Governor Gretchen Whitmer has weighed in with an endorsement in the hotly contested Democratic primary race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat as early in-person voting begins Saturday and absentee ballots are out.
Whitmer’s endorsement of U.S. Representative Haley Stevens came just days after inveighing against the increasingly harsh tone of the primary campaign and warning it could cost her party a must-win open seat if Democrats are to take the Senate majority next year.
Whitmer cited Stevens’ record in Congress and her work on the Obama administration’s auto rescue task force as the primary reasons behind her endorsement.
“She knows what Michigan families are going through and that’s how I know she will always put Michigan first,” she said in a video posted to X by the Stevens campaign.
Whitmer joins other prominent state Democratic elected officials who say Stevens is the stronger Democrat to face former Republican U.S. Representative Mike Rogers.
Former health official Abdul El-Sayed has never held an elected office and is a progressive favorite. He ran against Whitmer in her first gubernatorial primary. He is endorsed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the United Auto Workers union.
The Senate primary campaign has played out largely as a contest between the Democratic Party’s center-left mainstream and its emerging progressive wing.
“The corporate establishment has closed ranks and made their pick,” said El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner about Whitmer's endorsement. "Now Michigan voters will get to make theirs.”
