Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, a Democrat, crossed party lines to endorse Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers over her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. The move set off a public argument among the co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” on Monday.
Stevens said in an interview Sunday that El-Sayed’s “anger” and “lack of kindness” drove her decision to back Rogers instead.
Co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro criticized the endorsement, suggesting Stevens acted out of wounded pride rather than principle. Hostin said “Shame on her” if that was the motivation.
Co-host Sara Haines, a registered independent, defended Stevens. “I disagree. And I actually think that, although there’s a lot of Islamophobia here that are muddying the waters, there are deep concerns about his beliefs,” Haines said. She pointed to El-Sayed campaigning alongside streamer Hasan Piker, saying, “You could not put enough room between me and that man,” while also noting Republicans campaigning with Nick Fuentes was “also problematic.”
“If crossing party lines can be an act of conscience for Liz Cheney, I don’t know why the automatic response was that this was betrayal somehow,” Haines said, calling Stevens’ decision “brave.”
“Integrity is not just backing your party when you support your party,” Haines continued. “The real test is backing them when it costs you something. I keep hearing, ‘Donald Trump is so dangerous,’ and that is true, but that can’t end every conversation we have about what we’re willing to accept on our own sides.”
“You cannot loan your loyalty and support out to a party,” she added. “They must earn it every single time.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin backed Haines’ framing, saying Stevens raised “real issues” about antisemitism and comparing the endorsement to Liz Cheney’s backing of Kamala Harris. “We shouldn’t just praise independents when Liz Cheney breaks with Republicans, because she thinks that’s the principled position. If this woman feels this is the principled position for her, she has every right to do that,” Griffin said.
Whoopi Goldberg pressed on the timing of the endorsement, and Navarro said she believed Stevens acted because El-Sayed had not wanted her campaigning alongside him.
A Democratic Strategist Pushes Back
Democratic strategist Kaivan Shroff disputed Haines’ defense in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Haines’s defense is hard to square with the facts. I was one of the early Democrats who said El-Sayed needed to put real distance between himself and Hasan Piker. And he did. He said Piker did not speak for his campaign, stopped campaigning with him, and reportedly even called him directly to say his rhetoric was hurting the campaign and counterproductive. That all happened well before Haley Stevens’s last-minute endorsement,” Shroff said.
“So Haines is using an issue El-Sayed already addressed to excuse this wild switch-up, while openly acknowledging the Islamophobia on the other side and then instantly brushing past it,” he added, calling it “a glaring double standard.”
Shroff also rejected the Liz Cheney comparison. “Cheney crossed party lines because of Trump’s conduct and her stated concerns about democracy. Stevens, by contrast, says she is crossing party lines because she cannot tolerate hate, yet she is endorsing Mike Rogers in a race where anti-Muslim hate has been Rogers’s central campaign strategy,” he said. “Moreover, Haley still maintains that Republicans — folks like Mike Rogers — are allowing Trump to act as a ‘dictator.’ It just doesn’t add up any way you try.”
Fox News Digital reached out to both the El-Sayed and Rogers campaigns for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
