Gretchen Whitmer waited until the final stretch of Michigan’s Senate primary to throw her weight behind Haley Stevens.
The Michigan governor’s Friday endorsement put her squarely against progressive Abdul El-Sayed days before Democrats choose their nominee in the Aug. 4 open Senate race, sharpening the party fight over whether its left flank could capture the contest.
Stevens’ campaign released Whitmer’s video, where the governor tied the endorsement to her own governing pitch.
“As governor, I’ve had one strategy: Get things done. And that strategy informs everything that I do, and that’s why I’m endorsing Haley Stevens for the U.S. Senate,” Whitmer said in the ad.
Whitmer linked Stevens directly to that approach. “Just like me, Haley will do whatever it takes to get things done for the people of Michigan, and we need her now more than ever,” she added.
I am absolutely thrilled to have Gov @GretchenWhitmer’s endorsement for U.S. Senate. She is a champion for our state, she understands the stakes of this race and why it’s so important we elect the strongest Dem in this primary, and she gets stuff done for Michigan. Let’s go win! pic.twitter.com/NfFtlD2IWu
— Haley Stevens (@HaleyforMI) July 24, 2026
Stevens answered by leaning hard into Whitmer’s political identity in Michigan.
“Governor Whitmer embodies what it means to be ‘that woman from Michigan’ and everything that makes our state so special,” Stevens remarked in a statement.
“She’s authentically Michigan — and I could not be more honored to have her endorsement for U.S. Senate. Let’s go win!”
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Republicans read the move as a panic signal, not a show of strength.
Greg Manz, senior communications adviser for the Michigan Republican Party, dismissed the idea that Whitmer’s choice would leave the GOP facing a safer opponent.
“Establishment Democrats are beyond panicked, and Gretchen Whitmer’s endorsement of Haley Stevens proves it. However, Whitmer closing ranks behind Stevens does not change the fact that she is every bit as extreme as Abdul El-Sayed,” Manz argued in a statement.
Whitmer was not the first major Democrat to move toward Stevens.
Retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are also backing Stevens, with Nessel’s endorsement coming after state Sen. Mallory McMorrow ended her Senate bid.
Peters framed Stevens as someone he had already worked beside during his years serving Michigan.
“Over the last eighteen years, while serving the people of Michigan, I have been surrounded by many extremely talented and dedicated partners who work tirelessly for our state. Haley Stevens has been that partner in Congress,” Peters wrote in a statement.
“Haley Stevens will be ready on day 1 to fight for Michigan, which is why I am excited to announce I am all in for Haley Stevens.”
The progressive side has its own heavyweights. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are all behind El-Sayed, the former Wayne County health director.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., added another Senate endorsement for El-Sayed, calling him “a fighter.”
El-Sayed used Smith’s support to connect his campaign to labor, the economy and reproductive rights.
“Senator Tina Smith has been a fighter for working people in the US Senate,” he said in a statement Thursday. “She’s fought for and delivered on an economy that works for all of us. I hope to build on her leadership on women’s health and reproductive rights and access which has paved the way for the future I want for my daughters and every American. I’m deeply grateful for her support.”
But El-Sayed’s coalition has also become a target for Democrats worried about what the party would be forced to defend in November.
On CNN Wednesday, Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Mich., made political commentator Hasan Piker and disgraced Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner central to her case against El-Sayed.
The Piker issue traces back to the left-wing Twitch streamer’s 2019 apology for saying America deserved Sept. 11, remarks he later called “inappropriate.”
For Scholten, the apology did not erase El-Sayed’s decision to campaign with him.
She said El-Sayed chose “to campaign with Hasan Piker, who said America deserved Sept. 11. Sure, he went on to disavow those comments, but I’m telling you, nobody on my team would ever, you know, come even close to making a comment like that.”
Scholten told CNN’s Jake Tapper she would give Piker “credit for disavowing it after the fact. But the reality is, he [El-Sayed] also didn’t have to choose to campaign with Hasan Piker.”
When Tapper pressed her on whether she could support El-Sayed if he defeated Stevens, Scholten refused to give a direct answer.
“I cannot, I will not even come close to being associated with comments like America deserved September 11,” Scholten responded.
El-Sayed has defended his Michigan State University campaign appearance with Piker and treated opportunities to disavow Piker’s views as a “gotcha game.”
Platner became Scholten’s second example. “Abdul El-Sayed and Graham Platner campaigned together,” Scholten noted.
Scholten warned that accepting those alliances would send the party in the wrong direction, especially to veterans.
“I think that condoning behavior like this from candidates like Abdul El-Sayed is taking us in a direction that we don’t want to go as a party. I don’t need $20 million to study why young men stopped voting for the Democratic Party,” she stated.
“Look at the message that we’re sending to our veterans if we’re willing to embrace or even brush aside comments like that. I would never stand on a stage or be at a rally with someone like Hasan Piker because he chose to say comments like that,” Scholten said.
Her criticism then moved from El-Sayed’s allies to his language about Stevens and Whitmer.
“There is a uniquely sexist bent to the things that he has said about women,” Scholten said. “He said that Congresswoman Stevens couldn’t string two sentences together, that, you know, she was sort of an empty vessel.”
Scholten pointed back to El-Sayed’s race against Whitmer as another example.
“Going back to his race with Governor Whitmer, he said she was bought and sold for by her dad’s company,” Scholten said. “Essentially comparing her to property with no ideas of her own.”
The “two coherent sentences” fight came from a Semafor interview, where El-Sayed called Stevens “a suit with a large AIPAC account” and suggested the pro-Israel group might teach her “how to string together two coherent sentences.”
The line followed El-Sayed to CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, where Tapper confronted him with the comment.
“I don’t think it’s kind to make fun of somebody for how they talk or how they show up,” El-Sayed said. “I also don’t think it’s kind to make insinuations about somebody’s character, as is being done to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.”
