Biden reelection campaign team travels to Michigan but is shunned by some Arab American leaders

FILE – Biden-Harris 2024 campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez speaks during a Biden-Harris 2024 campaign news conference, Nov. 7, 2023, in Miami. Chavez Rodriguez led a group of top Biden advisers to the Dearborn, Mich. area to better understand the electoral landscape heading into the 2024 election. But some Arab-American leaders, who have for months accused the president of being too supportive of Israel in its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, refused to meet with the campaign team. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — President Joe Biden ‘s campaign manager traveled to Michigan on Friday, where many Arab American leaders are enraged over the administration’s Israel policy, and found a number of leaders unwilling to meet — exposing a growing rift between the White House and groups otherwise loyal to Democratic causes in a critical swing state.

President Joe Biden walks off Air Force One upon arrival, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, at Duluth International Airport, in Duluth, Minn. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Biden’s reelection campaign, led a group of advisers to the Dearborn area. But some Arab American leaders, who have for months accused the president of being too supportive of Israel in its war with Hamas, declined to sit down with them.

A meeting between Rodriguez and Arab American and Muslim leaders was canceled Friday after pushback within the community, said Assad I. Turfe, a deputy Wayne County executive, who said he was tasked with coordinating the meeting.

Turfe said he reached out to more than 10 Arab American and Muslim leaders after being contacted by the Biden campaign on Wednesday. The leaders then spoke with community members, Turfe said, who made it clear they did not want them meeting Rodriguez.

“I don’t believe that the Biden administration, at the senior top level, understand how big of a problem this is and how upset and angry the community is,” Turfe said.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas has inflamed tensions between Jews and Muslims around the world but had an especially deep resonance in the Detroit area, which is home to several heavily Jewish suburbs and Dearborn, the city with the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud took to Twitter, formerly X, to sarcastically note Rodriguez’s travel while criticizing Biden for urging congressional leaders to quickly approve a $20 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

“Little bit of advice — if you’re planning on sending campaign officials to convince the Arab American community on why they should vote for your candidate, don’t do it on the same day you announce selling fighter jets to the tyrants murdering our family members,” Hammoud wrote.

The mayor’s office confirmed that he was invited as part of the group of Arab American leaders but said that he did not accept. Two Democratic state representatives, Alabas Farhat and Abraham Aiyash, were also invited to the meeting but could not attend.

“It’s unrealistic to expect that political conversations will re-secure our support for the president when only a ceasefire can truly re-open that door,” Farhat said in a statement He added that he was in favor of the meeting being canceled.

Aiyash, the second-ranking Democrat in the Michigan House, said he’s reached out to Biden officials multiple times to discuss the escalating tensions in Michigan’s Arab American community. He has yet to hear from them, even as Chavez Rodriguez comes to the state, he said.

“The conclusion that I’ve drawn from this is they don’t really see this as a legitimate problem. And it’s disturbing at best and at worst, it’s extremely dismissive and disrespectful,” said Aiyash, who is also the highest-ranking Arab or Muslim leader in the state.

The Biden campaign announced this week that deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, his 2020 campaign manager, was moving to his reelection campaign headquarters in Delaware, along with Mike Donilon, a senior adviser who is one of Biden’s longtime and most trusted, longtime political aides. The campaign insists the move isn’t part of a broader shakeup and that Rodriguez is still in charge.

A person familiar with Rodriguez’s schedule, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share details that haven’t been made public, said Rodriguez planned to meet with other Arab American leaders on Friday evening — meaning that the gathering others suggested was canceled was actually going forward.

The person also said that Rodriguez held multiple meetings across Detroit and Dearborn that have been in the works for weeks, and that included talking with many Michigan leaders, such as local elected officials and leaders from the state’s Arab and Palestinian American, Hispanic and Black communities.

The trip was part of the campaign’s and the Biden administration’s ongoing dialogue with core constituency groups and officials will continue to have conversations with these groups. Senior Biden campaign staffers have had similar meetings and roundtable discussions with constituent groups across the country and in key swing states beginning last fall, the person said.

Still, political tensions are running higher in Michigan than in many other parts of the country — and the chilly reception some offered Rodriguez and her team in Dearborn suggests a growing political headache for Biden in a state that important to his reelection bid.

“People in the community, like community leaders, don’t want to meet with Mr. Biden,” said Dawud Walid, the executive director of Michigan’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “I don’t know who he’s planning on meeting with, but the major organizations are not interested in meeting with him.”

Hundreds gathered Friday for an “Abandon Biden” rally movement at the Islamic Center of Detroit that included prominent civil rights activist Imam Omar Suleiman. The event was timed for when organizers heard Rodriguez would be visiting to urge otherwise sympathetic voters not to support Biden in November.

Former President Donald Trump won Iowa and New Hampshire to leadoff the Republican presidential primary, seizing a commanding lead that is making a rematch of the 2020 general election against Biden look increasingly likely. A narrow victory in Michigan in 2016 helped propel Trump to the White House even as he lost the nationwide popular vote.

Imad Hamad, the director of the American Human Rights Council in Dearborn, said that many community leaders didn’t want to meet with the Biden campaign unless they were going to discuss “practical steps that give the community a reason to reconsider.”

Hamad added that many in the community felt that Friday’s visit was more about political optics than achieving real understanding of activists concerns because “none of the people who have been the most vocal were approached or invited” to meet with Rodriguez and her team.

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Weissert reported from Washington.