Haley Stevens on Mike Rogers support: I need to be honest where my heart is

Congresswoman and Mike, do you want to make a couple of remarks? Yeah, well, thank you, and greetings to the press corps. My name's Haley Stevens. I'm a proud Democrat, and I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate. I am one vote in this state. Michigan is a swing state, and I have a divided household, as some of you have heard, up until last night. But even my own mother... Cast her vote for Mike Rogers as my own father cast his vote for Abdul. This is a very close election, we all know that. But Abdul made very clear that I was not welcome in his campaign. That he didn't need me there, that he didn't want me there. And at some point, you gotta look at who's standing for country. There's always a lot of elections taking place in America and this is one. I'm going to cast my ballot. I still haven't done that. And 90% of the votes I'm going to cast are going to be for Democrats. My vote for Senate, I am just one vote, as is every Michigander. My vote for Senate is going to be with Mike Rogers. And I will tell you why. Because we have to stand with country. We can't stand with hate. We can't stand with Hassan Piker. A friend of mine was talking about how education is on the ballot, and it's very true. Well, there's a lot of young people looking at this election. I was a young person once, and we've gotta make a choice about who is standing with them. I think that Chuck Schumer is gonna become the majority leader. And I think that there are incredible Democrats and incredible activity taking place across this country. I stood with my party and I was booed off the stage and violently shouted down. I was up there with other Democrats. Those people who are on that stage with me, they're gonna make their choice. The ballot box is still very personal and private. And today, in a moment of faith, tied to my faith and to this great city. By the way, I'm standing here with a guy named Mike Rogers. And there's another guy named Mike who ran the city of Detroit for 12 years. And a lot of Detroiters voted for him, and he kind of looks like this guy. And you know what happened with that, Mike? He stepped out of his party. He put up his hand for a brief while, he was running for governor. I don't know everything that's gonna happen. And all I can do is lead with love and integrity. This was a personal and private decision. I woke up this morning and I decided to go to church. And I'm here with the person who I am voting for, for United States Senate. And that is Mike Rogers. Congresswoman, are you concerned about hounding the Democratic Party? Let me just say I'm honored to have Haley Stevens' support today. I'm honored to have earned that vote. When I got the call this morning, obviously it's probably not the day we anticipated going forward today, but when we decided this would be good to worship together today, I'll just give you a little bit of flavor about this. We talked about America, what was better for Americans, what was better for the future of our state by bringing people together. Martin Luther King said, you cannot solve darkness with darkness. You have to solve it with light. You can't solve hate with hate. You have to solve it with love. And I Talked to Haley about that letter, love letter to Michigan that she wrote that I thought was very, very good. And candidly, I'm glad I'm not running against Haley Stevens today. But what we decided is sometimes the hate grows so loud that it jeopardizes some of our citizens in this state. When young Jewish women have to hide their Star of Davids to walk across University of Michigan campus, we have gone too far. When young men have to wear ball caps over their yarmulkes because they're getting harassed for being Jewish, we have gone too far. This is more a statement about standing together against hate and the future of this state and this country than it is anything else. And I just want you to know, she reminded me at the end of the call, remember, I'm still a Democrat. And there's a big group of Democrats for Rogers. A lot of them are in my congressional district. There are a lot of people across this beautiful state. And of course, Abdul has been running his campaign. He's been working really hard. I don't wanna undermine that. I just wanna be honest about where I am and where my heart is at this time.