Abdul El-Sayed said Saturday that he did not want Hayley Stevens to join him at a party unity event in Detroit on Sunday. He said it after a campaign rally in Sterling Heights, adding that he did not want “any distractions.”
El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, and Stevens had been publicly quarreling for days about Israel. Their disagreement landed just as the campaign moved into the final stretch before the midterms, with opinion polls showing El-Sayed and Mike Rogers locked in a tight race.
August primary
Stevens lost to El-Sayed by less than a percentage point in the August primary, and both had been expected to attend the Sunday event together. The schedule for the gathering listed speakers including James E. Clyburn, El-Sayed and Mayor Mary Sheffield of Detroit, but not Stevens.
The event was set for a church in the North End of Detroit, and the schedule said the remarks would be followed by a march to the offices of the Detroit Election Department. That made the appearance more than a routine campaign stop: it was supposed to show Democrats closing ranks before a closely watched election.
Dingell and Clyburn
Representatives Debbie Dingell of Michigan and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina were trying to broker a peace between El-Sayed and Stevens before the election. Antjuan Seawright, an adviser to Clyburn, said Saturday afternoon, “This is not Abdul’s event.” He also said, “The invitation still stands.”
That left the Sunday gathering in Detroit as a test of whether the two Democrats could share the same stage after days of friction. If Stevens stayed away, El-Sayed would still have Clyburn, Dingell and Sheffield on the program, but the unity push would arrive with a visible gap at the center of it.
