Haley Stevens Endorsed Mike Rogers. What Did Black Michiganders Gain?

What did Black Michiganders gain from Haley Stevens’s endorsement of Mike Rogers?

That question deserves an answer beyond the photographs, the political surprise, and the television coverage of a Democratic feud. On November 1, two days before Michigan’s Senate election, Stevens attended services with Rogers at Detroit’s Perfecting Church and endorsed the Republican after losing the Democratic primary to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. She presented Rogers as someone who would support investment in Black-owned businesses. ¹

The spectacle became a circus: the endorsement, the confrontation, the reaction to the confrontation. Meanwhile, El-Sayed pointed reporters toward families a short drive away worrying about food, medical bills, and the condition of their children’s schools. Those needs would still be there after the cameras moved on. ²

That is where this examination belongs. An endorsement offered as a benefit to a community should be measured against the policies and decisions that affect the people living there.

Stevens’s promise about Black businesses provides a place to begin. On September 23, 2010, Rogers voted against the legislation that became the Small Business Jobs Act. Among its provisions was the Small Business Lending Fund, which supplied capital to participating community banks and community development loan funds to encourage small-business lending. ³

The program was not exclusively for Black businesses. It concerned access to capital, one of the practical foundations of starting, sustaining, and expanding a business. Stevens’s endorsement does not explain how Rogers’s opposition to that legislation fits the commitment she now attributes to him.

Housing presents another test.

On March 29, 2011, Rogers voted for H.R. 839, the HAMP Termination Act. HAMP—the Home Affordable Modification Program—helped eligible homeowners facing financial hardship obtain more affordable mortgage payments. The bill would have stopped new assistance while preserving offers already extended to homeowners, including trial modifications. It passed the House but never became law. ⁴

The bill’s stated case for termination was that the program had fallen short of its goals, suffered serious implementation problems, and should end to save taxpayers money. The proposed response was to close this avenue of assistance to additional homeowners. Rogers supported that choice. ⁴

He now has a housing proposal that includes construction incentives, credit recognition for timely rent payments, and expanded uses of college savings for home purchases. His earlier vote to end new mortgage-relief assistance needs to accompany that new promise. ⁵

A plan to help someone purchase a home does not answer what you did when someone else was trying to avoid losing one.

Health care supplies another part of the record. Rogers voted against the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. In May 2013, he voted for legislation to repeal it. That repeal bill passed the House but did not repeal the law. ⁶

For families considering an endorsement, these decisions concern the cost of seeing a doctor, maintaining coverage, and managing an illness alongside the other bills arriving at the kitchen table.

The record also reaches workplace discrimination. In January 2009, Rogers voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The law clarified that the filing period for challenging discriminatory compensation restarts with a paycheck affected by that discrimination. Its protections encompass compensation discrimination based on race as well as sex and other protected characteristics. ⁷

In November 2010, he voted against the Claims Resolution Act, a broader settlement package that included $1.15 billion for resolving discrimination claims brought by Black farmers against the Agriculture Department. That package became law over his opposition. ⁸

These votes concern lending, homeownership, health coverage, fair compensation, and remedies for discrimination. They deserve examination whenever someone presents a candidate as an ally to the people whose lives those policies affect.

Rogers also voted for the 2006 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. That belongs in the record. So does the NAACP’s assessment of his later performance: its legislative report card for the 2013–2014 Congress gave Michigan’s Mike Rogers a score of 30 percent and an F. That assessment covers a particular period and the organization’s selected votes. ⁹

Stevens’s endorsement needs to explain the record she is asking the public to accept.

Her stated objection to El-Sayed centered on hate, his associations, and his response to an advertisement about Israel. The advertisement came from Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC, an outside group supporting El-Sayed. It depicted a couple struggling with grocery costs while discussing American spending on Israel’s wars. Stevens characterized its argument as antisemitic scapegoating. ¹⁰

El-Sayed’s campaign initially answered that it had no affiliation with the ad. On October 31, he addressed its content directly: “That ad was not made by me, and I do not agree with the contents of that ad.” He also dismissed the controversy as a distraction from the election’s substantive issues. Stevens publicly welcomed his disagreement with the ad before endorsing Rogers the following day. ¹¹

Stevens also objected to a separate advertisement from El-Sayed’s own campaign that featured Tucker Carlson criticizing Rogers. That was campaign-produced material, and it should not be confused with the Rebellion PAC advertisement. ¹¹

Those distinctions matter. A reader should know who created the material, what the candidate said about it, and when he said it. Saying El-Sayed never rejected the outside advertisement would leave readers with a false account.

The same scrutiny must reach Rogers.

In his own August 5 campaign statement, Rogers claimed El-Sayed believed America deserved September 11. The statement came from Piker; El-Sayed had already publicly rejected the proposition that the attacks were justified. PolitiFact rated Rogers’s attribution Pants on Fire. ¹²

In October, Rogers said El-Sayed had not disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood. Video showed that he had. PolitiFact rated that claim False. ¹³

These were accusations made by the candidate himself.

His campaign also helped fund an October 2 advertisement invoking the threat of radical Islam to argue that El-Sayed must never become a senator. The NRSC, which coordinated advertising with Rogers, later promoted an online attack called “Jihad Jeopardy,” built around allegations about El-Sayed and his family. ¹⁴

Religious suspicion was being used as campaign material. A person’s ancestry, Muslim faith, or relatives cannot substitute for evidence of his own allegiance or conduct.

The clergy connections warrant the same precision. Rogers appointed Pastor Lorenzo Sewell to his campaign’s faith coalition leadership. Sewell helped organize an anti-Muslim march in Dearborn with Jake Lang. Michigan Advance later reported that Rogers’s campaign said he had condemned Lang’s protest, but had not directly condemned Sewell, who remained on the faith leadership team. ¹⁵

Rogers demanded that El-Sayed denounce Hasan Piker. Why did Sewell remain on Rogers’s faith leadership team after helping organize anti-Muslim agitation? Where was the same standard for Rogers’s own side? ¹⁵

Hate should not be spread by any campaign. Demanding accountability from an opponent means accepting it for the people you recruit, the allies you retain, and the messages your own campaign promotes.

Pastor Marvin Winans’s role at Perfecting Church was different. He acknowledged political candidates during the November 1 service. That acknowledgment does not establish that he or the congregation endorsed Rogers. The responsibility for Stevens’s endorsement belongs to Stevens. ¹

Her stated opposition to hate therefore leaves a public question unanswered: how does endorsing Rogers confront the religiously charged attacks his own campaign has advanced?

Which brings me back to the church.

For me, a Black church is a foundation. It is where faith meets education, mutual support, organizing, and the relationships that help families through difficult times. It is where people share information, develop leadership, and find strength to face conditions they cannot overcome alone.

That foundation deserves respect from anyone seeking its attention.

If the dispute was about antisemitism, why did this endorsement unfold around an appearance at a Black church? What specific commitment to the community accompanied the appeal? How did the candidate’s record support it?

Those questions concern accountability. A sanctuary should not lend automatic credibility to a political claim simply because the claim is delivered nearby.

We are more than a last stop.

Being an ally requires a record that can withstand examination. It requires showing how decisions about lending, mortgages, health care, and discrimination serve the people whose trust is being sought. It also requires applying an opposition to bigotry consistently, including when the prejudice comes from a political partner.

My mother warned me about wolves in sheep’s clothing. The lesson was to pay attention to conduct. A reassuring presentation cannot do the work of a trustworthy record.

On the record examined here, Stevens has not made a convincing case that this endorsement advanced the interests she invoked. An introduction does not repair those votes. A stand against bigotry loses its credibility when it overlooks the religious suspicion promoted by the candidate receiving the endorsement.

The Sunday Dinner Question

When a politician asks a community to trust an ally, what should carry more weight—the introduction, or the record of the person being introduced?