In a dramatic break with her own party just two days before the November 3 midterm elections, Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Stevens, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed in August, cited his failure to unequivocally confront antisemitism within his political coalition and specifically his association with extremist social media personality Hasan Piker, whose hate-filled rhetoric about Jews, Israel and the United States has drawn widespread condemnation.
The final rupture followed a campaign advertisement for El-Sayed produced by Rebellion PAC in collaboration with The Young Turks, whose co-founder, Cenk Uygur, is Hasan Piker’s uncle and himself an anti-Zionist pundit known for raw, unrestrained hostility toward Israel and its supporters. The ad blamed American support for Israel for rising grocery prices, depicting a couple shopping for food, with the woman explaining that they could not afford eggs because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” It ended by portraying Republican Mike Rogers as representing Israeli interests and El-Sayed as representing ordinary Americans.
The ad was widely condemned for scapegoating Jews, or in this case the Jewish state, for the economic hardships of ordinary Americans. It evoked familiar Nazi propaganda tropes, where Jews were blamed for the country’s economic crises and national misfortunes. The ad similarly portrayed Israel as responsible for depriving Americans of basic necessities. Stevens argued that this message echoed El-Sayed’s own campaign rhetoric linking American economic difficulties to support for Israel.
While El-Sayed, in response to the backlash, denied responsibility for the advertisement, he did not condemn its underlying message. And when Stevens demanded an explicit condemnation and an apology for El Sayed’s own similar rhetoric, he accused her of attempting to relitigate their August primary. The candidate eventually stated that he disagreed with the ad’s contents, although he never identified its message as antisemitic or apologized for his own statements. Stevens insisted that distancing oneself from an advertisement without condemning its underlying message was insufficient.
El Sayed used the same tactics to justify his relationship with Hasan Piker, who campaigned alongside him at university rallies despite Piker’s record of overtly antisemitic rhetoric, apologism for terrorism and virulent anti-American statements. Piker famously declared that “America deserved 9/11,” a statement he later walked back, and has proclaimed Hamas to be “1,000 times better” than Israel. He referred to Orthodox Jews as “inbred,” expressed support for terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and dismissed evidence of Hamas’s sexual violence on October 7. Piker also ominously suggested that if American Jews continued identifying themselves with Israel, someone would eventually “take action” against them. He accused Jews of making antisemitism worse through their support for Israel, comparing the Jewish state to ISIS.
When challenged about his association with a hate-mongerer, El-Sayed responded with an anodyne statement opposing antisemitism and violence. But he did not directly repudiate Piker or his political association with him.
On October 30, Piker went further, comparing the heavily Jewish Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood and accusing residents of “Jewish supremacy” because of their support for Israel. Michigan State Representative Noah Arbit warned that such rhetoric could incite violence and threaten the Jewish community.
Other controversies had already strained El-Sayed’s relationship with Michigan’s Jewish community. Following the March 12 terrorist attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, where approximately 140 people, mostly children, were inside the synagogue, El-Sayed condemned the violence but immediately appeared to rationalize it, saying “hurt people hurt people” and linking the attacker’s actions to the deaths of family members in Lebanon. El-Sayed later apologized, acknowledging that he should have stopped at condemning the attack.
Although he condemned the comparison of Jewish Michiganders to the Ku Klux Klan, El-Sayed avoided criticizing Piker himself, explicitly identifying Piker’s rhetoric as antisemitic or repudiating their political association. His response echoed his handling of the antisemitic advertisement — distancing himself from particular statements while refusing to confront the antisemitism underlying them.
Announcing her decision to support Rogers, Stevens declared, “We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.”
Her endorsement provoked an immediate backlash from Democratic leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who condemned the move while continuing to support El-Sayed. El-Sayed dismissed the controversy and said his focus remained on voters’ economic concerns.
The episode exposes a widening conflict within the Democratic Party over Israel and antisemitism. Stevens’s decision to cross party lines, citing El-Sayed’s continued association with Piker and his response to the antisemitic advertisement, illustrates how deeply those divisions have fractured the party just days before a closely contested election.
