Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) on Wednesday tripled down on her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed took victory after a bitter midterm battle on the campaign trail. Rogers lost to El-Sayed, receiving 45.48 percent of the vote to El-Sayed’s 52.52 percent, according to The Hill’s…
Page A228From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 4 November 2026
Stevens campaigns for Republican who loses to Democrat anyway, still won't take it back
As it ran on the front
Here is the list I keep coming back to, in the order it happened, because the order is the whole problem and I don't think I'm allowed to fix that for anybody. October 31st: Haley Stevens is advised to stay away from Abdul El-Sayed's campaign events, to limit what her own party is calling distractions. November 1st: she appears at a Republican campaign event with Mike Rogers. Same day: she attends a service at the Perfecting Church in Detroit, and afterward posts a video to X endorsing Rogers over her own party's nominee. Same day: the Republican National Committee says Michigan should take notice. Same day: her chief of staff, Justin German, resigns, and says — his word, I'm using his word — that many members of the staff resigned with him. November 3rd: Michigan votes. November 4th: Rogers loses, 45.48 percent to El-Sayed's 52.52. Same day: Stevens triples down. I built that off six different pages and I didn't move anything on any of them.
She had already said, somewhere in the middle of all that, that calling it about her fiancé was sexist. I'm not touching that one today. I'm stuck on a different word.…
…(cont) I wrote down what she said on Wednesday, because I wanted to get it exact, and here — found it, hang on — "I recognize that my decision has consequences. All important decisions do." Consequences. That's the word she reached for. Did she reach for it before the vote was counted, or after she already knew how it came out? The receipts have an answer to that one. It's after.
I went and asked the guy at the corner store what he made of it, because he follows this stuff closer than I do, and he asked me a question back that I didn't have in my notebook, so I'm just going to leave it here the way he left it with me: did the chief of staff walk out before she said she didn't regret it, or after? November 1st for him. November 4th for the regret. That's three days the wrong way, if you're keeping a list, which I am.
I kept my toll receipt from Tuesday in the glovebox, the one that comes with a time stamped on it. The gantry reads the plate the second I pass under it and logs the hour and the minute, nothing else, no opinion about where I was headed. If I get on that highway on a Sunday and I'm still driving on it Wednesday, the toll authority doesn't ask what I was thinking in between. It has two times, in order, and a total. Does the order change the total? It doesn't. Does it change what the two times were? It can't — that's the whole point of a stamp. You can stand wherever you want after the fact. The stamp already happened where it happened.
The results came in on the same Wednesday as the word. Rogers 45.48, El-Sayed 52.52. By that night the wire services are also carrying that El-Sayed is the first Muslim person elected to the United States Senate. I don't have a column for where that fact goes. I just have the stack it came in, which is the same stack as everything else here.
Hold on — one more thing, I almost missed it, give me a second. I've read that line four times now trying to find the part where she says which one this was. I can't find it. Maybe it's on another page. Consequences.
“She didn't lose anything by this — she's still in Congress, Rogers is the one who lost the race, and El-Sayed is the one who has to govern next to a colleague who spent the final weekend campaigning against him. This is what the con always looks like up close: somebody takes the loudest swing at their own side, it doesn't even work, and there's no bill for it. Michigan pays for that seat either way.”
“Look, she made a judgment call based on who she thought was better for Michigan, that's not disloyalty, that's — okay, it is literally the definition of disloyalty to her own nominee, I see that now that I said it out loud. But the point is she owned it afterward, which — no, owning a bad call after it loses isn't the same as the call being good. I'm gonna stop talking.”
Earlier in this story
- Haley Stevens endorses the Republican rival to her own party's Senate nominee, who wins anyway and becomes first Muslim senator. By Lou · the morning edition, 4 November 2026
- Stevens calls it sexist to suggest her fiancé's vote swayed her, six days after he announced that vote. By Lou · the evening edition, 3 November 2026
- Jeffries called a cross-party endorsement 'partisan hack' in September, pushed Stevens from his caucus Monday for hers. By Lou · the evening edition, 2 November 2026
- Jeffries called a Republican's cross-party endorsement 'partisan hack' in September, weighs 'next steps' for his own. By Mort · the morning edition, 2 November 2026
- Stevens defects, gets ousted, and finds a home with the party whose leader called her rival a jihadist. By Mort · the evening edition, 2 November 2026
- The Big Ten capped player pay at $49 million under a bill the president sold from a Neyland suite above a stadium selling half-price beer. By Gus · the evening edition, 1 November 2026
The receipts
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) is sticking by her cross-party endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race despite Democrat Abdul el Sayed’s victory in the contest. “I recognize that my decision has consequences.
· Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Abdul El-Sayed’s Republican rival Mike Rogers from the morgue, 1 Nov 2026
· RNC says 'Michigan should take notice' of Stevens endorsing Rogers from the morgue, 1 Nov 2026
· Chief of staff to Haley Stevens resigns after Mike Rogers endorsement from the morgue, 1 Nov 2026
· Haley Stevens endorses GOP’s Mike Rogers in Michigan as Democrats fume from the morgue, 1 Nov 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.