If 75% of the roughly 200,000 Muslim Americans in Michigan cast their vote on November 5, Vice President Kamala Harris will be virtually guaranteed to lose the state and its critical 15 electoral votes.
That’s what one activist group in the state, Drive for 75, believes. And to achieve it, Rex Nazarko and his organization are barnstorming Mosques, hosting voter promotion sermons and knocking on thousands of doors across the state.
“What was a guarantee for [a Harris loss] to happen? We tried with different percentages and different turnouts, and with the 75% number, again, accounting only for the Muslim community, not other communities, not other allies, not other progressives. It essentially guaranteed a 99.9% likelihood of the vice president losing the election in Michigan, if 75% of [the community turned out],” Nazarko told the Caller, explaining that they ran numerous mathematical simulations to inform their strategy.
“We ran that simulation 10,000 times, and almost every time that was the case. So that’s how we got the Drive for 75 call to action and idea,” he explained.
Though Harris hasn’t faced nearly as many pro-Palestinian protestors as President Joe Biden, efforts to thwart the Democrats’ presidential aspirations haven’t disappeared. Muslim Americans told the Daily Caller they are working to push their community to vote for Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, or even in some cases former President Donald Trump, in an effort to hold Harris accountable for how she and Biden have handled the Israel-Hamas war.
In light of some establishment Muslim “endorsements” of Kamala Harris, patronizing our community as a politically immature and hesitant monolith, claiming they represent us, I put some thoughts down in this article highlight the strategic interest for Muslims to NOT vote for… https://t.co/ZZWQrnm5Ss
— Rex Nazarko (الباني) (@RexAlbanii) September 26, 2024
“[The Muslim American community] lost their faith in the Democratic Party and the Democratic administration, so they’re out to kind of hold them accountable. And I don’t want to necessarily say punish, but it is also a punishment vote, in a sense. I think that they’re desperate. We’re desperate. It’s also a vote of desperation. You know, we want to see an end to this bloodshed and this genocide as soon as possible,” Nazarko told the Caller.
The Michiganders who spoke to the Caller acknowledged Trump might not have the Israel-Gaza policy the community hopes to see, but their effort is more focused on punishing the current administration than about who they could vote into office. The movement is also about sending a message to politicians that their voice cannot be ignored, Democrat Khalid Turaani, co-chair of the Abandon Biden campaign in Michigan, told the Caller. (Stream Daily Caller’s latest documentary ‘Cleaning Up Kamala’ HERE)
“We’re hoping that, whether Republicans or Democrats, will not take our vote for granted. So if it is [spoiling Harris’s chances], I hope it teaches not only the Democrats but the Republicans that, you go against your voters, you go against people as well. You continue to support a genocide, you’re going to lose,” Turaani told the Caller.
We’ve launched a dedicated website to host a letter signed by Muslim American Imams, urging Muslim Americans to consider voting for a third party.
Please note, this letter is NOT an endorsement of any specific political party.
The website will be updated daily with a growing…
— Abandon Harris (@Abandonbiden24) October 1, 2024
Before Biden dropped out of the race for the White House, his primary victory was stunted by a large protest vote across several key swing states, including Michigan. Campaigns like “Abandon Biden” pushed Arab and Muslim Americans to vote for the “uncommitted” ballot option in protest of his Gaza policy. And while 81.1% of Democratic primary voters chose Biden, 13.3% — more than 100,000 people — chose the uncommitted option.
In light of Biden exiting the presidential race, Abandon Biden switched its name to Abandon Harris, even though the vice president has indicated she would be tougher on Israel than her boss.
“She parrots the same line of ‘well on Oct. 7’ and okay, there has been more than 50,000 deaths. Two-thirds of them are women and children and she can’t get past ‘well on October 7.’ And we feel that this callous disregard to the lives of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of not only their infrastructure, the entire place in Gaza has been decimated, and and she just continues to parrot the same line. Meanwhile, continuing to support the Israeli assault and the Palestinian civilians and their lives and their buildings and their every aspect of their lives is under assault,” Turaani told the Caller.
“This administration represented by Biden and Harris continues to support that. The other thing is the fact that every effort to stop the genocide has been thwarted by this administration,” Turaani continued.
To cost Harris the state, not every Muslim American is expected to vote for Trump. In fact, some groups told the Caller they expect the community to not vote for either. Just five days ago, Abandon Harris threw its support behind Stein, who also has the backing of some socialist groups in the U.S due to her anti-capitalist economic positioning. And the Green Party seems to know its bid could spoil Harris’ candidacy.
WOW! At an event before introducing @DrJillStein, Kshama Sawant ADMITS that Stein can’t win and is only in the race to prevent Kamala Harris from winning.
Make sure everyone sees this! pic.twitter.com/qQAPu5HgIe
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) October 7, 2024
Not fighting to punish Harris for her support for the genocide is disastrous strategy for the antiwar movement.
Trump is absolutely not an alternative.
But a sitting Vice Pres backing genocide needs to pay the price. The message is for both Dems & Reps. Genocide is a red line.
— Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) October 10, 2024
“We need to be clear about what our goals are, we are not in a position to win the White House. But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan,” Kshama Sawant, a former Seattle City Council Member and self-described socialist, said to cheers at a recent rally for Stein.
A spokesperson for the Stein campaign referred the Caller to Abandon Harris’s endorsement, adding that it “outlines Muslim support for the campaign.”
“We’ve conducted an internal informal poll, we’ve cross-referenced with other polls taken in the state and nationwide, and we’ve been speaking to thousands of community members for the past weeks. The sentiment seems either Jill Stein or third-party, and then Trump and then Harris is at the very bottom. So if we just get the community out, we know that the natural distribution of both is going to fall towards that third party,” Nazarko told the Caller.
Vice chair of the 12th Congressional District Republican Committee, Stephanie Butler, who lives in Dearborn and is married to a Muslim, told the Caller that a deciding moment for the Muslim community in Michigan was former Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Harris.
“Here’s the new thing going around, people are saying that, ‘hello, she’s been endorsed by Dick Cheney.’ That tells you everything you need to know about this woman: that her intentions are war,” Butler told the Caller.
The owner of one of the most popular restaurants in Arab American majority Dearborn city in #Michigan just posted a full throttle endorsement for @realDonaldTrump as the only solution to bring back peace
(His family runs an amazing Yemeni restaurant called Sheeba , highly… pic.twitter.com/nH8rNMEtNi
— Oubai Shahbandar (@OS26) October 15, 2024
But a few weeks out from the election, some are still worried that the community may choose to stay home rather than go out to vote amid their anger.
“I feel like a majority of Muslims will vote for Jill Stein. There are a small portion that will vote for Trump,” Hassan Chami, a Dearborn resident, told the Caller. “The issue is, I fear that a lot of people may not want to vote at all. And if that’s the case, Kamala maybe can win Michigan.”
To address the concerns, Drive for 75 is blitzing the Muslim community. The effort currently has a civic representative and team captains assigned to each mosque that are building a sub team of volunteers and who each will be responsible for providing materials and election updates to 50 contacts within the community. Currently the plan is being implemented in 25 mosques, but will be expanded into more.
Within those mosques and other community centers, Drive for 75 is hosting turn out the vote events and using social media and text messages to push Muslim Americans to the polls. In the final two weeks of the election cycle, Drive for 75 expects to knock on 10,000 doors.
“Muslims are family-oriented and family-centered. We’re relying on the large networks that community members have to encourage one another,” Nazarko told the Caller.
Though polls show the race neck-and-neck in the state, there is a confidence among the community about what to expect.
“There’s no way [Harris] can win Michigan,” Butler told the Caller. “There’s just no way.”