By Nathan Layne and Nandita Bose
DETROIT/WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Democrats sought to contain a rift in Michigan's US Senate race after one of their own crossed party lines to endorse the Republican, while President Donald Trump pressed his legal efforts on Monday to intervene in ballot-counting as both parties made their closing arguments a day before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
Over a fast-moving weekend, US Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic
Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in a bitter contest, suddenly switched to backing Republican Mike Rogers and appeared with him at a Detroit church. The race is critical to Democrats' hopes of ending the 53-47 Senate majority hold of Trump's Republicans in Tuesday's vote.
Stevens' Sunday surprise came the same day a federal judge dismissed a US Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of election results in Alaska if Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan narrowly loses in the battleground state.
An undeterred Trump, who has been holding daily rallies around the country for Republican candidates, filed an emergency request with the US Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily block California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who federal officials allege are likely non-US citizens.
California said the lawsuit could disenfranchise 20,000 voters based on vague accusations and that the administration's process for identifying noncitizens was flawed and prone to error.
The president, who continues to falsely claim that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 was caused by widespread fraud, was due to deliver remarks at 2 p.m. ET (1900 GMT) at the belated reopening of Washington's Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. An earlier renovation as part of his beautification efforts for the US capital was botched by contractors, leading to the "American flag blue" liner peeling away, which Trump had wrongly blamed on vandals.
A spokesperson for El-Sayed's campaign said it raised $2.4 million on Sunday, its largest single-day fundraising haul, fueled by small-dollar donations averaging $36.74 from more than 65,000 donors.
Nonpartisan analysts generally favor Democrats' chances of winning a majority in the House of Representatives. Winning control of the Senate will be trickier, with those analysts now seeing races in traditionally Republican-leaning states including Texas, Kansas and Iowa as competitive for the opposition party, giving it more options for a path to the majority.
Control of either chamber would constrain Trump's ability to pass legislation and empower Democrats to investigate his administration, while a Senate majority would also allow them to block his appointees to federal courts including the Supreme Court.
According to the University of Florida Election Lab, 55 million votes have been cast in person and by mail already, more than the 45 million cast in the 2022 midterm elections.
MICHIGAN RIFT
Stevens called on El-Sayed to condemn an outside group's ad that she said blames Israel for high grocery prices.
"That ad was very painful," Stevens told CNN on Sunday night. "There are so many Democrats who want to vote for our Democratic nominee, and they're just being told, 'Hey, this is a party you don't belong in, or this is a campaign you don't belong in.'"
El-Sayed rejected Stevens' demand, saying she was creating a distraction by revisiting a primary election she lost months prior.
"You guys love to play the condemn game," he told reporters on Saturday when asked about Stevens' demand. "I've already been clear that that ad was not made by me, and I do not agree with the contents of that ad."
El-Sayed, an Egyptian American Muslim born in Michigan, has been targeted by Trump and other Republicans who have repeatedly questioned his loyalty to the US and baselessly called him a terrorist sympathizer whose election would invite attacks on Americans. El-Sayed has called questions about his loyalty to the US "shameful."
The verbal attacks fit a broader pattern of inflammatory rhetoric from some Republicans targeting Arab Americans, Muslims and transgender people and portraying Democrats as communists and dangerous radicals ahead of the midterms.
Stevens' mother, Maria Marcotte, said her daughter decided to endorse Rogers because of what she described as dangerous political rhetoric from El-Sayed, pointing in part to his past appearances with Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who has been criticized for his comments about Israel and American Jews.
"She's really reached a point where she felt like her constituents, the people that she cares about, and the people she knows and loves are scared and frightened by some rhetoric that's coming out," Marcotte said in an interview with Reuters from the porch of her home in Birmingham, a northern Detroit suburb.
Democratic voter Pamela Johnson, 72, criticized Stevens after casting her ballot for El-Sayed in Warren, a Detroit suburb: "Haley Stevens is a traitor."
ALASKA INTERVENTION FALTERS
The Trump administration's attempt to intervene in Alaska's Senate race faltered when a federal judge dismissed the US Justice Department's lawsuit on Sunday that sought to block certification of the results if Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan narrowly loses.
The Justice Department argued voters may be confused by the presence of a challenger named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the same ballot.
The issue has roiled the campaign over the last several days after the New York Times reported that Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign was involved in recruiting the latter Sullivan into the race as a spoiler.
The senator said on Sunday he would accept the results of Tuesday's election even as the Trump administration presses a criminal investigation into the issue.
Peltola has denied involvement, and Sullivan Jr. has denied coordinating with Peltola's campaign.
"I think it's great that it got thrown out," said Aileena Bird, a 24-year-old resident of Wasilla, Alaska, who said she voted for Peltola. "I think that more should be done to fight against what Trump has been doing in trying to suppress the voters."
(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Nandita Bose; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York, David Lawder in Washington, Nathan Frandino in Wasilla, Alaska; Editing by Sergio Non, Lincoln Feast and Howard Goller)
