A Democratic Rift Shadows Michigan's Senate Race on the Final Weekend
Reuters reports it was unclear whether Rep. Haley Stevens would attend a Detroit unity event Sunday with Abdul El-Sayed, the rival who beat her in the primary — in a Senate race against Mike Rogers that could help decide control of Congress.
The final weekend of the midterms produced an awkward question in Michigan. Reuters reported on Sunday that it was unclear whether U.S. Representative Haley Stevens would attend a Detroit event with Abdul El-Sayed that had been billed as a show of Democratic unity — Stevens is the rival El-Sayed beat in the party's primary, and her absence or presence would be read either way.
El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in one of the closely watched Senate races in the country. Michigan is the kind of state that decides chambers: Republicans hold the Senate 53-47, and with 35 Senate seats and all 435 House seats on Tuesday's ballot, a single flipped seat narrows the majority that has carried the president's agenda.
The uncertainty in Detroit sits inside a national picture Reuters has reported all weekend: more than 52 million Americans have already voted — a midterm record, by the University of Florida Election Lab's count — while the president's approval among rural Americans fell to a new low of 45 percent in October in Reuters/Ipsos polling.
New York's own races are decided Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., but the city's voters are voting in the same national weather. Whether Stevens stood with El-Sayed on Sunday is a Detroit story; what it says about the party asking for control of the Senate is a national one, and Reuters reported it as still unresolved when its file moved.
