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.”
Adam Hamilton on faith, Trump and the fight for Kansas
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WORKING OUT THE KINKS: New York’s Department of Health began transitioning more than 147,000 Medicaid and Medicare Savings Program enrollees to an upgraded case management system about a year ago.
Since then, state officials say only a third of them have been able to automatically renew their coverage without assistance.
The shift is part of a $1.1 billion contract aimed at creating an automated system for Medicaid enrollees to receive real-time determinations on their eligibility for the two programs. While the new system is intended to create a seamless enrollment process, for many consumers it’s been riddled with challenges.
The initiative is part of a broader effort to move the Medicaid program away from local social services departments that still rely on paper applications and an outdated system in desperate need of overhaul. The state wants to transition the program to one centralized system run through its public health insurance marketplace, New York State of Health, according to officials.
Lindsay Heckler, managing attorney for policy at the nonprofit Center for Elder Law & Justice, said her firm has seen a surge in inappropriate denials.
“I’m not saying the new system shouldn’t be in place,” Heckler said. “But the concern is that the training and processes that are in place are preventing people from becoming eligible. My concern is that in the coming year they are moving more people into a system that doesn’t have the kinks worked out for the people that are in the system right now.”
The state began rolling out the new Medicaid Eligibility and Client Management system in September 2025. A second wave of more complex cases is expected to migrate to the new system between November 2027 and February 2028. And while state officials say the system — which was created by Deloitte Consulting through a $1.1 billion contract — was thoroughly tested by both the Health Department and the company, they concede that problems remain and are being addressed as they’re flagged.
Advocates describe the situation in starker terms. They say errors have put health care coverage in jeopardy for people who are 65 years and older, blind or disabled. They also told Blue Light News they’ve discovered inaccurate information being transferred, a flawed automated asset verification tool and state workers’ inability to manually override inappropriate denials.
Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment.
New York entered into a $177 million contract with Deloitte in August 2023. But that projected outlay has grown to $1.18 billion after the state quietly filed four amendments to the initial deal, which ended on March 31, 2025. The latest amendment included an $866 million extension along with a work plan modification, according to details of the contract listed in the Open Book New York database.
The Health Department said the contract extension will complete the migration of Medicaid enrollees to the new system, which includes more complex cases in the next wave, such as long-term care and nursing home patients. The contract also includes additional funding for Deloitte to conduct testing and ensure compliance with new federal requirements.
“This multi-year transition to a centrally administered model will replace the outdated, expensive, error-prone and inefficient paper-based system with a streamlined, user-friendly platform that better supports the health coverage needs of New Yorkers while reducing the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse,” Health Department spokesperson Cadence Acquaviva said in a statement. “At every step of the way, this transition and contract were subject to extensive federal review and approval by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”
Read more in Blue Light News Pro from Katelyn Cordero.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Join Blue Light News’s New York Outlook: Affordability, Industry & The Economy on Oct. 14 for live conversations about the business and policy decisions being made today — from City Hall to the State Capitol — that will shape the city’s economic future. The lineup includes New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, New York City Economic Development Corp. CEO Anthony Shorris, Partnership for NYC CEO Steven Fulop, Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein, Charles H. Revson Foundation President Maria Torres-Springer, and more. Register now to attend in person or watch the livestream.
From the Capitol
JACOBS WINS: State Democratic Committee Chair Jay Jacobs handily won a new two-year term on the job, receiving 82 percent of the weighted vote at a party gathering in Westchester today.
Jacobs — who angered the left last year by declining to endorse then-Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani in the general election — faced a challenge from Otsego County chair Caitlin Ogden. He preached unity as his victory message, inviting Ogden to join his leadership team in a “substantive” role.
“This party has got to come to an understanding that our first priority is electing Democrats in whatever districts they’re in, and speak the language of the people in those districts,” Jacobs said. “All sides of our party need to learn to listen, to understand, to respect each other. There should be no vitriol inside the Democratic Party tent.”
Party members have traditionally supported the governor’s choice for chair. Gov. Kathy Hochul never publicly wavered in her support for Jacobs, making clear in recent weeks he was still her pick.
“I want to thank him for accepting the weight, the responsibilities,” she told party officials today. “Not the easiest job in the state. But he has done it in a way that has brought us together.”
Jacobs, who also heads the Nassau County Democratic Committee, has chaired the state party under the past three governors, serving from 2009-2012 and since 2019. If he completes his new two-year stint, he’d be just one term away from surpassing FDR kingmaker James Farley as the longest-tenured chair in the history of the New York Democrats. — Bill Mahoney
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
POLL POSITION: Republican Rep. Mike Lawler and Democratic challenger Cait Conley are locked in a tight race, per a new Emerson College/PIX11 poll.
Conley earned 48% of support to Lawler’s 46%, with 7% of respondents undecided.
Lawler has more crossover support than Conley does, and independents break for him. But the pollsters note the percentage of Democratic backing for him fell from an Emerson survey in October 2024, while Conley’s GOP support increased compared to Lawler’s 2024 opponent, former Rep. Mondaire Jones.
Hochul’s favorability is underwater in the district — 40% of respondents approve and 49% disapprove — though the pollsters acknowledge she’s on better footing than she was in 2024. President Donald Trump is also unpopular, with 43% approving his performance and 53% disapproving. The poll did not ask about Mamdani, a favorite foil of Lawler’s on the trail.
The survey was conducted among 400 likely voters from Sept. 27-29. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.9 percentage points. — Madison Fernandez
TRUMP TO CNY: Trump is considering a trip to upstate New York on Oct. 9 to appear alongside Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
The event is being considered for central New York, but has not been finalized, said a fourth person. The people were granted anonymity to disclose the private conversations about the potential trip.
Blakeman’s campaign did not comment and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Trump previously appeared on Long Island this summer to rally with Blakeman and Republican House candidates.
Read more from Blue Light News’s Nick Reisman.
FROM CITY HALL
BILLIONAIRE’S ZO: Mamdani hosted fifteen business leaders — several of them billionaires — at Gracie Mansion yesterday for the inaugural meeting of his Business Advisory Council.
The council brings together business executives across industries to help guide the city’s economic policy and shepherd growth and innovation. Despite decrying the ultra wealthy, Mamdani welcomed input from billionaires such as Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya and Jefferson River Capital Chairman Tony James on how to address the affordability crisis, which has inhibited their ability to recruit top talent.
The council also discussed potential plans to convert unused office space across the city into arts and research hubs, according to a spokesperson for the mayor.
While he was welcoming other business execs to his home, one of the mayor’s biggest billionaire foes, Ken Griffin, was announcing his $3 billion donation to Carnegie Mellon University, the largest single donation in the history of American higher education.
Most of that money is earmarked to build the university a new campus in Miami — months after Griffin said the mayor’s rhetoric prompted him to “double down” on investments in Florida, rather than New York.
The Mamdani-Griffin beef swelled this spring when the mayor posed in front of Griffin’s $238 million penthouse in a social media video promoting his pied-à-terre tax. In the post, Mamdani framed the billionaire as a prime target of his tax-the-rich agenda.
Griffin responded by calling the video “creepy and weird,” saying his plans to further invest outside of New York were “an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor’s poor decision.”
“We will welcome anyone’s support, anyone’s involvement, and we will always do so because this is a city that belongs to all who live here,” Mamdani said when asked about Griffin’s historic donation. — Molly Reinmann
IN OTHER NEWS
— RETREAT: NYC first lady Rama Duwaji reportedly sojourned at an Islamic wellness retreat with a history of calling for the destruction of Israel, as her husband was rolling out his blueprint to combat antisemitism. (Washington Free Beacon)
— CHATBOT GOVERNANCE: The Mamdani administration is planning to unroll new AI safeguards, including cracking down on chatbots used in customer service and launching a formal study of AI assistants. (POLITICO Pro)
— SPEEDING THINGS UP: Mamdani’s administration unveiled 12 districts where housing will be fast-tracked. (POLITICO Pro)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
Republicans know President Donald Trump’s unpopularity poses a big problem for them in November. They also recognize he may be their only option to avoid a wipeout.
Five weeks before Election Day, many Republicans are facing a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don’t dilemma. Some candidates in close races are wary of alienating undecided voters by campaigning alongside Trump and the baggage that comes with him: High gas prices, voters’ persistent economic concerns and the prolonged war in Iran.
But keeping the president at arm’s length could make it harder to turn out the low-propensity base voters they need — voters that only Trump has been able to bring to the polls.
“These guys are in a pickle,” said one national GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape, like others in this article. “They may not want Trump to come to the district, but there are still things that Trump can do to help.”
Asked what would happen if Trump campaigned in a battleground state where their candidates were running, another GOP operative working on midterm races said: “I suspect my candidates would come down with COVID.”
But the candidates may not have much of a choice. Trump is increasingly inserting himself into the election in the closing stretch, ramping up his campaign travel with a slate of stops scheduled in red states, repeatedly imploring voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot and, most recently, appearing in taxpayer-funded campaign-style ads that the White House has claimed are Public Service Announcements.
Some Republicans have encouraged Trump’s team not to send the president to a blue-leaning Omaha district and other key districts where his approval rating is underwater ahead of Election Day, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Brinker Harding is running in the Omaha seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.); his campaign didn’t respond when asked if he’ll attend Trump’s upcoming rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, about a two-hour drive away.
Others have said similar things.
“They’ve called me four times now to see if we want him to come, and I’ve said no,” one senior Republican involved in a House GOP battleground race in a district Trump safely won in 2024 told Blue Light News.
Another Republican operative familiar with Republican midterm strategy said the party views its role — and Trump’s — primarily as driving GOP turnout, while the work of persuading moderates, independents and other swing voters falls more heavily on individual candidates.
“Where the president is going is being decided very strategically, to areas where we are trying to boost turnout among Republican voters,” the operative said. “We’re not going to be sending him into areas where it would necessarily be hurtful to our candidates.”
Others in red states that are increasingly competitive acknowledge that if they want to rally the MAGA base to the degree necessary to hold onto key seats, no one can deliver like Trump.
“He’s a turnout machine for the Republican Party, the president is,” said Ohio GOP Chair Alex Triantafilou, who will welcome Trump to his state on Saturday. “I certainly know what some of the national polling and some of the pundits have to say about this. But he is always welcome to Ohio because we know that he fires our people up.”
Not everyone thinks Trump is a net-positive even in places he comfortably won.
A national GOP operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there are “no indications that there are enough turn out voters to overcome dropping some persuasion voters.”
Outgoing North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said he doesn’t think it would be helpful for Trump to campaign in his state — which the president won in all three of his presidential runs, and where former RNC chair Michael Whatley is struggling to tighten the race against former Gov. Roy Cooper.
“Not in my opinion — just if you take a look at the votes — you take a look at the independents. I don’t think he’s the one who’s going to get them out,” he told Blue Light News.
“I think [Trump’s] job is to get the people out who traditionally vote for him and don’t show up in off-year elections,” he added. “Our job [as candidates] is to then … create some separation. It’s not like you’re breaking your loyalty to the president. … So there are states I think he should go to, there are states I don’t think he should go to.”
The Whatley campaign, however, feels differently. “Who drives R turnout right now in NC — Trump or Tillis? We would welcome Trump back to NC,” said Whatley’s senior adviser, Jonathan Felts. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been to North Carolina to campaign with Whatley in recent weeks.
Trump’s upcoming stop in a red corner of Ohio outside Dayton is part of a broader campaign swing that reflects the political bind. Other stops scheduled include in deep-red states like Oklahoma and Alabama, as well as in red states with key Senate contests including Ohio, Nebraska and Alaska.
Ironically, the expanding battleground map could make Trump more useful to Republicans in some of the places they are most worried about. As the fight has spread into states and districts he won by double digits, simply turning out more of his base may be enough to make a difference.
The White House argued Trump is the “unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party.”
“No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the President understands how to communicate with them,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said.
The Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee also said Trump is still a valuable turnout tool, and their candidates are eager to have the president visit their districts and to appear with him on the campaign trail. The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
But some of the voters Republicans most need Trump to activate — especially blue-collar white voters in rural areas who came out to vote for him but often skip voting in the midterms — are themselves unhappy with his presidency.
Recent Blue Light News polling found that even some of Trump’s strongest supporters — those who identify as MAGA — are souring on his handling of key issues. A Blue Light News Poll in August found that a 44% plurality of MAGA Trump voters said the Iran war has made things more expensive for them, while 38% said the war has had no real impact on their costs.
“It’s really Trump’s voting base that’s feeling the pain of Trump the most,” said another Republican operative involved in several battleground races across the country, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape.“They have to turn those people out. But those people are pissed at Trump, so it’s this weird dynamic of like: ‘Does he help? Does he hurt? Can he go and encourage the disenfranchised, the really pissed off Republican Trump voter?’” the operative said. “That’s really going to be what decides the outcome of this election.”
It’s noteworthy which GOP candidates are enthusiastically coming out to Trump’s rallies — and which are sitting out or staying mum on their plans.
A spokesperson confirmed that Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), who is locked in a tough race in a state Trump won by double-digits, will attend Trump’s upcoming rally outside of Dayton; a spokesperson for Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, did not respond to an inquiry about Ramaswamy’s attendance plans, nor did spokespeople for the trio of GOP House candidates running in Ohio’s competitive 1st, 7th and 9th Districts.
Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate candidate in Iowa, recently said the Iran war needs to be “brought to a successful and immediate end,” in a rare public break with Trump. Hinson also did not attend a campaign rally Vice President JD Vance held in western Iowa in mid-September. She did, however, appear in the Oval Office behind Trump earlier this week when he announced a plan to build a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa.
But with an ever-darkening environment, some Republicans see any efforts to reverse course as better than nothing.
“Everybody sees the polling,” said Daniel Garza, a Texas Republican strategist and president of the conservative LIBRE Initiative. “Is the polling accurate? I have no idea. All I know is that turnout is going to be key to this, and anything helps right now, at this point.”
Jordain Carney and Lisa Kashinsky contributed.
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