When Abe Hamadeh, 33, launched his race for Congress in Arizona, he had little idea how vicious and personal the attacks would be.
But before Hamadeh’s victory on Tuesday, his GOP primary rival, Blake Masters, leveled ugly accusations about his Muslim and Syrian heritage and said childless politicians like Abe don’t deserve to hold office.
“I’m a big believer that this life is temporary and our souls are eternal,” Hamadeh told DailyMail.com in his first online interview since defeating Masters in the contentious primary.
“I think they’re going to have to justify to their souls what they did,” he said of the attacks against him.
Masters leaned into the slur Vance used in 2021 against Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she was a “childless cat lady.” He directed the same criticism at Hamadeh, who is single, and compared her to himself, who has a “wonderful wife and four beautiful children.”
In what appears to be a first, Donald Trump has endorsed two top Republicans in an Arizona House primary in which they compete against each other.
“Political leaders should have children. And of course they should be married,” Masters wrote in X. “If you don’t or can’t head a household, how can you relate to a constituency of families or govern wisely with respect to future generations? The risk is significant.”
Hamadeh insisted to DailyMail.com that having children should not be an impediment to accessing public office.
“I can’t really speak to JD Vance’s words or what he was saying, but I think you can be an American and a leader without having children,” Hamadeh said.
When Abe Hamadeh, 33, launched his race for Congress in Arizona, he had no idea how vicious and personal the attacks would become.
“We’ve had a lot of generals. We’ve had a lot of people, just like George Washington didn’t have children.”
He continued: “You know, I think I’m a pretty young guy in politics. I mean, I’m 33. It was a little unusual for Blake to make a disparaging comment to me.”
But he said Vance’s comments on the matter had been exaggerated.
‘These are comments from three years ago. If you go back to Kamala Harris, I mean, this woman is a disaster. She’s made so many stupid comments and done a horrible job on policy, on the border and on so many other things. I think the runway for this story has run dry.’
The ads against Hamadeh also targeted his parents and his Muslim and Druze upbringing.
“Dishonest Abe claims that ‘America was founded on Islamic principles,’ not the Judeo-Christian values that made America great. We have enough terrorist sympathizers in Congress,” said an ad posted by a PAC supporting Masters.
“You claim Islam is a religion of hate and should be feared, but our own U.S. Constitution was based on Abrahamic religions, including Islam,” Hamadeh wrote on a Rand Paul forum when he was a teenager.
Masters’ campaign also paid for street signs that featured the quote “America was founded on Islamic principles” alongside a photo of Hamadeh in Mecca on a Hajj that Hamadeh says was taken while he was on a deployment with the U.S. Army.
Hamadeh, 33, the son of Syrian immigrants and a former prosecutor and Army intelligence officer, had previously lost a race for Arizona attorney general in 2022. He and Masters had run on the same ticket that year, the latter in an unsuccessful Senate race.
Other ads run by Masters and his supporters accused Hamadeh of being soft on immigration and claimed he was born to illegal immigrant parents.
“My poor mother couldn’t watch local television,” Hamadeh said, adding that Masters had inundated her with ads attacking her family.
“I was the only veteran running for office. It was totally despicable. And last week, they actually claimed that I was defending terrorists. It was totally unjustified. I have a top secret clearance and I was an intelligence officer.”
“It was a cruel and disgusting campaign that should not be repeated. I am glad that voters rejected it.”
Hamadeh himself draws on his record.
“My mother is Druze, my father is Muslim, and they’re both from Syria. I have family in Venezuela, so I know firsthand what some of these crisis countries are like, and that’s why I’m trying to prevent America from becoming that,” she said.
“At one point, we were on food stamps. I know what it feels like to skip a meal and what it feels like to be underestimated and looked down upon by elites.”
Hamadeh suffered another last-minute twist just before the primary: the support he had gained from Donald Trump was essentially rendered useless when Trump decided to also endorse his main competitor, Masters.
It was the first time Trump had formally endorsed both front-runners in a race, a move that underscored how little he likes to risk being on the losing side. Trump later boasted that his endorsed candidates had a “10 out of 10” win in Arizona.
The race had been unique in that Trump originally found himself on the opposite side of his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance, who backed Masters.
‘He did not support Blake Masters before he was elected. “JD Vance,” Hamadeh said. “I think, from what I’ve been told, that he did some polling and I think it was wildly inaccurate.”
Vance had told Tucker Carlson in a 2021 interview that the United States is run “by Democrats, by our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of cat-loving women with no children.”
“Dishonest Abe supported Chuck Schumer’s amnesty bill, perhaps because Abe’s parents were illegal immigrants,” a Masters ad read. “Dishonest Abe said women have the right to abort their babies. Dishonest Abe supported cuts to Social Security, Medicare and the military. Dishonest Abe said America was founded on Islamic principles. He even said Israel was behind 9/11.”
To be clear, Hamadeh did not campaign to the left of Masters. He continues to fight the election results in his 2022 campaign for attorney general and was a frontline defender of Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Arizona in 2020.
Asked about his top legislative priorities, Hamadeh called for “military force” to fight drug cartels on the southern border, election integrity, stopping “sending money overseas” and making Social Security tax-free — an idea Trump recently floated.