Haley Stevens Endorses Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate Race as Both Parties Set Their Midterm Closing Arguments
A defeated Democratic primary candidate crossed party lines in Detroit on Sunday, backing the Republican in one of the Senate races that will decide control of Congress — while a federal judge in Alaska dismissed the Justice Department's bid to block certification there.
Democrats sought on Monday to contain a rift in Michigan's Senate race after one of their own crossed party lines to endorse the Republican candidate, as both parties made their final pitches before Tuesday's midterm elections, Reuters reported. Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in a bitterly contested race, publicly backed Republican candidate Mike Rogers and appeared with him at a Detroit church, in a state viewed as crucial to Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate.
Stevens' endorsement came on the day she was scheduled to appear with El-Sayed in a show of party unity, and it unraveled over an outside group's ad that she said blames Israel for high grocery prices. “That ad was very painful,” Stevens told CNN on Sunday night, and in a video posted to social media she said: “I don't belong in Abdul's campaign.” Representative Debbie Dingell called the move a “distraction” for Democrats. El-Sayed's campaign said it raised $1.2 million in the four hours after Stevens endorsed Rogers, its second-best fundraising day since the August primary, and a New York Times/Siena poll released and partly conducted on Sunday showed El-Sayed leading Rogers 53 percent to 42 percent — a lead measured largely before the endorsement landed.
The second front in Reuters' closing-arguments file was Alaska, where the Trump administration's attempt to intervene faltered on Sunday when a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuit seeking to block certification of the results if Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan narrowly loses. The department argued voters may be confused by a challenger named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the same ballot; the New York Times has reported that Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign was involved in recruiting Sullivan Jr. as a spoiler, which Peltola and Sullivan Jr. have both denied. Senator Sullivan said Sunday he would accept the results of Tuesday's election even as the administration presses a criminal investigation into the issue.
