Politics
Dearborn’s Arab Americans feel vindicated by Harris’ loss
DEARBORN, Michigan — Arab American leaders for months warned Vice President Kamala Harris that she needed to separate herself from President Joe Biden’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza — or face an electoral backlash from this influential community in a key battleground.
But those pleas went 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 climbed. She refused to host a Palestinian American onstage at the Democratic National Convention. She curtly shut down protesters at campaign rallies who criticized her solidarity with Biden over the conflict. She dispatched pro-Israel surrogates to Michigan.
Now, many Arab American residents in Dearborn “feel like they’ve been redeemed,” said Michael Sareini, Dearborn city council president. “They wanted to send a message and they did.”
“This stance on endless wars and killing of innocent women and children has got to end,” he said.
In the initial days after the election, as Democrats despaired over the results, Dearborn residents felt unsurprised by President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding win, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Arab American leaders in this densely populated Muslim city just outside Detroit. Adding to their sense that they were right, their protest vote was not limited solely to Arab Americans, who make up a fraction of the U.S. population. Their furor toward the Biden administration over Gaza spilled out onto college campuses across the nation and among progressives of all ages, amounting to the most significant anti-war protest in a generation.
“While we dealt with that grief, 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 earned 36 percent — a 33 percentage point drop from when Biden won Dearborn in 2020. Green party candidate Jill Stein collected 18 percent.
Zoom into Arab American neighborhoods and you’ll find an even more dramatic crumbling for the vice president. Trump showed up big throughout the Eastern and Southern parts of Dearborn, where a high concentration of the community lives. In one of those precincts, Harris earned only 13 percent while Trump got 51 percent.
Multiple Dearborn leaders said that Trump’s social conservatism and isolationist “America First” foreign policy made Arabs more comfortable with backing a Republican after the community fled from the GOP in the aftermath of 9/11. And, for a population that often feels targeted by the justice system, many identified with Trump’s legal woes.
But those leaders emphasized that the dramatic move toward Trump does not mark a permanent realignment with the Republican party for this demographic historically 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 at every other level of the ballot, from U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib down 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 the Arab American News. “No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”
‘I am speaking now’
When Harris took Biden’s place 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 may be the president who would stand up against Israel. By that point, the war in Gaza had endured for nine months — and Biden repeatedly refused to order an arms embargo against Israel, despite pleas from the community for an end to the bombardment that according to Gaza health officials has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
But when Palestinian Americans were denied a speaking slot at the DNC convention a few weeks later, residents in Dearborn started to feel disgruntled. That resentment grew when Harris in August told a pro-Palestinan protester “I am speaking now” — a line that Arab Americans now point to as a difficult moment for Harris to overcome.
As the deaths increased in the Middle East — and images of dead bodies were shared widely on social media — the Arab community felt even more pushed aside by the Biden administration. It started to feel, they said, like a betrayal from Harris herself.
When Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon in October, which they stated was in response to military attacks by Hezbollah, Arab Americans’ rage over the response by the U.S. reached its peak.
Opposition to Harris “built up slowly but surely,” as the war continued on, said Abed Hammoud, founder of the Arab American Political Action Committee. A large share of Dearborn’s population comes from South Lebanon, which has been devastated by the military action. Some Michigan residents have seen their entire families overseas killed.
“I wake up in the morning, I turn on the news just to see which village was leveled to the ground and who was killed,” said Sam Baydoun, Wayne County commissioner, who emigrated to America from Lebanon when he was 15. “This is the daily routine we have here in Michigan.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, the Harris campaign dispatched surrogates to Michigan who deeply offended the Arab community. Bill Clinton, speaking at a rally in late October, said Israelis were in the Holy Land “first.” Residents also grumbled about appearances by New York Rep. Richie Torres, a staunch Israel proponent.
Adding to insult, the campaign touted the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the war in Iraq. His daughter, Liz Cheney, who was the former No. 3 Republican in the House and a staunch Trump critic, was featured as part of Harris’ closing message.
By that point, Harris’ repeated statements that she wanted to end the war in Gaza and return hostages felt hollow to this community. She had lost them.
An opening for Trump
The Trump campaign viewed the Arab community’s disdain toward Harris in the waning weeks before the election as an opportunity. Residents were inundated with anti-Harris texts and mailers, which “played big” among voters, said Ali Jawad, founder of the Lebanese American Heritage Club.
Then Trump paid a visit to Dearborn four days before the election. He stood in a restaurant surrounded by a crowd of Arab Americans and declared that under his presidency, “we’re going to have peace in the Middle East — but not with the clowns that you have running the U.S. right now.”
Harris never personally visited Dearborn. Campaign staff and surrogates went in her place instead.
“The Democrats did this,” Zahr said. “They created a situation where Donald Trump was walking around our city, putting his feet up, shaking hands, kissing babies and Harris didn’t even enter our community. She was afraid.”
Arabs in Dearborn were united in anguish but deeply divided on how to express it politically. Factions emerged. Conversations among themselves grew 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 entirely.
There was a split among the area’s mayors. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud emerged as a strong ally of the uncommitted movement, the Michigan-born coalition that galvanized antiwar sentiment on college campuses. Election results revealed that some big liberal college counties seemed to underperform for the Democratic ticket by at least a point.
Hammoud refused to meet with Trump when he was in Dearborn, based on his disagreement with the former president’s enactment of the Muslim ban and arming of Saudi Arabia. But he also declined to endorse Harris.
The mayors in two neighboring cities with similarly large Arab populations, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, stumped for Trump throughout Michigan. Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi even appeared at Trump’s final campaign rally held 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 push aside their misgivings for Harris, like for political organizer Ismael Ahmed, who said he “held my nose and voted for her.”
Yet in the end, Trump “was able to say some things that made them think maybe he’s really on our side,” Ahmed said. “Or maybe he’ll fix the economy in a way that no one else will. And it worked.”
Statewide ballot measures are flying under the national radar — but some are drawing big spending.
At least $400 million has been spent on TV ads for ballot initiatives, according to data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The 145 ballot measures across 39 states include fights attracting the attention of future presidential candidates and millions from dark-money groups on both sides of the aisle.
The focus of this year’s ballot measures reflect broader shifts in the political discourse. The number of abortion-related initiatives has dropped precipitously since 2022 as states have had time to determine their individual laws following the repeal of Roe v. Wade. At the same time, voters in five states will weigh in on ballot measures focusing on transgender issues, the most in history.
Here are the most consequential ballot initiatives facing voters in November:
California’s wealth tax
By far the most expensive and most aggressively targeted ballot measure in November is California’s Prop 40, which if passed would levy a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires. An eye-watering $92 million has been spent on TV ads debating the issue, mostly on the “No” side, although that pales in comparison to what the Silicon Valley tycoons opposing the initiative like tech investor Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin would be forced to pay should it pass.
Leading progressive figures including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna are backing the “Yes” side. Caught in the middle is Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, who’s opposed the measure even as he’s tried to claim some populist credibility by proposing a national tax hike on billionaires. A Citrin-POLITICO poll earlier this month found the measure receiving 46% support, short of the majority needed to pass.
Newsom and Brin are both backing another ballot measure, Prop 42, a separate question that would cancel out the Prop 40 wealth tax if it passes. If both pass, Prop 42 could still cancel out Prop 40 if it receives more votes.
Redistricting wars continue
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is making himself the face of a constitutional amendment that, if it passes, would pave the way for the state legislature to draw new lines turning the state’s lone GOP House seat solidly blue. Moore, a potential presidential candidate in 2028, is taking a cue from Newsom, who passed a redistricting referendum last year that is likely to swing five House seats in favor of Democrats. Former President Barack Obama cut an adfor the “Yes” campaign this week.
Missouri Democrats recently won a contentious legal battle that barred the GOP from using a new gerrymander to erase a Kansas City-area Democratic seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and allowed voters a referendum on whether that gerrymander will be used in future elections.. Now, voters get to choose what the state does going forward. The campaign pushing “No” on the referendum reported raising $6 million earlier this month, with big help from Democratic megadonors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Transgender rights restrictions hit the ballot
This year marks the first time multiple states have taken up ballot initiatives focusing on transgender issues.
The six initiatives across Colorado, Missouri, Washington, Arizona and Nebraska help make up the most LGBTQ-related ballot measures in a year since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. Each of the measures asks voters to either ban transgender surgeries for minors or restrict access to girls sports for transgender girls.
Abortion access measures in four states
Measures in Nevada and Virginia would enshrine abortion access in those states’ constitutions, similar to measures that have passed over the last few years in Ohio, Michigan, Montana and other states.
A measure in Idaho, which would override the state’s near-total ban, is a statutory change rather than a constitutional one, meaning the GOP-dominated state legislature could (and is expected to) vote to override it if it passes.
Missouri has a social conservative combo: a proposition to overturn the abortion-rights constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2024 and reinstate a near-total ban on the procedure that would also prohibit gender transition surgeries for minors. Advocacy groups on both sides are pouring millions into the initiatives, with abortion rights groups spending $22.5 million and anti-abortion groups spending $8.7 million on TV ads, with most of that money being spent in Missouri.
Voting on voting
Over a dozen ballot measures will weigh election administration rules for future elections. In seven states,voters could approve requirements for valid ID to vote. Six states will give voters the chance to explicitly codify in state law that only U.S. citizens can vote in the state. Massachusetts voters will weigh in on whether to establish a top-two nonpartisan primary system, like California has, while Alaska voters will decide if the state will end its top-four primary and ranked-choice voting laws in favor of traditional party primaries and first-past-the-post vote counting.
Republicans rethink their attacks on AOC
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EAU CLAIRE, Wisconsin — In this rural-heavy stretch of the upper Midwest, Democrats are trying to claw back districts where their party brand is still deeply toxic.
It won’t be easy, even in a midterm environment that heavily favors their party. Local Democratic organizers in western Wisconsin, where Rebecca Cooke is trying to oust GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, know that elections here are decided by the slimmest of margins. They have no room for error.
“Everything’s on a razor’s edge,” Clara Serrano, who volunteers for the local Democratic Party, said as she drove along farms and cornfields outside Eau Claire.
But a decade after President Donald Trump’s populism and culture wars swung the formerly Democratic-leaning region right, many voters from western Wisconsin over to southern Minnesota and down to eastern Iowa are hurting — and blame the president’s policies. Family farms are reeling from his tariffs. Diesel is over $6 a gallon. The cost of fertilizer has shot up more than 30 percent since the war in Iran began earlier this year.
“[Rural voters are] mad when we get to the door — and not at us,” said William Garcia, co-chair of the La Crosse County Democratic Party who has been out canvassing. “They’re mad about gas prices. They’re mad about fertilizer. They’re mad about the tariffs. And so all we do as Democrats is say, ‘Hey, we agree. We rejected all of these things. We’ve been fighting all of these things.’ So it’s much more receptive now than really it’s ever been.”
Local Democrats have pulled out all the stops to propel Cooke in Wisconsin’s 3rd District, knocking endless doors in redder areas. There have been national reinforcements as well: Populist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed Cooke during the primary and hit the campaign trail with her this week in Eau Claire. The national party is trying to make generational gains in Minnesota’s 1st District — where they’re hoping to pull off a major upset to unseat GOP Rep. Brad Finstad in a Trump +12 district — and in deep-red Iowa, where Democrats are targeting three GOP House seats, a Senate seat and the governorship.
Democrats for years have faltered with rural voters in these districts. Now, with polling showing Democrats gaining ground in redder territory and an electorate that’s souring on the GOP, Democrats hope they can finally make up ground this November — and lay a solid foundation for the 2028 presidential election.
If that doesn’t happen, it’s an ominous sign for the party.
“If we can’t win these seats now in this environment, it seems like we’re in for a world of hurt in 2028,” said one House Democrat, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Wisconsin Democrats have worked nearly-year round to build up a ground game. A major new initiative from the state party has helped to boost organizing, especially in rural counties and other places they’ve struggled.
“We haven’t really stopped organizing since 2024,” said Pete Huff, co-chair of the nearby Dunn County Democratic party, where Trump won by 16 points.
Cooke, who grew up on a farm in the area, has tried to create a more durable brand of politics in the district by largely trying to distance herself from the national Democratic party as she seeks to win over a broader base of voters. It helped in 2024: She overperformed Kamala Harris by 9,000 votes across the district, even though she narrowly lost to Van Orden.
“I think that the party doesn’t know how to speak the language of rural America, and I feel like I uniquely do,” Cooke said in an interview. She regularly canvasses in rural communities and has tried to tie Van Orden to increasingly unpopular data center developments, after local projects sparked backlash. On Sunday, before the campus rally, Cooke attended a meeting for residents worried about a new high-voltage transmission line that would cut through farmland.
This cycle, she’s especially leaned into the rare House endorsement from Sanders, who’s built his own populist and anti-establishment brand. At a Sunday rally on the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus, she introduced the Vermont senator by saying: “Everyone forgets he’s an independent.”
Potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders see the stakes of winning back rural-heavy districts as well.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is traveling to Minnesota’s 1st District on Sunday to rally voters for Democrat Jake Johnson in Rochester.
It’s one of the many once-safe red seats that Republicans and Trump’s political operation are scrambling to shore up in these final days, with Johnson and Finstad running in what’s become a highly competitive race. Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, then a high school teacher, won a House seat here in a 2006 wave election amid voter anger at the Iraq war and their GOP incumbent. Also that year, a local prosecutor named Amy Klobuchar swept to a big Senate win, part of a Democratic surge across the region.
Democrats are hopeful that history is repeating, with high costs and a president unpopular because of a Middle East incursion hurting the GOP in the region and nationally.
“The price of diesel is devastating,” said Ted Winter, who farms with his son near Fulda.
“We’ve patterned a lot of our campaign after Amy Klobuchar, who famously shows up in every single county every single year,” Johnson, a math teacher, said in an interview. “And so I just said, ‘hey guys, let’s host a town hall in every county.’”
National Republicans for months brushed off concerns from local Republicans that Finstad’s race was growing increasingly competitive. Pro-Trump super PACs only recently injected their first cash of the race into the district, with the latest total quickly hitting several million dollars — an unheard-of prospect just a few weeks ago. The National Republican Congressional Committee spent for the first time in the race Tuesday. Democratic groups, on the other hand, started spending in the contest over the summer — and the leading House Democratic super PAC just responded with a $2.2 million money dump and a last-minute TV ad campaign.
Finstad said in an interview at a local textile mill in Faribault that he flagged money concerns to national Republicans weeks ago. He also raised those concerns to GOP Whip Tom Emmer, who is from Minnesota.
“We raised that with anybody and everybody that would want to hear it,” Finstad said. “From a global perspective, people were like, ‘Well, you won by 18, you’re fine.’ And, you know, those of us in Minnesota know that this district has always had kind of an independent streak to it.”
But Finstad said the tariffs were helping farmers in some cases, and the massive fraud scandals in Minnesota are keeping Trump voters and Republicans engaged in the final days. That’s one particular drag that could hit Johnson in this area.
Democrats are still optimistic.
“Things are changing in rural America right now,” Klobuchar, who’s now running for governor, told a crowd of volunteers and voters alongside Johnson on Sunday, at a local park in Fairmont. She pointed not only to the tightening 1st District race, but also to neighboring Iowa as proof.
Republicans have grown particularly worried about the Hawkeye State as they’ve privately come to believe Democrats will flip at least one of three congressional seats there. And, they’re alarmed about the prospect of wider losses across a state Trump won by 13 percentage points, should disillusioned Republican voters decide not to turn out in the numbers they need.“Does it feel good to be running neck-and-neck against Democrats in Iowa just days out? No,” said one GOP strategist in Iowa working on a House race. But they noted that long-term demographic make-up of most Iowa districts do not favor Democrats.
Speaker Mike Johnson is traveling to Rep. Zach Nunn’s Des Moines-based district in Iowa on Wednesday to help save the seat. Republican Joe Mitchell, who is running in the nearby seat to replace GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, is locked within the margin of error in his race against Democrat Lindsay James, according to two people with direct knowledge of internal polls. And Republicans are largely assuming GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller Meeks’ seat just to the south of that is already gone as she faces Democrat Christina Bohannan.
“The tariffs, the Iran war, the health care cuts, these things are just brutal for the people of Southeast Iowa,” Bohannan said in an interview. That’s why national and local Democrats alike worry if they can’t pull out key wins in the upper Midwest this election season, they will continue to be shut out of power for years. They’re keenly aware that, no matter how frustrated rural voters are with Republicans, they’re still wary of the national Democratic party brand.
“I don’t approach the door as a Democrat,” Jeremiah Fredrickson, who’s running to flip a Wisconsin state assembly seat, said in an interview before he knocked doors in the small, GOP-leaning village of Elk Mound. “My goal is to try to be a representative. I think way too many of our politicians have gotten to the point where they go to Madison, and they forget about the people back here.”
At one door, an older man with white hair looked down at the pamphlet Serrano — the Democratic volunteer for Cooke and Fredrickson — was holding. “You can keep that,” he replied. “I’m not voting for them. No way in hell.”
Van Orden, the Wisconsin Republican racing to hold his seat against Cooke, is skeptical his district’s voters will swing back toward Democrats. That’s despite high prices and Trump’s current unfavorability.
The retired Navy SEAL rode in on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to the Boon Docks bar as part of a multi-day district tour. After greeting patrons, he told Blue Light News in an interview that Cooke is a “flat-out socialist.” He dismissed Sanders’ draw, saying that “voters here hate career politicians.”
“Is it politically convenient that we’re fighting with the Iranians now? The answer is no,” Van Orden said. “I don’t want gas prices to go up. I also don’t want my grandkids fighting the Iranians … 50 years from now.” But he’s counting on Trump voters to turn out for him.
Across the bar, Deb Bork, who’s in her 70s and lives up the road in the small town of Independence, said she was sticking with Van Orden and Trump, regardless of the “hardship” of higher gas prices, saying the war was a blip compared to the length of other U.S. wars.
She still trusts Trump.
“He feels it’s in the best interest of our country to protect us,” she added. “For so long we’ve been out there protecting everybody else and forgetting about the people that live here.”
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