Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) is seen on the House steps of the U.S. Capitol on June 16, 2022.
Repeatedly, including as recently as last month, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens has told constituents that she lives in Michigan’s 11th congressional district, where she is a candidate in the upcoming primary. But a Prospect review of property records, campaign filings, photos, and several hours of video footage indicates that Stevens has been living in the neighboring 10th district for most—if not all—of her reelection campaign.
There is no state or federal restriction on members of Congress living outside the district they represent, though the issue frequently comes up in campaign ads. But the situation with Stevens is notable for two reasons.
First, election laws in Michigan are fairly stringent, raising significant doubt about whether Stevens is legally eligible to cast a ballot for herself in the upcoming August 2 primary, where she is competing against fellow Democrat Rep. Andy Levin. Second, because she listed an address inside the district on her campaign’s nominating petition, which was submitted in April, she could be challenged about whether her candidacy itself is legal. Other candidates for statewide or federal office in Michigan have seen themselves thrown off the ballot because of problems with nominating petitions in recent years.
Stevens’s misleading claims about her residency stand in stark contrast to the accusations of carpetbagging that she has made against Levin. Stevens and her allies have repeatedly knocked Levin for allegedly abandoning voters in the 10th district by choosing to run against her in the newly drawn 11th. An interview with local television station FOX 2 that aired in February typified those arguments. When asked to defend a statement about being “pushed out of her district,” Stevens recounted her claim to the 11th—a suburban Detroit seat that encompasses most of Oakland county.
While Stevens’s specific comments were unremarkable by the time that segment aired, one aspect of the interview was quite remarkable: Stevens filmed it from her old home in Rochester Hills, which is in Michigan’s 10th district, rather than the home she recently purchased with her husband in Waterford Township, which is in the 11th district. A review of property records and videos shot within both homes confirms that the kitchen Stevens streamed from is located in the Rochester Hills residence, which is still owned by Stevens’s mother.
Since her reelection announcement in December, Stevens has filmed Democratic club appearances, Congressional hearings, campaign debates, and more from the Rochester Hills location, on at least a dozen separate occasions, at different times of the day including evenings and weekends. The hours of footage cast serious doubt on Stevens’s ongoing claims that she no longer lives in the residence.
It is unclear whether Stevens has ever broadcast any video from her Waterford Township property, and there is no evidence that her husband, software engineer Robert Gulley, is living at the Rochester Hills residence. Representatives for Stevens’s congressional campaign did not immediately respond to questions about her residency. A representative for Levin’s campaign declined to comment for this story.
Screenshot via YouTube
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) participates remotely in a House Committee on Education and Labor hearing on May 26, 2022.
The doubts raised by Stevens’s frequent virtual appearances from the Rochester Hills home are corroborated by numerous other documents, photos, and videos obtained by The Prospect. Those materials indicate that Stevens has been using the house in Rochester Hills as her primary residence for months.
In particular, several photos and videos show that, as recently as this weekend, Stevens has been staying at that residence overnight. Those photos and videos, which are not being published in order to protect the privacy of Stevens, show that she has used the Rochester Hills residence even when her local campaign schedule made staying at her Waterford Township property equally or more convenient. (The properties are a similar distance from the Detroit airport, another relevant factor for Stevens given her regular trips to and from Washington.)
Stevens’s own filings with the Federal Elections Commission also suggest that the Rochester Hills home is still her primary residence. Since April, her reelection campaign has used the Rochester Hills address for reimbursements for campaign expenses on three separate occasions. It has not used her Waterford Township address in any recent filings.
Election laws in Michigan clearly stipulate that a voter or candidate’s residence is the location where a person spends the greatest portion of their time, regardless of marital status or ownership of other properties. The Prospect’s investigation of Stevens’s residency suggests that her Rochester Hills home is substantially more likely to meet this requirement. So Stevens voting for herself in the upcoming primary could theoretically be open to challenge as a violation of state residency requirements.
More critically, while Michigan law does not require federal candidates to live within the districts they represent, Stevens’s decision to list her Waterford Township property as her address on her campaign’s nominating petition, which she submitted in April, also raises legal questions about whether her candidacy for the 11th congressional district would withstand legal scrutiny if challenged in court.
Faulty nominating petitions was the basis for five Republican gubernatorial candidates in Michigan being thrown off the ballot in May, in that instance due to fraudulent signatures. A decade ago, incumbent Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter was tossed off the ballot because he did not supply enough valid nominating petition signatures.
Those materials indicate that Stevens has been using the house in Rochester Hills as her primary residence for months.
Stevens obtained the required number of signatures, but the past history shows that Michigan’s board of state canvassers has not historically been lenient about errors on nominating petitions, even with sitting members of Congress.
Under Michigan election law, challenges to nominating petitions must be issued within seven days of filing. However, those challenges are typically related to petition signatures, and case law is less clear on the subject of the address of the candidate for office. It’s unclear whether Stevens could be removed from the primary ballot over this, as the state Supreme Court has never touched the issue.
The brazen nature of Stevens’s misleading claims over the last several months is accentuated by her decision to continue hitting her opponent over the territorial dispute that emerged after redistricting.
Despite a previous investigation by The Intercept showing that Stevens purchased her Waterford Township property only after new congressional boundaries became clear, she has argued that she has the best claim to the new Oakland-based 11th district because it contains a slightly larger share of her former seat than Levin’s. (Neither candidate currently represents a majority of the newly drawn 11th district’s constituents.)
She has argued that Levin, whose family has lived in Oakland County for generations, should be running in the neighboring 10th district—a Republican-leaning, Macomb-based seat that contains both Stevens’s childhood hometown and a significant share of Levin’s former constituents.
It is not uncommon for the redistricting process to pit incumbents of the same party against each other. Across the country, new congressional maps have forced a number of contentious primaries between incumbent House Democrats. Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux faced one such situation in Georgia this May, and in June, Illinois Reps. Marie Newman and Sean Casten also squared off in a member-on-member primary. Similar dynamics will play out in New York next month when Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler will compete for the Democratic nomination in the 12th district.
Accusations of carpetbagging are also commonplace in these instances, but among the House Democrats foisted into the unenviable position of running against another sitting member, only Stevens has made such a concerted effort to make territorial claims into a central part of her campaign message—a move that appears to be at odds with her own residency issues.
