Former House Democrat Endorses Republican Senate Candidate

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Former Democratic Congressman Hansen Clarke, who represented Michigan’s 13th Congressional District from 2011 to 2013, has endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for U.S. Senate.

Clarke’s time in the House of Representatives overlapped with Rogers.

“Choi Clarke and I stand with Congresswoman Haley Stevens in supporting Mike Rogers for the U.S. Senate,” Clarke said in a statement shared on social media.

“I served with Mike in the U.S. House of Representatives. I know that he is committed to improving the quality of our lives, protecting our nation’s security, and working with Democrats to get the job done,” he added.

JFeed shared further:

The endorsement follows Rep. Haley Stevens’s announcement on Sunday that she was backing Rogers. Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed in August, said El-Sayed had made clear she was not welcome in his campaign. She appeared alongside Rogers at a church service in Detroit before endorsing him. Her longtime chief of staff and several other staffers resigned after the announcement.

Senior Democrats condemned Stevens’s move, and El-Sayed’s campaign said it raised a single-day record of $2.4 million from 65,000 donors in its wake.

El-Sayed has faced months of criticism from fellow Democrats over his positions on Israel, his response to the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, and his campaign appearances with streamer Hasan Piker. In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, he said Palestine has a right to exist but attached conditions to Israel’s.

Watch the announcement by Stevens below:

The contest between Rogers and El-Sayed will be among the most closely watched Senate races on Tuesday.

Some polls indicate El-Sayed’s chances have increased in the days leading to Tuesday’s election.

However, other polls indicate a closer race.

More from the Associated Press:

The state party chair, Curtis Hertel, said Stevens’ endorsement “shows that she has abandoned everything she claims to care about.”

“We reject the attempts by Stevens and bad-faith actors to divide our party and undermine our momentum,” Hertel wrote, and won’t let such 11th-hour “distractions” deter the campaign. Hertel later wrote that Stevens “is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who supported Stevens in the primary, denounced her endorsement of Rogers.

“This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens,” Schumer wrote in a social media post.

Among the Democrats who joined El-Sayed at church Sunday morning were Dingell, U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the Senate primary before voting began.

Dingell, a senior Democratic figure in the state who helped organize the planned joint appearance, said she asked Stevens not to attend and that Stevens told her she would abide by that.

“I’m the one who pulled it, because it had become way too distracting,” Dingell said in an interview before Stevens appeared with Rogers. “This is not how I was going to spend my weekend before the election, to be perfectly frank.”

In the August primary, Stevens defeated El-Sayed in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, and neighboring Oakland County, drawing support from Black and Jewish voters who are important parts of the Democratic coalition.

The post Former House Democrat Endorses Republican Senate Candidate appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

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