Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democratic leadership’s pick for the party’s Senate primary in Michigan, may soon become the prime example of a mistake the establishment has repeated again and again this cycle: failing to adjust at all to the times.
Starting with Zohran Mamdani’s victory over Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral race last year and continuing through Maine’s Senate race, a U.S. House race in California’s Central Valley and the Washington, D.C., mayoral contest, progressives’ biggest primary wins have come when the party establishment runs candidates who offer nothing to a more energized and populist Democratic electorate.
Stevens’ unexpectedly narrow loss to progressive Abdul El-Sayed, a result many centrist Democrats fear will at the very least make holding on to Michigan’s Senate seat and subsequently winning the Senate even harder, is at least partially due to this mistake.
Stevens’ close ties to and $30 million worth of support from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC dominated discussion of the race, but less frequently mentioned was her unapologetic acceptance of corporate PAC money at a time when turning it down is expected even of many moderate candidates in close races. She said from the start of the race she would back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has become increasingly unpopular with the party’s base. She ran an old-school campaign, light on social media and podcast appearances until the very end of the race, as her opponents made themselves ubiquitous.
Stevens’ supporters who became disillusioned with her campaign’s direction — at least in part because they believed polls that turned out to be significantly wrong — often complained her team seemed as focused on silencing critics of the establishment as they did on actually winning.
Conventional wisdom quickly formed that state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who ran as a bridge between moderates and the left, would have been able to defeat El-Sayed. The idea has merit, since she presumably would have been able to win a chunk of voters who ruled out Stevens because of her ties to AIPAC. (McMorrow left the race in early July, forced out when Stevens’ financial advantages became clear.)
But the theory has clear holes: Stevens had significant Black support from the start of the primary in a way McMorrow did not, and she was able to grow that support in large part because of the aforementioned support from AIPAC, whose super PAC ads highlighted her ties to former President Barack Obama. There’s no guarantee McMorrow would have matched Stevens’ margins.
Still, a key way Republicans eventually started to (sort of) get their repeated issues with problematic candidates under control during the tea party era was to look for candidates more acceptable to the party’s base — their elevation of then-state Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa is often cited as a turning point in their quest to unite a restless grassroots with the preferences and electoral goals of party elites. McMorrow could have been a Democratic equivalent.
Democrats’ own Iowa story could also be illustrative. In the state’s primary earlier this year, they backed Josh Turek, a state representative with moderate views on some cultural issues and a strong electoral track record. But Turek declined corporate PAC money, deployed populist messaging and had the support of former Sen. Tom Harkin, a progressive icon in the state. He won easily despite his opponent making hay out of Turek’s support from Schumer and company, which included $10 million in super PAC support.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is not used to having candidates it backs lose in primaries. With the exception of a low-profile loss in deep red Tennessee in 2020, the committee was undefeated in primaries from 2010 to 2024. But losses for Stevens and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who did not even make it to primary election day, represent two significant setbacks. Returning to the aura of invincibility they once had within the party may require some adjustments the establishment has been reluctant to make.
Here are five other takeaways from Tuesday night’s elections across the country.
El-Sayed’s Working-Class Struggles
Like other progressive populists, El-Sayed’s rhetoric about helping the working class did not clearly translate to working-class support. His best county was Washtenaw, which contains Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan; he also did well along the state’s Cherry Coast, an area with a booming tourism industry. Stevens, by contrast, handily won counties like Genesee and Saginaw, working-class communities that once hosted booming General Motors plants.
One twist: While Stevens clearly won Black voters throughout the state, El-Sayed held his own in some Black communities. His sweep of Grand Rapids included the city’s majority-Black neighborhoods. Even in Wayne County, which contains most of Detroit, Stevens won 51% to 45%, a far cry from the 60% to 38% by which Hillary Clinton won the county at the start of the moderate vs. progressive war in 2016.
Regardless, winning Michigan will require El-Sayed to attract significant support from the working class, and the margins he’s able to hit with voters without a college degree can either prove or disprove long-standing progressive arguments about the political potency of left-wing ideas about economics and battling corruption.
The Center’s Coordination Problems
There is a long, long history of left-leaning candidates splitting the vote in Democratic primaries. (You only need to go back to late June to find a vivid example.) But in Michigan’s 7th District, a key toss-up seat held by GOP Rep. Tom Barrett, it was the center that ended up splitting the vote. William Lawrence, the co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, was earning 43%, to former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink’s 30% and former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam’s 28% when the networks called the race around 11 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday.
Brink and Maasdam were both relatively moderate, mainstream Democrats, while Lawrence is a progressive with the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Predictably, some Democratic operatives have doubts about Lawrence’s viability in a general election. But the center’s internal divisions are a key reason he will make it to the November ballot.
In HuffPost interviews last week, both Maasdam and Brink were still taking more shots at each other than at Lawrence, even though he was the leading candidate in the race. It was a messy situation, where Brink held early leads in polls and fundraising, but Maasdam had more late support from outside groups — enabling each of them to claim they had the better path to defeating Lawrence.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was nonetheless bullish on the race: “Will Lawrence has spent his life siding with working families to stand up to corporate power and corruption that Barrett has enabled,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a moderate who chairs the committee. “Michigan voters will hold Barrett accountable for his lies and broken promises and elect a true fighter in Will Lawrence in November.”
Red-State Voters Reject The GOP Changing The Rules
Voters in two red states rejected attempts by Republicans to rewrite the rules and enact more conservative policies by overwhelming margins. In Kansas, Republicans pushed a referendum to make the state Supreme Court — whose nominations are now made by a commission — into a wholly elected body. In a referendum vote on Tuesday, the state’s voters easily swatted away the concept.
And in neighboring Missouri, voters rejected an attempt to require referendums to win not just statewide but in each of the state’s incredibly gerrymandered congressional districts, which essentially would make changing the state’s laws via vote impossible.
Republicans tried to change the rules in both states because they were angry at the policy outcomes: Voters in Missouri had protected abortion rights and expanded Medicaid via referendum, while Kansas’ Supreme Court had similarly protected abortion rights. The election results are the latest display of how red-state voters want to maintain their ability to enact some liberal policies even as they vote for Republican politicians by large margins.
Democrats Dream Of Kansas Yet Again
While Michigan was a nail-biter, the Democratic primary for Kansas’ U.S. Senate seat saw the party get its preferred candidate in Pastor Adam Hamilton, who won by 20 percentage points over his closest competitor in a crowded field. While the race remains a long shot — Democrats have not held a Senate seat in Kansas since the 1930s — Hamilton, a moderate who leads a large congregation, is an impressive enough candidate for two major political forecasters to switch their ratings from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
Democrats had similar hopes of flipping a Kansas seat in 2020, when now-incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall first ran there. However, party-switching state Sen. Barbara Bollier’s campaign fell short of expectations.
The End Of A Very Odd Political Career
State Rep. Donavan McKinney defeated incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th District, putting an end to one of the oddest political careers in recent memory. An Indian immigrant who became wealthy in business, Thanedar first jumped into the scene by spending oodles of his own money trying to get elected governor of Michigan — at one point leading both now-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and El-Sayed in the 2018 primary.
He got elected in the 13th District, a majority-Black seat containing much of Detroit and its working-class suburbs, two years later. He established himself as one of the stranger members of Congress, treated by many of his Democratic colleagues as an annoyance or embarrassment. He joined the Democratic Socialists of America, apparently because he noticed Rep. Rashida Tlaib — who represents a neighboring district — got attention for her membership in the group. But he left it shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
McKinney ousted Thanedar, who by now had attracted the support of the cryptocurrency industry, by uniting progressives — McKinney had the backing of El-Sayed, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Justice Democrats — and much of the traditional Black political establishment.
