Trust, Betrayal, and Haley Stevens

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won a hotly contested senate seat. While Michigan is consistently considered a battleground state, the midterms are always particularly important given their implications for how the rest of a president’s term will play out. It came as a shocker to many, then, when Haley Stevens — a democratic congresswoman who lost the democratic nomination to El-Sayed in August — came out in support of the GOP candidate Mike Rogers by attending a campaign event with him and releasing a subsequent endorsement video. Not only was there perhaps an implicit belief that Stevens would toe the party line and endorse the party’s candidate — due in large part to her previous statements about the damage Rogers would cause if voted into power — but many received verbal confirmation from her that she would put her support behind El-Sayed and/or not support Rogers. For instance, when asked by staffers if she would join her fiance in supporting Rogers, she reportedly exclaimed by text, “Omg, why would you think I would do that?!!” Moreover, the night before she attended a campaign event at a Michigan church with Rogers, she told former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard that she planned to attend an event at a different church with El-Sayed.

Obviously, this swift change of direction came as a surprise to many within the democratic party, leading several, such as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, to explicitly call this act a betrayal of the democratic party. While there is a sense in which anger towards Stevens stems from purely pragmatic considerations surrounding the Democrats’ efforts in this year’s midterms, there is also a sense in which many feel deeply disappointed, dumbfounded, and betrayed by her actions. Although many did not use this language explicitly, I believe a large part of these deeper feelings of disappointment and betrayal are in large part because they trusted her. It’s worth considering, then, what trust is and how Stevens betrayed the trust of not only her fellow party members but also her constituents.

Trust is an important topic in philosophy. We trust others to treat us with respect, to not violate our autonomy, to provide us with true beliefs, etc. Even without a philosopher’s treatment, it is clear to see that trust is not only important, but that many parts of society fundamentally rely on trusting others. Politics is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this. In voting for someone, we put our trust in them. We trust that they will make good on the promises they made in their campaign, and we trust that they have our best interests at heart — or at the very least that their interests align with ours in some way.

Trust, in philosophical circles, is often thought to be a kind of practical reliance at its core: part of trusting someone to do x is having an expectation that they will do x, and part of trusting what someone says is relying on what they say. It is completely uncontroversial to say that reliance is a part of trust, but trust is different from mere reliance. Following the influential work of Annette Baier, most philosophers argue that trust is reliance plus something else. This stance in the literature is at least partially motivated by the different reactions we have towards misplaced trust and misplaced reliance. Whereas I might rely on my shelf to hold up a plant, I don’t necessarily trust it. On the other hand, I genuinely trust my partner, rather than merely rely on them. If my shelf breaks (and thus my reliance was misplaced) I am likely to be disappointed; if my partner cheats on me (and thus my trust was misplaced) I may feel disappointed, but more than that I feel betrayed.

Exactly how we further delineate between trust and reliance is up for debate. Here, however, I want to introduce Katherine Hawley’s account of trust as a belief that someone has a commitment to do something and us relying on her to fulfill that commitment. In the case of Haley Stevens, then, it seems like many trusted her in virtue of their belief that she had a commitment to her constituents and to the democratic party and their reliance on her to fulfill that commitment. While her commitment to the Democratic party was largely pragmatic in nature (i.e., make sure that a Democrat is in the senate seat), the commitment to her constituents is different. The trust placed in Stevens by her constituents was based on her representation of certain values and the platform and promises she maintained. Endorsing Rogers seems to be a betrayal of these values and that public image. Stevens’s actions are condemnable, then, not because of who she ultimately endorsed, but because of her refusal to represent the interests of her supporters.

Stevens was well aware of those commitments. She clearly communicated multiple times to different individuals that she was not only planning to support El-Sayed in the general election, but had nothing but contempt for Rogers. Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland claimed that he had a conversation with Stevens on Saturday night — the night before Stevens put her support behind Rogers — in which she assured him that she was “committed to the party.”

The fallout was quick. Stevens’s allies deserted and most of her staff quit. Her longtime chief of staff wrote that her team was “shocked and heartbroken.” As Stevens faced fiery backlash for her public support of Rogers, El-Sayed’s campaign reported a record fundraising day, raising nearly $2.5 million dollars on Sunday.

While Stevens’s actions are not the first case of a politician betraying the trust of the public and their party (nor will they be the last), they are perhaps one of the best examples of the difference between reliance and trust playing out in the public sphere. If her party and constituents had merely relied on her, Stevens would not have faced the backlash she did, including being expelled from the Michigan Democratic Party. Regardless of your political leanings, Stevens has offered us a textbook example of the value of trust, and the dangers of betraying it.