A Democrat in Michigan has endorsed the Republican candidate in the state’s closely-fought US Senate contest, as a spat with her own party’s candidate Abdul El-Sayed escalated just days before the vote.

Haley Stevens, a former congresswomen who lost out on the Democratic nomination to El-Sayed, made a surprise appearance alongside the Republican candidate Mike Rogers at a church on Sunday.

“I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” she said in a video posted to X shortly after that appearance. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate and is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now.”

“That’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers,” Stevens said.

Stevens also said El-Sayed had told her she was no longer welcome in his campaign.

The pair had been scheduled to appear together at an event on Sunday, but El-Sayed reportedly asked her not to come.

They had clashed publicly over a campaign advert from a liberal group which blamed Israel for high food prices.

El-Sayed, who has not commented on Stevens’s endorsement of his opponent, criticised the advert and said he had nothing to do with its contents.

The Michigan Senate race is considered by analysts to be one of the tightest in Tuesday’s midterm elections, which will decide which party controls Congress for the next two years.

It is one of a handful of battleground contests that will ultimately decide control of the Senate.

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