DEARBORN, Mich. — Arab American leaders warned Vice President Kamala Harris for months that she must break away from President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war — or face electoral backlash from this influential community at a important battlefield.
But those pleas were largely ignored.
Instead, Harris made strategic mistakes that deeply offended Arab-American voters reeling from intense grief as the death toll rose in the Middle East. She refused to host a Palestinian American on stage at the Democratic National Convention. At campaign rallies, she curtly shut down protesters who criticized her solidarity with Biden over the conflict. She sent pro-Israel surrogates to Michigan.
Now many Arab-American residents of Dearborn “feel like they have been redeemed,” said Dearborn City Council President Michael Sareini. “They wanted to send a message and they did.”
“This stance on endless wars and the killing of innocent women and children must end,” he said.
In the first days after the election, when Democrats despaired over the results, Dearborn residents did not feel surprised by newly elected President Donald Trump’s resounding victory, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Arab-American leaders in this country. densely populated Muslim city just outside Detroit. What further reinforced their sense that they were right was that their voice of protest was not exclusively limited to Arab Americans, who make up a fraction of the U.S. population. Their anger toward the Biden administration over Gaza spread to college campuses across the country and among progressives of all ages, amounting to the most significant anti-war protest in a generation.
“As we dealt with that grief, we became much more mature politically,” said Amer Zahr, a Palestinian-American activist.
Unofficial results show Trump received the most votes in Dearborn, with 42 percent, while Harris earned 36 percent — a drop of 33 percentage points from when Biden won Dearborn in 2020. Green Party candidate Jill Stein collected 18 percent.
Zoom into Arab-American neighborhoods and you’ll discover an even more dramatic erosion of the vice president. Trump made a big showing in the eastern and southern parts of Dearborn, where a high concentration of the community lives. In one of those districts, Harris earned 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 supporting a Republican after the community rallied for the Republican party had fled. And for a population that often feels targeted by the justice system, many identified with Trump’s legal troubles.
But those leaders emphasized that the dramatic move toward Trump does not mark a permanent realignment with the Republican Party for this demographically historic part of the Democratic base, but rather an explicit rejection of Biden and Harris. The top of the ticket was the exception: Democrats won Dearborn on every other level of the ballot, from U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib to state lawmakers and school board members.
“They didn’t vote for Trump because they believe Trump is the best candidate,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of Arab American News. “No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”
‘I’m speaking now’
When Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee in July, Arab Americans were hopeful. She had given some indications of a softer stance in the Middle East, and Dearborn residents were optimistic that she could be the president who would stand up to Israel. At that point, the war in Gaza had already lasted nine months — and Biden repeatedly refused to enforce an arms embargo on Israel, despite pleas from the community to end the bombardment that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians killed.
But when Palestinian Americans were denied a speaking slot at the DNC convention a few weeks later, Dearborn residents began to feel dissatisfied. That resentment grew when Harris told a pro-Palestinian protester in August, “I speak now” — a line 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 pushed aside by the Biden administration. It began to feel, they said, like a betrayal of Harris himself.
When Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in October, which it said was a response to military attacks by Hezbollah, Arab Americans’ anger at the US response reached a fever pitch.
Opposition to Harris “slowly but surely built up” as the war continued, said Abed Hammoud, founder of the Arab American Political Action Committee. Much of Dearborn’s population comes from southern Lebanon, which has been devastated by the military action. Some Michigan residents have seen their entire families murdered abroad.
“I wake up in the morning and turn on the news to see which town was razed and who was killed,” said Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, who immigrated to America from Lebanon at age 15. is 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 said at a meeting in late October that the Israelis were “first” in the Holy Land. Residents also grumbled about appearances by New York Rep. Richie Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel.
Adding to the insult, the campaign touted the support of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the Iraq war. His daughter, Liz Cheney, the former No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives and a staunch Trump critic, was featured 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 felt hollow to this community. She had lost them.
An opening for Trump
The Trump campaign viewed the Arab community’s contempt for Harris in the waning weeks before the election as an opportunity. Residents were inundated with anti-Harris texts and mailers, which “played a huge role” among voters, said Ali Jawad, founder of the Lebanese American Heritage Club.
Trump then visited Dearborn four days before the election. Standing in a restaurant surrounded by a crowd of Arab Americans, he declared that under his presidency “we will have peace in the Middle East – but not with the clowns you have in the US now.”
Harris never personally visited Dearborn. Campaign staff and surrogates went in her place.
“The Democrats did this,” Zahr said. “They created a situation where Donald Trump was walking around our city, putting his feet up, shaking hands and kissing babies, and Harris didn’t even enter our community. She was scared.”
The Arabs in Dearborn were united in their fear, but deeply divided over how to express it politically. Factions emerged. The conversations among themselves became tense. The main PAC representing Arab-American interests not only declined to make 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 Disengaged Movement, the Michigan-born coalition that stoked anti-war sentiment on college campuses. The election results showed that some large liberal college districts appeared to be underperforming the Democratic ticket by at least one point.
Hammoud declined to meet with Trump while in Dearborn because he disagreed with the former president’s implementation of the Muslim ban and arming of Saudi Arabia. But he also declined to endorse Harris.
The mayors of two neighboring cities with similarly large Arab populations, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, stood for Trump across Michigan. Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi even showed up at Trump’s final campaign rally in Grand Rapids in the hours before Election Day.
But Trump’s record — like the Muslim ban and his promises to deport millions of immigrants — was enough for some to put aside their misgivings about Harris, such as political organizer Ismael Ahmed, who said he was “holding my nose and voted for her’.
But in the end, Trump was “able to say some things that made them think maybe he was really on our side,” Ahmed said. “Or maybe he will fix the economy in a way that no one else will. And it worked.”
