Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0; Michigan Capitol, 2023 archive crop.
Rep. Haley Stevens defended her decision to back Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat in a Sunday night CNN interview. Stevens, a Democrat, called her choice “rock solid.” Earlier Sunday, President Donald Trump praised her switch, while fellow Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell said Stevens had told her the night before that she would not endorse Rogers.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Stevens why she had changed her mind after withdrawing her support for Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed earlier Sunday. Stevens had faced El-Sayed in the Democratic primary and initially backed him for the general election.
“My mind is made up, I’m rock solid. I’m an independent woman, I made my decision,” Stevens told Cooper, according to CNN’s account of the interview. She said she had not yet cast her ballot and added: “I still love my party a whole lot.”
Asked what had changed before her Sunday announcement, Stevens said she had taken time to think. “I woke up this morning clear-eyed, fresh and focused on what was in my heart, and that’s that,” she said.
Cooper pressed her about the reversal after her reported late-night conversation with Dingell. Stevens referred to an “anger and lack of kindness” from El-Sayed, CNN reported, but did not identify a specific new event that prompted her decision. “Nothing with me changed,” she said.
Stevens also said: “I changed my mind. (El-Sayed) said, ‘Hey, I don’t need your endorsement.’ That’s fine. Why the anger? Why the frustration?”
Trump had praised Stevens while speaking to reporters after arriving in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday afternoon. He called her decision “a smart thing to do,” according to the transcript of his airport remarks.
During an exchange about her safety, Trump said: “Yeah, I’d say she’s in danger. I think she was very brave doing it.” That was his assessment, not an announcement of a confirmed threat. He said he had never met Stevens but had “great respect for her.”
Dingell offered a different account of what Stevens had told her before the announcement. “I was stunned since she had told me she wasn’t doing that last night at midnight,” Dingell told CNN earlier Sunday.
After Stevens’ interview, Dingell told Cooper: “That was one of the most painful interviews I have ever watched.” She said she had been worried about Stevens and had held multiple conversations with her.
The Sunday-night interviews followed the endorsement and the political backlash reported earlier by JBizNews.
The interview also addressed departures from Stevens’ congressional office after the endorsement. She said she was under a “transition” and described the departing staffers as “great individuals” she cared about. “They’re free to share their views on this,” she said.
Stevens’ comments left her commitment to Rogers unchanged, even as she said she wanted to remain part of the Democratic Party. “I hope to see more kindness in the Democratic Party and for all of us to just accept when somebody has a disagreement,” she told Cooper.
JBizNews Desk | New York
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