Reported by Al Jazeera
Stevens’s endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers comes after a bitter dispute with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
A Democratic congresswoman has thrown her support behind a Republican in one of the most closely watched races in the US midterm elections, just two days before voters head to the polls.
Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary in August, announced on Sunday that she was endorsing Republican Mike Rogers over her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed.
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The decision follows weeks of tension between the two Democrats over Israel and has provoked a backlash within the party as it fights to win control of Congress and limit President Donald Trump’s power.
Stevens is a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who narrowly lost the party’s Senate primary to El-Sayed, a former public health official who could become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate.
Despite a bitter primary battle, Stevens promised to support El-Sayed and said as recently as Wednesday that she still wanted him to win.
That was despite her fiance, Jason Turkish, a Jewish Democrat and civil rights attorney, announcing that he would vote for Rogers. Turkish accused El-Sayed of anti-Semitism, saying his rhetoric about Israel and the war in Gaza had made Jewish voters feel unsafe.
The decision followed weeks of tension over Israel that became increasingly public in the final days of the campaign.
Stevens is a strong supporter of Israel, while El-Sayed has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and US military aid to the country.
Their differences were also a major issue during the Democratic primary, when a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent tens of millions of dollars to back Stevens.
But the latest dispute began last week, when an independent group backing El-Sayed, Rebellion PAC, released an advertisement linking US military aid to Israel to Americans’ struggles with the cost of living.
The ad shows a couple shopping for groceries who decide to put back a carton of eggs because they need to save that money for “killing Palestinians”.
Stevens called the ad anti-Semitic and demanded…