At a recent campaign rally in Detroit, Vice President Kamala Harris was interrupted by people chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide.”
She swiftly shut the protests down: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Some Michigan voters evidently took her seriously. This week, Amer Ghalib, the Yemen-born mayor of Hamtramck, endorsed President Donald Trump less than 50 days before the election, signaling a potential opportunity for the former president to pick up votes in Michigan.
Elected in 2021, Ghalib became the town’s first Muslim mayor. Once a majority Polish enclave of Detroit, Hamtramck became the first Muslim-majority city in the country in 2013. Ghalib’s victory against incumbent mayor Karen Majewski ended Hamtramck’s century-long streak of Polish American mayors. That same year, Muslim candidates won all six city council seats for the first time. Today, Polish Americans make up just 5 percent of the town’s population.
With 93 percent of American Muslims voting for President Joe Biden in 2020, Hamtramck should be an easy win for Democrats. But the Israel–Hamas war has made strange bedfellows for some Muslim voters in Michigan.
Trump met privately with Ghalib ahead of a rally in Flint, Michigan, on Sept. 17. A few days later, Ghalib endorsed the former president in a post on Facebook:
President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles. Though it’s looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time. I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences.
Trump told Breitbart that he was “very impressed” with Ghalib, who “was a very big fan of the Trump administration because he saw no wars.”
The Israel–Hamas war has made for strange bedfellows — Ghalib among them. Support for Trump doesn’t always correlate with Republican policy positions.
Earlier this year, Ghalib and the Hamtramck city council voted unanimously to divest from Israeli companies. “For now, the city will do its best to refrain from buying, investing or contracting with companies that support the Israeli genocide,” the mayor said.
In March, Ghalib renamed a major street in Hamtramck “Palestine Avenue” in a show of solidarity with Palestinians. Referencing the protesters’ outburst at Harris’ rally in Detroit, Ghalib posted on Facebook in August that Kamala could finish her speech when “Netanyahu finishes his genocide.”
That Trump was a close ally of Israel throughout his presidency and maintains a “good relationship” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently not affected Ghalib’s support for the former president.
But Muslim Americans in Michigan aren’t a perfect ideological fit with Democrats either, despite voting nearly unanimously for progressive candidates. As a self-described “conservative Democrat,” Ghalib doesn’t agree with progressive liberal ideology. In 2023, he supported a resolution banning the display of LGBTQ flags on city property in Hamtramck. In nearby Dearborn, Muslim parents have made headlines for their opposition to sexually explicit LGBTQ books in school libraries.
“Thank you for changing the perception that all Muslim Americans are default ticket to Democratic Party,” Dearborn resident Khalil Othman said after Ghalib endorsed Trump.
A number of Muslim voters in Michigan like Ghalib are defecting because “the Biden-Harris administration is ‘directly contributing to the death and destruction of our home country and of our relatives overseas,’” says Soujoud Hamade, an Arab American living in the area.
For Hamade, Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Harris — and her embrace of his endorsement — was the last straw. “These aren’t the values that we as Democrats stood for. We were not the party of war,” she told the Midwesterner.
Similarly, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American whose district is just south of Hamtramck, has refused to endorse Harris in opposition to the vice president’s stance on Israel.
Throughout the election cycle, Muslim voters have made their discontent clear: Democrats need to earn their support. Harris has made some headway in her two months on the campaign trail, earning endorsements from far-left squad members Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the vice president hasn’t fully earned the trust of Muslim voters. In Michigan, where Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 150,000 votes, Harris can’t afford to lose the support of traditionally Democratic voters.
Recent polling from the Council on American Islamic Relations found that 12 percent of Michigan Muslim American voters plan to vote for Harris, with 18 percent supporting Trump and 40 percent planning to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Currently, polling shows Trump and Harris neck and neck in the state as Election Day approaches. Though the shift in support among Muslim voters is an exciting development, the population might not be big enough to truly threaten Harris’ chances at victory in the state.
Using data from the 2020 Religion census, political scientist Ryan Burge analyzed Michigan’s Muslim population and cast doubt on the hope that their votes could change the outcome of the election. Despite the high concentration of Muslims in Southeast Michigan, they make up only 2 percent of the state’s overall population. Considering immigration status and age, the population of eligible Muslim voters shrinks further, especially given the relative youth of America’s Muslim population.
Burge estimates that Muslim voters will cast about 1.8 percent of all ballots in Michigan this November, or just over 100,000 votes. With those votes split between the candidates, there’s no guarantee that support for Trump among Muslim voters like Ghalib will tip the scales in the GOP’s favor. But in a two-party system, the enemy of an enemy quickly becomes a friend.
Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
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