• Democratic US Senate candidate Haley Stevens frequently refers back to her work on Obama auto task force
• Though she wasn’t a decisionmaker on the task force, former administration officials and Michigan politicians have praised her work
• Stevens is facing fellow Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in a competitive US Senate primary

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In debates and campaign stops, Democratic US Senate candidate Haley Stevens rarely misses a chance to highlight her role with the task force that managed the bailout of the US auto industry.

“Michigan was really bottoming out, and people were writing us off the map,” Stevens said during a June 1 forum with Michigan Democratic Party caucuses.

“I was the kid from Michigan on that team, taking the phone calls from back home, explaining to folks that we were trying to save their jobs and their small businesses,” she continued. 

“We did just that.” 

Stevens, a four-term member of Congress facing Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s US Senate Democratic primary, was hired by “car czar” Steven Rattner, who led the administration’s auto restructuring efforts, in 2009. 

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At the time, the Detroit Three automakers headquartered in Michigan were headed for insolvency as sales cratered. Over the course of several months, the Obama administration negotiated a deal with automakers and unions to bail out the industry with emergency loans and put Chrysler and General Motors through bankruptcy. 

As chief of staff, Stevens was not a member or official designee of the task force that made key decisions about the government-led restructuring process. Instead, she primarily handled day-to-day operations and outreach to public officials and other stakeholders. 

During Stevens’ 2018 congressional run, Republican opponents attempted to undermine her record, claiming she inflated her resume. And in the 2026 contest, opponent Abdul El-Sayed has touted his endorsement from the United Auto Workers union as proof that Stevens doesn’t have a monopoly on sticking up for the auto and manufacturing industries. 

“They endorsed me in this race because I understand that the biggest challenge we have right now, the thing that is throttling our ingenuity, is the fact that our corporations are a lot more interested in a quarterly bottom line than they are in the long-term sustainability of manufacturing,” he said during a recent debate with Stevens in Grand Rapids. 

The facts

In his 2010 book on the auto restructuring process, Rattner said he and fellow adviser Brian Deese “quickly decided to make (Stevens) our chief of staff,” adding that the team “would come to find her tireless, cheerful, and blessed with a social conscience and a talent for improvisation.” 

Over the book’s 300-plus pages, Stevens is mentioned 14 times, primarily in the context of finding office space or meeting rooms for staff and sessions with automakers, ordering lunch, researching key players and offering Michigan-specific insight to the team working to overhaul the auto industry. 

Rattner’s deputy, Ron Bloom, told The Detroit News in 2018 that Stevens “kind of made everything happen,” from logistics to external relations with auto dealers, unions and other constituents: “She was chief, cook and bottle washer.”

President Barack Obama, too, has praised Stevens’ work. During a 2018 rally that’s since been featured in several pro-Stevens ads, Obama said Stevens “was a critical part of my team that helped the American auto industry come roaring back.”

Describing her role in a 2019 Detroit Free Press interview, Stevens said her responsibilities ranged from “overseeing operations to working with our suppliers and congressional leaders on overall programmatic goals.” 

In an article published this month, the New Yorker described Stevens’ role as a “factotum who was occasionally called upon to provide a Midwestern perspective to the distinguished economists.” 

But she told the magazine she spoke up while Rattner and others were considering liquidating Chrysler, suggesting it would be a death knell rather than “a rescue.”

Stevens counts her phone calls to autoworkers among her proudest accomplishments from that time, spokesperson Joetta Appiah said. She said Stevens would frequently stay late in the office “to hear their worries and concerns about losing their livelihoods, to get suggestions or feedback on how to help, or to offer updates on what the task force was doing.”

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Stevens supporter, said she was in frequent contact with Stevens during that time, giving her some of the credit for the way the deal shook out in Michigan’s favor. 

“I tread into her office so many times during that horrible period of time for Michigan,” Granholm told Bridge Michigan after endorsing Stevens in May. “The fact that the auto industry is alive today is in large measure because of the work she did back then.” 

US Sen. Gary Peters, who endorsed Stevens on Monday, cited his dealings with her during the restructuring process as proof that she can withstand the pressure of a competitive race and deliver for Michigan residents. 

“It’s important for people to think about who was there during those really tough times, who was there fighting, who was there understanding how important the situation was to everybody’s life,” Peters told Bridge Michigan.

“To me, that’s where a real test of who a person is, is when you’re in a real crisis situation like we were in during that period,” he said. “I knew Haley Stevens was someone that was fighting each and every day.”

Auto bailout impact

On her campaign website, Stevens touts that she was the “only Michigander” on the bailout team and her work helped “save 200,000 Michigan jobs.”

The number comes from Center for Automotive Research studies in 2009 and 2010 that found $80 billion in loans to Chrysler and GM prevented a “worst case” scenario of a drawn-out bankruptcy that would cost Michigan 224,000 jobs.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made a similar estimate in 2013, suggesting the US would have lost more than 1 million jobs nationwide without the bailout and the Great Recession would have become a full-blown depression.

In a 2012 analysis questioning whether US government intervention saved the auto industry, the fact-checking organization Politifact noted that it’s impossible to know for sure whether the industry would have fared better without the government bailout, but that “the massive loss of jobs and the disruption to the network of auto parts suppliers did not happen.” 

“Given the tangible reality of today, the view among most analysts is that President Bush kept the carmakers afloat long enough for President Obama to put them on solid footing moving forward,” the analysis concluded. “If that matches the definition of a rescue, then both presidents saved the auto industry.”

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