Let me share a few quick thoughts about former Democratic Senate primary candidate Haley Stevens. As you’ve likely seen, Stevens showed up this morning at a Black church in Detroit with Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Let me say first that my best guess is that Abdul El-Sayed is going to win this race and that all this final-days drama with Stevens won’t end up to have mattered. I will also say that I can’t remember a spectacle quite like this, or any defeated Democratic primary candidate crashing out like this, in 30-plus years of observing Democratic politics very, very closely.
On Friday I said that while to that point I’d questioned Stevens’ judgment, wisdom and decision-making, I was now questioning her sanity. That was only slightly tongue-in-cheek. And even less so now. There’s a level of erratic, boffo behavior here that is even more than appears on the surface. From a mix of watching the morning shows and my own reporting, I can tell you that as recently as last night Stevens told multiple Democratic power players that she was still going to vote for Abdul El-Sayed. Last night. As I’m writing this, in addition to the church appearance, I’ve just seen that she is now officially endorsing Mike Rogers. She seems to be blaming that to some degree on that fact that she was disinvited from today’s Democratic unity rally. But whatever you think of Stevens and El-Sayed, her statement in advance of that rally made disinviting her unavoidable. She quite literally forced it.
I don’t know Stevens, have never met her, though I know a number of people who do know her quite well. At least from the outside, and to some degree from the inside, it does appear that there is some sort of mutual catalyzing and mutual weirdness-escalation between Stevens and her fiancé, Jason Turkish, who caused headlines last week by announcing that he planned to vote for Mike Rogers. Watching their tag-teaming over the last few days, there’s a vibe of two dorky high schoolers who find true love and then launch into some kind of manic apotheosis of mutual dorkdom. Everyone deserves happiness and to find their soulmate, obviously. But it’s quite a thing to see unfolding like this at the center of a top-tier Senate campaign.
Each thing that has happened over the last 36 hours seem to have been a total surprise, even to her closest aides and advisors; as the Detroit News is apparently now reporting, all or most of her senior House staff resigned this morning. Staff was literally waiting for her at this morning’s Clyburn unity event thinking she was about to arrive.
In any case, from the point when Stevens sent out that lengthy statement about the unity rally, which is underway today, it was clear that her future in Democratic politics was over. Now … well, I’ve seen various people saying she’s angling for a lobbying gig. And that may absolutely be the case. But it’s not a selling point for any lobbying firm if you’re this toxic to every member of your own party.
What I can tell you pretty definitively is that even a significant number high profile Democrats who were and are highly skeptical of El-Sayed and in some cases not supporting him appear to be baffled and aghast by what they’re seeing.
