Voters who spoke with National Review on Election Day had made their minds up well before Stevens’s last-minute about face.
West Bloomfield, Michigan — Though it dominated headlines over the weekend, Democratic Representative Haley Stevens’s endorsement of Republican candidate Mike Rogers does not appear to have had much of discernible effect on the ground in Michigan.
Voters who spoke with National Review on Election Day in Oakland County, a former Republican stronghold that has lurched left in recent cycles, had made their minds up well before Stevens’s last-minute about face. For most of them, the choice was clear — very few said they struggled to pick between two candidates who could hardly be more different in their presentation, messaging, and policy priorities.
Far from encouraging them to break with their party and vote for the Republican, Democratic voters — even those casting their votes at the local synagogue in a city with a heavy Jewish community — discounted Stevens’s endorsement and questioned her motivations, with some even suggesting that pro-Israel forces had influenced her.
“I feel like she was definitely swayed by AIPAC and her boyfriend,” El-Sayed supporter Rachel Blaschak told NR after she cast her vote. Stevens’s fiancé, Jason Turkish, who is a Jewish supporter of Israel, announced he was voting for Rogers days before she jumped on board with the Republican candidate.
While there was a possibility that Stevens’s backing Rogers could have given moderate Democrats — who were dissatisfied with El-Sayed’s aggressively anti-Israel posture — a permission slip to vote for the GOP nominee, the groundswell of sentiment against the Democratic candidate does not appear to have materialized. Judging by voters’ reactions Tuesday, El-Sayed’s alienation of Stevens will has not hurt him as voters make their choice.
Following her Sunday endorsement of Rogers, some commentators conjectured that the pro-Israel lobby or her fiancé had swayed Stevens. That belief was widespread among El-Sayed supporters in southeastern Michigan.
“I think she has conflicting interests,” Adam Huttenstine, a voter in the Detroit suburb of Novi, told NR. “I think Israel is a big part of it. I have a lot of Jewish friends in the area, and they’re also in the same sort of confliction [sic] between religion and policy.”
Another Novi voter, Thomas Cho, expressed a similar sentiment when asked why he thought Stevens endorsed Rogers.
“I don’t know exactly, but if you read some of the news out there, I guess she’s associated to, like, the Israeli funders and received some money potentially,” he said. “I don’t know. I mean, but that’s what I’ve heard. And I know her fiancé is a very pro-Israel person as well.”
El-Sayed has stayed away from such rhetoric, opting instead to minimize Stevens’s influence. “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he told reporters soon after Stevens announced her endorsement.
One El-Sayed supporter in West Bloomfield, a woman named Marissa who would not give her last name, hewed to her candidate’s line. “It’s not really my concern. There’s bigger things at stake,” she told NR.
On the other side of the race, a number of Rogers supporters cited El-Sayed’s Muslim faith as a reason to vote Republican. An older Chaldean voter, Arkan Houbba, noted his own heritage in explaining why he voted for Rogers.
“Where we come from, Iraq, my fathers escaped that country, and there’s like 200,000 Chaldeans in Michigan,” he said. “And they have the history of the Islam, how they rule. We don’t want Sharia Law in America. We don’t want Muslims to control our women, our beliefs.”
Likewise, Danny, another Republican voter, who would not give his last name, gave similar reasons for his votes.
“We don’t want our country to go haywire with what El-Sayed is standing for,” he told NR. “It is ridiculous. We are a U.S. nation, Christian-based, not Muslim, which they’re striving for, because that’s how they infiltrate the government with all this nonsense from other countries. They bring their laws in here, and what I’m worried is about Sharia Law.”
But one voter in Novi, who would not give his name, indicated he had looked at more than mere partisan or ideological affiliation in determining his vote. He voted for Rogers because he was not a fan of El-Sayed, but that did not mean he was solidly supporting the Republican nominee. He suggested his vote would have been different had Stevens or state legislator Mallory McMorrow, another primary candidate, been the Democratic nominee.
“I probably would have voted Democrat,” this voter told NR.