I was trying to enjoy my Halloween weekend when supposed Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens pulled the ultimate trick or treat and endorsed Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race. This is the same Mike Rogers who Stevens and her supporters spent the entire primary insisting was such a threat that it was important to nominate her as the candidate most likely to defeat him and keep the Senate seat blue.
Stevens torched her mostly undistinguished career out of a toxic stew of wounded pride, not-so-subtle bigotry, and flat-out delusional thinking (she suggested that Rogers might be like John McCain or Lisa Murkowski, but Rogers is running a shamelessly racist campaign and is openly a Trump stooge).
Stevens’s obvious mental breakdown is neither all that compelling nor likely to alter the outcome of the Senate race that actual real-live Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is leading, but I do think her larger motivations, while seemingly incoherent and self-obsessed, are worth examining in further detail. My friend Noah Berlatsky explains how it’s not unfortunate mental illness but a consuming ideology.
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Why Haley Stevens Needs More Than A Little Bit Of Luck
On paper, Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens might’ve seemed a safe choice to hold the Senate seat that Democrat Gary Peters is vacating next year. She flipped Michigan’s 11th District in 2018 and was the state’s first millennial representative on Capitol Hill.
Chuck Schumer’s Primary Blues
Graham Platner became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the Senate election in Maine last week after sitting Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign. Mills announced on Thursday that she lacked the financial resources to effectively compete against Platner, who she’s consistently trailed in the polls, often by humiliating margins.
