Detroit Democrats censured Whitsett in 2020 and blamed her for stalling their final weeks in power in 2024. Now the outgoing state lawmaker says the party is treating Stevens the way it treated her.
By EEW Magazine Online News Editors
U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, left, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for the U.S. Senate on Nov. 1, 2026. Michigan state Rep. Karen Whitsett, right, defended her decision as Democratic leaders condemned it. (Getty Images/Illustration by EEW Magazine Online)
Karen Whitsett has been disciplined by her own party before. In 2020, a Detroit Democratic organization voted unanimously to censure the state lawmaker after she met with President Donald Trump and credited a drug he promoted with helping her survive COVID-19. In 2024, House Democrats blamed her for bringing their final weeks of control in Lansing to a halt.
On Sunday, Democratic leaders across the country were condemning U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens for endorsing Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race. Whitsett went to X to take Stevens’ side.
Michigan state Rep. Karen Whitsett of Detroit speaks to reporters in the Michigan House chamber in Lansing on Dec. 19, 2024, alongside then-House Minority Leader Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, after Democrats failed to reach a quorum. (AP Photo/Isabella Volmert)
“Haley Stevens didn’t have to endorse Mike Rogers,” Whitsett wrote. “She chose conscience over party,” she added, saying Black Democratic leaders “attacked her instead of asking why.”
“I know the playbook,” she wrote. “During lame duck, I chose to listen to Jesus and walk away.”
Stevens narrowly lost the August Democratic primary to Abdul El-Sayed in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. She endorsed Rogers two days before Tuesday’s election, after attending a Sunday morning service with him at Perfecting Church, the east side congregation founded by Bishop Marvin Winans. That same morning she had been scheduled to attend a different Black church in Detroit with El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., to show the party was united.
Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed laughs with U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., at a “Souls to the Polls” event at Northend Church of God in Detroit on Nov. 1, 2026, the same day Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. (Salwan Georges/Getty Images)
The two camps had been at odds since the primary over Israel and over El-Sayed’s earlier campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker, whose comments about Jews have drawn criticism from both parties. Last week, Stevens’ fiancé, Jason Turkish, and her former campaign chair, David Kramer, both said they would vote for Rogers. Then came an ad. Rebellion PAC, an outside group founded by commentator Cenk Uygur, ran a spot blaming U.S. aid to Israel for high grocery prices.
Stevens called the ad “fearmongering” and demanded that El-Sayed condemn it. His campaign said it had no connection to the group. On Friday night, the campaign said Stevens would not be welcome at its events. That same night, Rogers called Stevens and told her he would welcome her support, according to Axios.
El-Sayed explicitly rejected the ad’s contents on Saturday, and Stevens publicly welcomed his remarks. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who helped organize the church appearance, told CNN she asked Stevens not to attend because the dispute had become a distraction.
Hours before the endorsement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said on national television that Stevens had personally assured him Saturday night that she would back El-Sayed. She kept allies and staff in the dark throughout, Semafor reported.
“Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said in a video. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.” Outside the church, she praised Rogers’ support for Black-owned businesses. “I’m sorry people are upset,” she told reporters.
Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers listens as U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., speaks to reporters outside Perfecting Church in Detroit on Nov. 1, 2026. Stevens told reporters she was endorsing Rogers after Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign told her to stay away. (Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The setting drew the sharpest response. In the primary, Stevens beat El-Sayed in Detroit by 28 percentage points. Her campaign and its allies, including AIPAC’s super PAC, ran ads aimed at Black voters, Michigan Advance reported. Virgie Rollins, chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Black Caucus, said in a statement that Stevens had “revealed herself to be a sellout who used Black Michiganders for a political stunt.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., accused Stevens of using Black people “as a prop and as a shield.” Former U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman called the endorsement a “disgrace” at a Detroit roundtable of Black, Arab and Muslim El-Sayed supporters.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who backed Stevens in the primary, called her decision a “despicable betrayal.” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel Jr. wrote on X that Stevens “is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.” Her chief of staff of eight years, Justin German, resigned with other staff members.
“We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’ decision to support Mike Rogers,” German said. El-Sayed brushed off the endorsement, saying he hardly thinks about Stevens.
“I recognize this playbook because the Democratic Party used it on me,” Whitsett wrote, “again and again. Before pointing at Haley Stevens, look at who has the power and who is being punished. If unity requires obedience, it is not unity. It is control.”
Her record supports part of that account. The 2020 censure came from the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization, which said the White House visit broke protocol. The resolution barred her from party endorsements.
Michigan state Rep. Karen Whitsett of Detroit listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with recovered COVID-19 patients in the White House Cabinet Room on April 14, 2020. Later that month, a Detroit Democratic Party organization censured her over the visit. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In December 2024, Republicans were boycotting the House and Democrats were weeks from losing their majority. Whitsett stayed off the floor, which left Democrats short of a quorum. Speaker Joe Tate ordered a rare call of the House to bring absent members back. It failed, and much of the Democratic agenda died. At the time, she was refusing to attend session until her priority legislation was addressed.
“This is the poorest leadership that I have ever seen in my six years,” she said. Her Sunday post describes that walkout as an act of faith.
In January 2025 she stopped attending Democratic caucus meetings. That year she missed 86.4% of the House’s roll-call votes, the highest rate for any Michigan legislator since 2002, according to MIRS. “I know what I do. God knows what I do,” she told the news service. In March she announced that she would never run for office again and was leaving the Democratic Party.
“For me, it’s impossible to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party as it exists today,” she said. Hertel answered with “Good riddance.”
“My district knew me,” she wrote Sunday, “and voted me back.” Voters re-elected her in 2020, months after the censure, and again in 2022. In November 2024 she won re-election with no opponent, a month before the lame-duck standoff. Her first race after the standoff was a 2025 bid for Detroit City Council. She lost it to Democratic Socialist Denzel McCampbell, 59% to 40%, according to certified city results.
Whitsett broke with El-Sayed long before Sunday. On Aug. 20, Rogers held a “Democrats for Rogers” news conference at the home of her mother-in-law. Whitsett said her deciding issue was health insurance: She and her husband fear losing his coverage under El-Sayed’s Medicare for All plan. El-Sayed says his plan would cover all necessary care without premiums, copays or deductibles, and his campaign says it would make private coverage “redundant and unnecessary,” Michigan Advance reported.
In September, Whitsett told Fox News Digital what she thinks of Democratic leaders who treat Black voters as a monolith. “It doesn’t change, it’s just different slave owners,” she said.
Michigan voters choose Peters’ successor Tuesday. Whitsett’s House term ends with the year. She has said she will stay civically engaged and will support leaders from either party who share her faith-based convictions. She is also building a media platform, Karen Whitsett Media and Reality Matters. She says it will cover health care, Detroit, faith and public policy under the slogan “Breaking the Chains to Common Sense.”
In a post promoting the venture, she still calls herself a Democrat, one who believes “people deserve facts, accountability, and real conversations beyond party labels.”