Curtis Hertel, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, criticized Representative Haley Stevens after she shockingly endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for Senate over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.
Stevens sought to make her participation in a joint appearance on Sunday with El-Sayed and South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn contingent on El-Sayed disavowing an advertisement by one of his allies that criticized Israel. In response, El-Sayed’s campaign asked Stevens to stay away from his events.
With just a couple of days before the election and facing criticism for appearing with Rogers at a Detroit church, Rogers published a video on social media in which she endorsed the man she once hoped to defeat for a Senate seat.
She said, in part:
"Abdul said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he's right. And that's why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today."
She added:
"Who we are as Michiganders is not hate, it is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
Stevens' endorsement send a shockwave through the party, and Hertel published the following statement on X acknowledging that he'd ejected her from the state's Democratic Party:
"Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future."
You can see his post below.
When asked by a reporter why he believes Stevens endorsed El-Sayed's opponent, Hertel said:
"Obviously there were sour grapes from the election, but there's no reasonable explanation for this. I've known Haley Stevens a long time and I know what she fought for in her career, and this is the antithesis of all that."
"If you don't know what's at stake in this country right now, that fact this president promised people that their prices would go down, that there would be no foreign wars, that the Epstein files would be released, and the only thing in Michigan and the United States that we've gotten is having the fifth best lake named after us."
"At this point, she's abandoning who she's been and therefore, none of us can stand with that."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Others have concurred with his remarks.
El-Sayed also pushed back against reporters, saying he would not be distracted at the eleventh hour, with Americans due to go to the polls tomorrow:
"I have a sense that you all are here today because of the decisions of somebody who's not here right now. I'm just going to tell you, this is a state of 10 million people who deserve a lot better from their government. I'm a lot more focused on the 9,999,998 that are not the ones you guys are talking about."
"I'm not in the business of driving clicks for you. I'm in the business of trying to solve problems for the people of my state."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Stevens' chief of staff for eight years, Justin German, also resigned Sunday morning alongside several other Stevens staffers, writing in a statement:
"Many members of our team have resigned, including myself."
"We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’s decision to support Mike Rogers."
German then encouraged "everyone to exercise their civic duty, vote for [Michigan Democratic Senate candidate] Abdul [El-Sayed] and Democrats up and down the ballot, and stand up for the America we all believe in."
