaked Young Republicans group chat, as the Detroit Metro Times reported. That’s the chat Politico published in October 2025, with “I love Hitler,” jokes about gas chambers, and more than 250 slurs.
The candidate warning Jewish voters about 1933 and the candidate who put a defender of that chat on his outreach team are the same person.
What Rogers didn’t have to answer for
Rogers stood on a debate stage and said El-Sayed’s birth mother worked for an organization that “helped al-Qaida.” Michigan Public fact-checked the claim and found it doesn’t hold up. When Meet the Press asked whether he agreed with Donald Trump calling El-Sayed a “Muslim Brotherhood jihadist,” he didn’t answer the question.
I looked for a single interview in which Rogers was asked about the member of his outreach team who defended “I love Hitler.” I couldn’t find one.
El-Sayed was made to answer for somebody else’s $1,000 ad and for a birth mother’s old job. Rogers gets to invoke 1933 without a follow-up. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the candidate held to the higher standard is the one who is brown and Muslim.
So who is this for?
Stevens gave up her House seat to run for Senate, and she lost the August primary 48.45 percent to 47.55 percent. Her term ends in January. She doesn’t have voters to answer to anymore. So who is this endorsement for?
It isn’t for Michigan Democrats. The state party put out a statement saying her decision to campaign with Rogers “shows that she has abandoned everything she claims to care about.”
Michigan, let’s win this together.
— Democrats (@democrats.org) November 1, 2026 at 9:50 AM
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It isn’t for her staff. Her longtime chief of staff resigned, and most of her senior House staff followed Sunday morning, according to the Detroit News, as TPM reported. Some of them were waiting for her at the unity event with Rep. Jim Clyburn, expecting her to show up.
And it isn’t for me.
It is good for Mike Rogers, who called her “a courageous leader who deserves the respect of every Michigan voter” two days before she endorsed him.
AIPAC and its allies spent close to $30 million trying to get her through that primary, the most the group has ever spent on a single race. Marshall writes that people are describing her as angling for a lobbying job, and notes that “it’s not a selling point for any lobbying firm if you’re this toxic to every member of your own party.”
I don’t know what her next job is. If I had to bet, I’d bet on a regular spot on Fox News.
Before Tuesday
If you’re in Michigan, find your polling place and vote on Tuesday. You can probably guess who I’d vote for.
And if you’re a politician who wants to protect Jews, ask one of us first. I’m on Bluesky at @keithlaugh.love.