Some Arab leaders in southeast Michigan have heard enough from Vice President Kamala Harris and are now encouraging their community to throw their support behind former President Donald Trump.
"Just look where we’re at right now and look where we were before," Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi told reporters during an online call Monday.
Bazzi’s comments represent a growing sentiment among some Arab leaders in Michigan, where there has been increasingly negative sentiment around the Biden administration’s handling of the conflicts in the Middle East.
In Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit with the largest per capita Muslim population in the United States, a movement bubbled up earlier this year to "Abandon Biden" during the state’s Democratic primary. While President Biden was still able to secure the nomination, leaders of the campaign against him hailed its success, noting that over 100,000 people failed to support the president and arguing they would continue to use their influence as the general election drew near.
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The Democrats' disconnect with many Arabs and Muslims in Dearborn has failed to improve since, even after Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and Harris’ quick ascent to the top of the ticket, leaving Democrats with a possible large hole in their typical coalition of support in a state that could make or break their chances at winning this year’s election.
However, questions remained whether members of a community who have traditionally voted Democrat for so long and where Trump was deeply unpopular could suddenly turn around and support his latest bid for the White House, something Bazzi is now encouraging them to do.
"I can tell you, a lot of people are actually swaying to voting for Trump because they really don’t like what going on," Bazzi said. "They think their future doesn’t look bright with the administration and the way they’re heading."
Bazzi was joined on the call by Hamtramck, Michigan, Mayor Amer Ghalib, who leads the nation’s only Muslim-run city and made waves last month by announcing his endorsement of Trump.
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"The current administration has done nothing, and the war is expanding to other countries, and it could be a regional war and maybe even World War Three," Ghalib said. "President Trump keeps saying that he will end the chaos in the Middle East, and I talked to him personally, I told him ‘your strength is that no wars happened during your term, so we want it to stay that way.’"
While Ghalib acknowledged that some of Trump’s past rhetoric offended those in the community, his outreach since has made a difference. That outreach has worked, the mayor argued, noting that there is a "portion of the community that’s considering supporting Trump, and historically, those people used to vote Democrat."
One of those people is Dearborn’s Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center founder and Imam Husham Al-Hussainy, who told reporters on the call that he is now leaning towards support for Trump.
"I lean towards Mr. Trump because I found him closer to the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran. Because I support peace, no war," he said, adding that the country "deserves to have a strong leader where he can bring peace in this world."
Meanwhile, Ghalib had a message for those in his community thinking about voting for a third party or sitting out, arguing that nothing could be worse than keeping Democrats in power.
"Some people are trying to vote for a third party because they predict that President Trump may do the same thing or even worse," he said. "What could be worse than what’s going on now? There’s nothing worse."
