Stabenow Endorses Haley Stevens for U.S. Senate

By: Sam Massey

Former US Senator for Michigan Debbie Stabenow endorsed Representative Haley Stevens on Wednesday in the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Senator Gary Peters, lending the four-term incumbent’s institutional credibility to a candidate currently running a healthy third in the polls. Stabenow, who held a seat in the Senate for over two decades before retiring in January 2025, framed the endorsement around a long partnership with Stevens dating back to the Obama administration’s auto industry task force, and argued Stevens has the track record and “Michigan grit” to both win in November and deliver for the state’s working families. Stevens faces a competitive three-way primary against former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed and state Senator Mallory McMorrow, with early voting beginning July 25 and election day falling on August 4.

The endorsement is just another highlight of a deepening factional divide within the Michigan Democratic Party, with the three major primary candidates effectively serving as proxies for the party’s competing wings. Sanders is backing El-Sayed, Warren has thrown her support to McMorrow, and Stabenow’s endorsement of Stevens now gives each candidate a prominent national validator. That the progressive lane is split between two candidates while Stevens consolidates the establishment lane may matter less than it sounds: the most recent Emerson College polling has El-Sayed and McMorrow tied at 24 percent each, while Stevens sits at just 13 percent despite her congressional profile and now the Stabenow boost. Stevens has actually shed support since January, when she polled at 17 percent.

Further, the endorsement lands at a moment when the Stevens campaign has already accumulated an almost comical record of self-inflicted damage. A town hall in Grand Rapids drew a single attendee who turned out to be a journalist. She has skipped multiple candidate summits, one which she claimed she had a vote in Washington and was later spotted in the Detroit metro area that same day. She deflected three separate opportunities to condemn corporate PAC money on a single television appearance. She was outflanked on nearly every issue at the three-way primary debate, with both El-Sayed and McMorrow finding easy purchase against her positioning.

Stabenow’s seal of approval might be genuine, but its almost as certainly irrelevant. An endorsement from a respected former senator does not explain to Michigan primary voters why their candidate drew one person to an event, or why she cannot answer a direct question about her donors or Israel, or why a campaign backed by Schumer and the DSCC is polling at 13 percent with the primary closing in. It reinforces exactly the narrative her opponents have built against her: that Stevens is a candidate selected by an unpopular party machine for an unpopular party machine, in a cycle where that distinction has become the race itself.

Check out Gambit Forecaster’s most recent election forecast, and Michigan’s State Watch page.