US Election 2024: Arab Americans Expect High Turnout in Michigan’s Dearborn

At At 9 p.m., there are only a few people milling around Lava Java, the smoky hookah lounge in Dearborn, Michigan, that is hosting the Arab Americans For Trump (AAFT) election watch party.

There may be more members of the international and local press here than participants.

But there is an air of confidence and pride among Arab Americans who say they have worked tirelessly since the spring to make sure former President Donald Trump’s campaign hears them. And in fact, he has become the only presidential candidate to come to their doorstep, to the capital of Arab America.

As one of seven swing states in the United States, Michigan is considered to be among those where even a small number of votes can determine the election outcome.

In 2020, the Democrats won, for example Michigan narrowly. Four years earlier, Trump won the state by just 10,000 votes.

Among the organizers is Syrian-American resident Wasel Yousaf, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and seemed greatly relieved that so many other Arabs now feel the same way.

“I can’t say just one thing. (Trump) is a great guy. He’s so different now from 2016. He’s so humble, so acceptable,” Yousaf told Middle East Eye.

“People are starting to love him now… he has shown love to everyone.”

Yousaf has been the Michigan point man for the AAFT and has been in regular contact with Massad Boulos, the Lebanese businessman who serves as a Trump adviser on Arab Americans. Boulos also happens to be the father-in-law of Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany.

Yousaf has met several of Trump’s family members and described the Trump clan as embodying family values ​​similar to the Arabs and their close-knit culture.

“The right person always has many many enemies,” Yousaf said.

Stepping outside to greet the latest arrival to the makeshift party, he picks up the mayor of Dearborn Heights, Bill Bazzi.

Bazzi spent 21 years in the US Marines, having emigrated from southern Lebanon at the age of 12 and encountered the civil war there. Unlike his better-known colleague in the city of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, Bazzi endorsed Trump.

“One of the biggest reasons I supported Trump is because he has preached the same thing: stop the war,” Bazzi told MEE.

His Dearborn Heights residents have struggled to afford basic necessities, he added, because “this economy is out of control” due to inflation in the post-Covid-19 era.

And although the Arabs have priorities, they are not individual voters.

“We don’t have good leadership in the White House,” he said. “I don’t know who runs this country.”

There seem to be even fewer people in this hookah lounge now as the media trickles out — even as Trump leads Harris in early results.

Arab Americans not ‘indifferent’

At McDonald Elementary, the sun was beginning to set and a traffic jam was building around the school. Today, the school was a polling place for precincts one and two in east Dearborn, a neighborhood that skews very heavily Arabic.

Outside, comedian and lawyer Amer Zahr’s booming voice could be heard around the premises: “Don’t forget to vote for the school board!” he said.

The Palestinian American and local resident is running for Dearborn’s school board — one of at least a half-dozen “down-ballot races” that civic engagement advocates here have pushed voters to get involved in, even if they would leave the top of the ballot empty and renounce all the presidential candidates.

Media from around the country were on the scene, including a New York Times staff writer who tried to conduct his own exit poll at the front doors.

Election officials here told MEE that turnout was very likely to exceed the 2020 numbers when polling stations closed. And back in 2020, there was no pre-election day, in-person voting to consider. They looked satisfied.

“A lot of people thought the Arab-American community would be indifferent and not come out and vote. That’s not true. It’s the opposite,” Zahr told MEE, between heckling incoming voters on the street.

“What is happening is that the Arab community is coming out and taking advantage of this historic opportunity to show that we can be an important factor (for change),” he said.

When voters went out, the overwhelming response to “Who did you vote for?” was either Donald Trump or Green Party candidate Jill Stein so far. More men appeared to have voted for Trump.