DEARBORN, Michigan – Arab American leaders warned Vice President Kamala Harris for months that she needed to break away from President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza, or face an electoral backlash from this influential community in a key battleground.
But those pleas were largely ignored.
Instead, Harris made strategic errors that deeply insulted Arab American voters reeling from intense grief as the death toll in the Middle East mounted. He refused to host a Palestinian American on stage at the Democratic National Convention. He briefly cracked down on protesters at campaign rallies who criticized his solidarity with Biden over the conflict. He sent pro-Israel surrogates to Michigan.
Now, many Arab-American residents in Dearborn “feel redeemed,” said Michael Sareini, president of the Dearborn City Council. “They wanted to send a message and they did.”
“This stance on endless wars and the murder of innocent women and children has to end,” he said.
In the first days after the election, as Democrats despaired over the results, Dearborn residents were not surprised by President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding victory, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Arab American leaders in the Muslim city. densely populated on the outskirts of Detroit. To add to their sense that they were right, their protest vote was not limited solely to Arab Americans, who make up a fraction of the American population. Their fury toward the Biden administration over Gaza spread to college campuses across the country and among progressives of all ages, representing the largest anti-war protest in a generation.
“As we dealt with that pain, we became much more politically mature,” said Amer Zahr, a Palestinian-American activist.
Unofficial results show Trump received the most votes in Dearborn, with 42 percent, while Harris got 36 percent, a drop of 33 percentage points from when Biden won Dearborn in 2020. The Party candidate Green, Jill Stein, got 18 percent.
Zoom into the Arab American neighborhoods and you’ll find an even more dramatic unraveling for the vice president. Trump had a large presence in the east and south areas of Dearborn, where a high concentration of the community lives. In one of those districts, Harris got just 13 percent, while Trump got 51 percent.
Several Dearborn leaders said Trump’s social conservatism and isolationist “America First” foreign policy made Arabs more comfortable backing a Republican after the community fled the GOP after 9/11. And, for a population that often feels attacked by the justice system, many identified with Trump’s legal problems.
But those leaders emphasized that the dramatic move toward Trump does not mark a permanent realignment with the Republican Party for this demographic that has historically been part of the Democratic base, but rather an explicit rejection of Biden and Harris. The top of the ballot was the exception: Democrats won in Dearborn at every other level of the ballot, from U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib to state legislators and school board members.
“They didn’t vote for Trump because they think Trump is the best candidate,” said Osama Siblani, editor of the Arab American News. “No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”
‘I’m talking now’
When Harris took Biden’s place as the Democratic nominee in July, Arab Americans were hopeful. She had given some hints of a softer stance on the Middle East, and Dearborn residents were optimistic that she could be the president who would take on Israel. At the time, the war in Gaza had raged for nine months, and Biden repeatedly refused to order an arms embargo against Israel, despite pleas from the community to end the bombing that Gaza health officials said would end. has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
But when Palestinian Americans were denied a speaking spot at the Democratic National Committee convention a few weeks later, Dearborn residents began to grow discontent. That resentment grew when Harris in August told a pro-Palestinian protester, “I’m speaking now,” a phrase that Arab Americans now point to as a difficult moment for Harris to overcome.
As deaths increased in the Middle East (and images of dead bodies were widely shared on social media), the Arab community felt even more marginalized by the Biden administration. They began to feel it, they said, like a betrayal by Harris herself.
When Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in October, which it claimed was in response to military attacks by Hezbollah, Arab Americans’ anger over the US response peaked.
Opposition to Harris “slowly but surely increased” as the war progressed, said Abed Hammoud, founder of the Arab-American Political Action Committee. A large portion of Dearborn’s population comes from South Lebanon, which has been devastated by military action. Some Michigan residents have seen their entire families murdered abroad.
“I wake up in the morning, turn on the news just to see what village was leveled and who was killed,” said Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon when he was 15. It’s the daily routine we have here in Michigan.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, the Harris campaign sent surrogates to Michigan who deeply offended the Arab community. Bill Clinton, speaking at a rally in late October, said the Israelis were in the Holy Land “first.” Residents also complained about appearances by New York Rep. Richie Torres, a strong supporter of Israel.
To add insult to injury, the campaign touted the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the war in Iraq. Her daughter, Liz Cheney, the former No. 3 Republican in the House and a staunch critic of Trump, appeared as part of Harris’ closing message.
At the time, Harris’ repeated statements that she wanted to end the war in Gaza and return the hostages seemed hollow to this community. I had lost them.
An opportunity for Trump
The Trump campaign saw the Arab community’s disdain for Harris in the final weeks before the election as an opportunity. Residents were inundated with anti-Harris text messages and mailings, which “played hard” with voters, said Ali Jawad, founder of the Lebanese American Heritage Club.
Trump then made a visit to Dearborn four days before the election. He was in a restaurant surrounded by a crowd of Arab Americans and declared that under his presidency “we are going to have peace in the Middle East, but not with the clowns they have running the United States right now.”
Harris never personally visited Dearborn. Instead, campaign staff and their surrogates went in their place.
“The Democrats did this,” Zahr said. “They created a situation where Donald Trump was walking through our city, putting his feet up, shaking hands, kissing babies, and Harris wouldn’t even come into our community. “I was afraid.”
The Arabs of Dearborn were united in anguish, but deeply divided over how to express it politically. Factions emerged. The conversations between them became tense. The major PAC representing Arab-American interests not only refused to give a presidential endorsement, but urged residents not to vote for Harris or Trump. Some residents decided to skip voting in the presidential race altogether.
There was division among the mayors of the area. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud emerged as a strong ally of the uncommitted movement, the Michigan-born coalition that galvanized antiwar sentiment on college campuses. The election results revealed that some large liberal college counties appeared to underperform the Democratic ticket by at least one point.
Hammoud refused to meet with Trump when he was in Dearborn, due to his disagreement with the former president’s enactment of the Muslim ban and supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia. But he also refused to endorse Harris.
The mayors of two neighboring cities with similarly large Arab populations, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, were stumped in favor of Trump across Michigan. Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi even appeared at Trump’s final campaign rally held in Grand Rapids hours before Election Day.
But Trump’s record, such as the Muslim ban and his promises to deport millions of immigrants, was enough for some to set aside their misgivings about Harris, like political organizer Ismael Ahmed, who said she “held my nose and voted.” for her.”
In the end, though, Trump “was able to say some things that made them think maybe he really is on our side,” Ahmed said. “Or maybe it will fix the economy like no one else will. And it worked.”
