Activists from prominent pro-Palestinian groups said Vice President Kamala Harris lost their support during the 2024 elections because they were dissatisfied with her stance on the war in Gaza.
With pro-Palestinian Michigan voters rejecting the Democratic ticket in historic numbers on Election Day, Uncommitted co-founder Layla Elabed explained the trend by saying President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to bring peace in the region resonated with people frustrated by Harris’s association with former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.
“There’s been many ways in which Harris chose the path of Liz Cheney and the donor class on a range of issues, and abandoning working families in places like Dearborn, who make up the people Democrats claim to be fighting for,” Elabed said during an interview NBC News.
Harris enlisted Cheney’s endorsement during her bid for the White House and even held a panel discussion with the former lawmaker in Michigan just weeks before the election.
A vocal proponent of the wars the United States has engaged in during her political career, Cheney has often invoked criticism from anti-war activists who have labeled her a warmonger and claimed she supports the “military-industrial complex” that is responsible for countless deaths.
Farah Khan, a lifelong Democrat and co-chair of Michigan’s Abandon Harris campaign in Michigan said that “people wanted to hear” Trump’s pledge to “end the war” in Gaza, noting that the president-elect made a concerted effort to court the state’s pro-Palestinian community.
“He at least, at least came and spoke to the Muslims. He heard them and said, ‘Okay, I will finish. I will end the war in the Middle East,’ even if he didn’t say, you know, a genocide, but he said he will bring peace,” she said. “And that’s what the people wanted to hear, and that’s why he got the votes,” Khan reflected in comments to the outlet.
“[Harris] says, ‘Oh, yeah, I feel bad.’ And the next day, they send billions of dollars again in weapons. I mean, you can’t even fool kids like this nowadays, let alone grown people who are your constituents, your voters,” she continued.
While some Uncommitted voters left the tops of their ballots blank after voicing frustration with the Democrats, Bryarr Misner, who worked as a campaign manager for the Abandon Harris campaign in Pittsburgh, ended up voting for Trump.
“We went through multiple avenues to try to be heard, and instead, we were ridiculed,” Misner said.
Elabed echoed the comments, saying Harris “never came to Dearborn,” a Michigan city that was the first Arab-American city in the U.S. that is located in Michigan. Dearborn ended up delivering for Trump after voting for President Joe Biden in 2020 with almost 70% of the vote.
“She never came to speak to families that were first-hand impacted by our U.S. policy decisions that ultimately killed their family members,” she added.
In contrast, Misner said that Trump “continuously came and he was in the community.”
“While I don’t believe that he’s going to enact policies that will benefit the community, he at least showed that he was willing to show up for the community,” he added.
The Biden administration has backed Israel during the Middle Eastern conflict that has raged for over 14 months, sparking outcry from Arab voters, particularly in Muslim-majority areas in Michigan, who had relatives killed in Gaza.
As she campaigned against Trump this fall, Vice President Kamala Harris largely aligned herself with the White House’s stance on the conflict, provoking anger from the Michigan-based pro-Palestinian Abandon Harris and Uncommitted movements, which called for an end to the hostilities in the Middle East. The disillusionment with Harris was particularly critical as Michigan is a crucial battleground state that holds some of the largest Arab-American populations in the country.
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Meanwhile, Trump prominently aligned himself with anti-war figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard during his campaign for a second term.
His strategy of pledging to bring a swift end to the war in the Middle East prominently gained traction with the Uncommitted-aligned mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan. Amer Ghalib, who heads one of the country’s only Arab-majority cities, backed Trump in a shocking endorsement foreshadowing the red wave that came on Election Day in the state.