After losing Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination in a surprisingly close race, outgoing Rep. Haley Stevens shocked the political world by rescinding her endorsement of the winner at the last minute and instead saying she would vote against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in favor of his Republican rival, Rep. Mike Rogers.
Now El-Sayed is heading toward the Senate and Stevens is nowhere to be seen — literally.
“The door to her office in Rayburn House Office Building was locked Monday afternoon,” reported Politico’s Riley Rogerson and Katherine Tully-McManus on Monday. “No one responded to a reporter’s multiple knocks nor to knocks from a staffer from another office who tried to enter.”
Rogerson and Tully-McManus added, “A sign reading ‘please come in’ hangs on the locked doors.”
Although votes were not scheduled until Monday evening and the journalists reported this earlier in the day, they noted that it is standard for Senate offices to be open and fully operational during Monday working hours. Indeed, they observed that “staffers for other members are currently working in other offices around Capitol Hill.”
Yet this was not the case for Stevens.
“The lights appeared to be off inside the office, a peek through the mail slot revealed,” the Politico journalists wrote. “Multiple calls Monday to Stevens’ Capitol Hill office went unanswered, sending callers straight to voicemail without a single ring. A message directed constituents to contact the district office in Farmington Hills, Michigan.”
They continued, “A call to that office rang, but no one answered. POLITICO left a voicemail asking whether Stevens planned to return to Capitol Hill for votes.”
When Stevens switched from El-Sayed to Rogers, the Democratic Party establishment overwhelmingly denounced her, with many declaring that her career in politics was effectively over. Stevens claimed that she could not support El-Sayed as a result of ads she deemed anti-Semitic that were run by pro-El-Sayed groups which she claimed he did not adequately denounce.
“I mean unions and black voters gave her, you know, unbelievable support,” Democratic strategist James Carville said at the time. “And then — well, I don’t know. People speculate on why she actually went out after she said she would not, and she made a pledge, and she endorsed the nominee and she took all the money and everything, and there’s a lot of speculation. What tipped?”
He then compared Stevens both to a different controversially MAGA-friendly Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and to the character Wimpy from the “Popeye” comic and cartoon series.
“And in the spirit of John Federman s—, give me another cheeseburger and I’ll give you my soul. I mean, lady, if you’re going to sell your soul, you got to get more for it than a f—— cheeseburger. Okay?” Carville said. “I’m just telling you that you got to put some kind of a price on yourself for some kind of a godd—— self-pride. But your political career is over.”