For Haley Stevens, the road from Democratic Senate candidate to campaigning alongside a Republican she once called a rubber stamp for Donald Trump has been remarkably short – and the issue running through almost every twist and turn has been Israel. Having failed to stop Abdul El-Sayed in the primary, Stevens chose to back Republican Mike Rogers on Sunday, a candidate who she previously warned would enable Trump’s agenda – apparently because the Democrat who won refuses to share her position on Israel. Stevens’s extraordinary reversal is about more than a personal feud or a bruised political ego.
It is the culmination of a fight over Israel that has come to define the congresswoman’s political persona, seemingly eclipsing her commitment to the Democratic party and its opposition to Donald Trump. It is also an issue that continues to dog the wider Democratic party, especially when it comes to candidates who accept money from Aipac, the biggest pro-Israel lobby in the country and one of the biggest spenders in US elections. But other Democratic candidates have sought distance from the baggage of the Aipac brand as US voters grow increasingly skeptical of the US-Israel relationship.
Stevens, on the other hand, seems to have doubled down. Earlier this year, Aipac and its affiliated groups poured around $30m into trying to secure Stevens’s Democratic primary victory, their largest ever investment in a single race, in their attempt to stop El-Sayed by any means necessary. She lost anyway, but continued the fight over Israel, demanding that El-Sayed distance himself from an outside group’s advertisement blaming rising grocery costs to American support for Israel just days before the election.
The advertisement was not produced by his campaign, and El-Sayed explicitly rejected its contents. That was apparently not enough. Stevens had been scheduled to appear alongside El-Sayed and the veteran congressman Jim Clyburn at a predominantly Black Detroit church on Sunday, an attempt to demonstrate Democratic unity before election day.
Instead, she released a lengthy statement attacking El-Sayed over alleged antisemitism and his associations, and was told she was no longer welcome at campaign events, which she then took personally. Her follow-up CNN interview with Anderson Cooper only deepened the questions about her decision. Asked repeatedly what had changed between her assurances to fellow Democrats the previous evening and her endorsement the following morning, Stevens struggled to offer a clear explanation.
Cooper pointed out that the criticisms she was making had been known for some time, including when she had agreed to campaign with him. Despite all the intra-party divisions over Israel, the response from Democrats has been unified: across the spectrum, they are horrified. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, no progressive firebrand, called her move “a despicable betrayal”.
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