Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) on Monday tried to justify her stunning decision to abandon Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and endorse Republican Mike Rogers, but an analysis found the lengthy statement she posted may not have been entirely her own.
Stevens lost the Democratic Senate primary to El-Sayed and initially endorsed him, but she reversed course Sunday, appearing at a campaign stop with Rogers, the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate she once warned would be a “rubber stamp” for the president’s agenda.
In an 890-word post on X titled “The Decisions We Make,” Stevens insisted the move “was not impulsive, and it was not made for me by anyone else.”
“It was a decision of conscience,” she wrote.
Stevens claimed El-Sayed’s campaign shut her out, and she complained about an ad from a pro-El-Sayed outside group tying grocery prices to U.S. support for Israel, and with another campaign ad featuring Tucker Carlson. She also criticized El-Sayed for campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker, who recently compared courting Jewish voters in West Bloomfield to canvassing a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood, although El-Sayed condemned those remarks.
“Blaming Israel for the price of eggs and elevating Tucker Carlson are not the way to build trust or bring people together,” Stevens wrote.
She also denied suggestions that her fiancé, Jason Turkish, who announced his support for Rogers last week, had influenced her decision.
“That is sexism dressed up as political analysis,” she wrote. “My fiancé has his own views. I have mine.”
Stevens accused Democratic leaders of rushing to condemn her, arguing, “We cannot preach inclusion while punishing dissent,” and she insisted that she remains a proud Democrat and argued that Rogers could be a John McCain-style senator who puts country over party.
But questions quickly arose over how much of the post Stevens wrote herself. The Daily Beast ran the statement through Pangram, an AI detection tool, which found it to be 87 percent AI-assisted. Other X users reported similar Pangram results of 89 percent and 90 percent.
Stevens’ office did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Several of Stevens’ staffers, including her chief of staff and communications director, have resigned over the endorsement.
Asked about her political future on Scott Jennings’ show Monday, Stevens struggled to answer.
“There’s great things in store for this country, and, you know, I’m not necessarily thinking a lot about, you know, anything other than what I’m doing tomorrow, I guess you could say,” Stevens said.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday showed Rogers trailing El-Sayed by 11 points.
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