The Mideast War Threatens Harris in Michigan as Arab Voters Reject Her

A year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Kamala Harris faces deepening Democratic fractures in a crucial state. Interviews suggest that her support from Muslim and Arab Americans is drying up.

One year after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, the relentless and escalating violence in the Middle East is threatening the Democratic coalition in the United States. Arab American voters show signs of abandoning the Democratic ticket, while some Jews worry about their future in a party their families embraced for generations.

Nowhere are those tensions more politically important than in Michigan, a crucial battleground state with a significant population of Arab American and Muslim voters.

Four years ago, President Biden won Michigan with strong backing from many of those Americans. But interviews this weekend with voters, activists and community leaders in the Detroit area suggested that support for the Democratic ticket has not merely eroded among Arab Americans and Muslims.

In some neighborhoods, it has all but vanished.

“I personally don’t know anyone who would vote for Harris,” said Imam Hassan Qazwini, who founded the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights and said that he planned to vote third party this year after supporting Mr. Biden in 2020 in his personal capacity. Initially, he said, many Muslims hoped that Vice President Kamala Harris would “show some even-handedness and fairness in handling the conflict. But unfortunately, that was wishful thinking.”

Many of those voters are outraged by the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel as it has waged war in Gaza and now in Lebanon. That sentiment is intensifying as the fighting spreads across the Middle East less than a month before Election Day — and it is a warning sign for Ms. Harris in a closely divided state.

The discontent is palpable on the ground in Michigan, which has more than 300,000 residents with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, though high-quality polling on Arab American and Muslim voters is scant. In nearly two dozen interviews this weekend with a range of these voters across levels of religious observance and familial countries of origin, just two said they were voting for her.

Michigan also has a sizable Jewish community, historically one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies and one with a wide range of opinions on Israel’s government. After years of speculation over whether Republicans could expand their support among Jewish voters — they have generally struggled to do so — some Democrats wonder whether this year might be different.

“Given how much Oct. 7 woke the Jewish community up to Jew hatred and rising antisemitism, it has very much hardened some people,” said Representative Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat from suburban Detroit, who represents a large Jewish community and expects most to back Ms. Harris. But, she added, “I do know some more independent-type voters, and I have heard from friends with young families, of friends of theirs who have traditionally voted Democrat, that they feel a little split.”

‘Either third-party or Trump’ for many Arab and Muslim voters

If Arab American and Muslim voters have found common ground with both Republicans and Democrats in the past, for some in this year’s presidential election, one of those parties is off the table.

“Most people that I know are either third-party or Trump,” said Fatima Klait, 25, a nurse who lives in Dearborn and said she intended to vote third-party after backing Mr. Biden in 2020. “I would rather have us not be involved in Israel whatsoever. But I do believe that Trump would do less damage overseas.”

Like Ms. Klait, Sereene Hijazi, 28, is part of Michigan’s significant Lebanese American population. Ms. Hijazi, who had long considered herself a Democrat, she said she had no interest in Mr. Trump. But she could not bring herself to support Ms. Harris, either, she said, explaining that she was pained at the idea of American-supplied weapons endangering members of her family.

“I feel very guilty,” said Ms. Hijazi, who said she was leaning toward Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who campaigned in Dearborn on Sunday. “A lot of Arab Americans feel guilty because, like, we’re here, we’re safe, but it’s our tax dollars that are killing our relatives and people we know.”

A Dearborn resident, Kamel Ahmad Jawad, was killed during an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last week, his family said, further outraging the community.

To Ms. Hijazi’s husband, Hussein Beydoun, 27, Mr. Trump’s message about pulling back from foreign intervention was also appealing.

“He cares more about what’s going on in America,” said Mr. Beydoun, who said he supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but was now backing Mr. Trump. “The Democratic Party seems to care more about what’s going on in other countries versus their own people.”

For some of Ms. Harris’s supporters, the idea that Muslim or Arab voters would consider Mr. Trump at all is incomprehensible.

It was Mr. Trump, they note, who blocked citizens of predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States; who has a long history of making racist and inflammatory comments; and who recently seemed to encourage Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Right-wing supporters of Israel often consider him an ally.

Ms. Harris and her campaign have been conducting outreach to Arab American and Muslim voters in Michigan and beyond. She met with community leaders while in the state on Friday. And she has also received some endorsements from current and former Arab and Muslim elected officials and leaders, and from the group Emgage Action, which focuses on building Muslim American political power.

Dr. Iltefat Hamzavi, the board chair of Emgage Foundation — Emgage’s nonpartisan voter engagement arm — said varied views about the election reflected the diversity of Muslim Americans, a group that includes Arab Americans but also Black and South Asian Americans. Ms. Harris, who would be the first female president, is Black and South Asian.

But, he added, “The biggest group is just, ‘I just don’t believe in the system.’”

In a statement, Nasrina Bargzie, the director of Muslim and Arab American outreach for the Harris campaign, said Ms. Harris was working “to earn every vote, unite our country, and to be a president for all Americans.”

“Vice President Harris has been steadfast in her support of our country’s diverse Muslim community,” Ms. Bargzie said.

The Uncommitted National Movement, which organized protest efforts against Mr. Biden during the primary race this year, has said it will not endorse Ms. Harris. But it has also warned supporters not to back Mr. Trump or third-party candidates.

Imam Qazwini doubted that many Muslims would support Mr. Trump, beyond the handful of endorsements he has received, including from the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich.

“As a community, we’re not foolish,” he said.

‘So raw, and so difficult’ for American Jews

If the pain of Muslim and Arab American voters was tangible in Dearborn, the anxiety and anguish of Jewish voters were just as evident in some Detroit suburbs.

Outside Temple Shir Shalom in West Bloomfield Township, a display of empty chairs and a crib was set up, a nod to the roughly 250 people taken hostage from Israel one year ago, including Kfir Bibas, who was 9 months old at the time. He is still unaccounted for.

State Representative Noah Arbit, a Democrat who represents the area, was pacing before the display, reflecting on the ways Oct. 7 and its aftermath had affected the Democratic Party in his state.

“It’s ripped the 2020 Biden coalition asunder,” he said. That, he said, is partly “why this election is so close.”

In an interview, he emphasized distinctions between the Democratic Party and its activist left, saying that some progressives, especially on college campuses, expressed opposition to Israel in ways that veered into antisemitism and intimidation.

The risk, he said, is that some voters this year may conflate the two.

“Kamala Harris is the opposite of these college protesters, but there are a lot of people who will say, ‘Look at what’s going on on the college campuses, that’s what Kamala wants to bring,’” he said. “It’s false. But that is how they are making their vote.”

In interviews with Jewish voters this week, while some expressed unease with the party, many expressed their antipathy for Mr. Trump, and there was nothing like the electoral backlash evident among Muslim voters.

Yet there were other signs of the toll that the year of conflict has taken.

In an interview inside Temple Shir Shalom, Rabbi Michael L. Moskowitz lamented that longstanding interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims had largely collapsed after the Hamas-led attacks.

“It’s been so raw, I think still, and so difficult, and so we’ve been focused inward and making sure our people are OK,” he said. “I’d welcome those conversations, though, too, right, but I don’t want to debate Israel’s right to exist.”

Imam Qazwini, who has made inflammatory statements about Israel over the years, spoke at Rabbi Moskowitz’s synagogue to show solidarity after the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.

But he, too, is focused on his own community these days.

“If the war stops, and the sooner it stops the better, I think we may go back to our dialogue,” he said. “But our focus now, today, is not on the dialogue, to be honest with you. It’s on cease-fire.”