Rep. Rashida Tlaib Endorses Protest Vote Against Biden In Michigan Democratic Primary

Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, lent her support Saturday to get Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s presidential primary on Feb. 27.

The move comes as many Arab Americans and Muslim leaders remain critical of President Joe Biden’s refusal to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, where the death toll in Israel’s retaliatory assault has climbed to over 28,000. 

“It is important, as you all know, to not only march against the genocide, not only make sure that we’re calling our members of Congress and local electeds,” Tlaib, who in early November accused Biden of supporting “genocide” in Gaza, said. “It is also important to create a voting bloc, something that is a bullhorn to say, ‘Enough is enough. We don’t want a country that supports wars and bombs and destruction.’”

Tlaib’s comments were delivered in front of a civic center in Dearborn, a suburb of approximately 110,000 people outside of Detroit that has one of the highest percentages of Muslim and Arab Americans in the US, according to the 2020 census.

The community was reportedly forced to increase its security presence earlier this month after a Wall Street Journal op-ed labeled it “America’s Jihad Capital,” generating what Abdullah Hammoud, the first Arab American Muslim mayor of Dearborn, described as an “alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city.”

Many local families have ties to Palestine and have seen family members killed in Israel’s assault on the territory. 

Tlaib’s endorsement makes her the most high-profile Democrat so far to get behind the so-called “Listen to Michigan” campaign. The effort began in early February, with community organizers and some 30 Democratic officials—including Hammoud—backing the protest vote. The group hopes to marshal 10,000 “uncommitted” votes to its cause, roughly equal to the margin by which former President Donald Trump won the all-important swing state in 2016.

The Michigan effort has also received an endorsement from former Democratic Representative Andy Levin, a progressive Jewish politician who represented the state from 2020 until the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies poured millions of dollars into a primary to successfully unseat him in 2022. “I am working with some people who feel like they will never vote for Joe Biden, but there are many, many, many I feel will vote for Joe Biden on Nov. 5 if he changes course,” Levin recently told The New York Times. “This is the best way I can help Joe Biden.”

Last week, the effort earned a new institutional backer: Our Revolution, a nonprofit that came out of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid, announced that it would be sending emails to 87,000 members in Michigan and 225,000 supporters elsewhere asking them to vote “uncommitted” to “push Biden to change course on Gaza now.” Notably, however, Sanders himself declined to support the effort.​​ “Bernie is supporting the President’s re-election and wants him to do well in the Michigan primary and elsewhere,” a Sanders spokesperson told the Huffington Post.

The Michigan campaign underscores the challenges President Biden faces in the Wolverine state, whose Muslim population of around 240,000 was instrumental in helping him win in 2020. In late early February, the President dispatched top aides to the state after community leaders in southeastern Michigan refused to meet with Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, citing the President’s approach to the war. 

Though Biden has become more outwardly aggravated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent weeks, he has largely kept US policy toward Israel in place, which has continued to frustrate many local leaders and Democratic voters.

“Senior Biden officials were talking about the mistakes as more of a messaging problem,” Abbas Alawieh, a former top Tlaib staffer and current leader of the “Listen to Michigan” campaign, who met with Biden officials in early February, told Business Insider. “But we’re not looking for language shifts. We’re not looking for sympathy from this administration. We’re looking for action from President Biden that saves lives.”