Backlash Voters Vent Anger at Biden in Michigan Primary

DEARBORN—Many of the Democratic voters filtering in and out of an elementary school polling location next to the Ford Motor World Headquarters had one thing in common: They’re not committing to supporting the re-election of President Biden.

“I made a mistake four years ago,” said Dearborn native Zainab Alshatri, as she watched her three children play on the school playground. “Little kids are dying with tax money that’s being taken from us. None of us, as humans, should want that.”

Alshatri, 39, is among many in this heavily Arab-American community who are using the primary ballot box to express anger toward Biden’s support of Israel in its war with Hamas and resulting humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Some local leaders have urged Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” to protest the administration’s handling of the war.

As foreign policy looms over the November battleground state, its closely watched primary is poised to give Democrats a sense of Biden’s vulnerability to anger over his support of Israel’s military campaign. Michigan is home to the largest percentage of Arab-Americans in the U.S., many concentrated in Dearborn, represented in Congress by Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian-American member of Congress. She and the city’s Arab-American mayor have backed the “uncommitted” protest.

Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said pro-Palestinian voices have been stifled across the country and the community’s concerns have largely been ignored by the Biden administration.

“This is a buildup of the continued attempt to silence the community,” Ayoub said. “Our voice is going to be heard through this vote. That’s the one thing they can’t silence—they can’t silence us at the polls.”

Biden has stood behind Israel despite international concerns over the conditions in Gaza, where most of its 2.3 million people are displaced and without adequate access to medical care. Nearly 30,000 people have been killed amid Israel’s military offensive, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian authorities. The numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has said it would press ahead with its operation following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas fighters that killed about 1,200 people.

Biden has called for a temporary cease-fire to free hostages still being held by Hamas and allow more aid to reach Gaza. In New York on Monday, the president said he hoped a cease-fire could take effect by early next week. But many Arab-American and Muslim voters say his efforts to broker a humanitarian pause are too little, too late.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is among a network of national and local activist groups involved in the effort to persuade Michigan residents to vote uncommitted in the primary, running ads to support the effort on social-media platforms. While a majority of Muslims and Arab-Americans have reliably voted for Democrats in recent elections, one of the messages behind voting uncommitted is to ensure that the Democratic Party no longer takes these votes for granted, organizers said.

Most voters supporting the uncommitted effort say they don’t favor a return to the White House for former President Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, but they are leaning toward voting third party or not voting at all because of their frustration with Biden.

Democrat Jonathan Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner whose district includes parts of Detroit, said he has been telling constituents who ask to “be responsible and vote Biden” after recent uncommitted movement mailers. Kinloch is angry and frustrated by a movement he thinks risks returning Trump to office, which he thinks would represent a threat to democracy.

“I understand the pain, but this is a prelude to upending the November election,” he said. “I never play games with my vote.”

Political analysts said they expect the uncommitted movement to be limited in scope to the areas around Dearborn and perhaps college campuses. A poll conducted last week by Emerson College found 75% of Democratic primary voters support Biden, 9% plan to vote uncommitted and 12% are undecided. Adrian Hemond, chief executive of the consulting firm Grassroots Midwest, said the undecided movement would have to capture at least 15% of the vote to have much impact.

Still, it has caught people’s attention for a reason. “You have to pay attention,” Hemond said. “The margins were tight here in 2020 and the president doesn’t have many votes to lose.”

Michigan was instrumental to Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump, who in 2016 became the first Republican to carry the state since 1988. Biden flipped the state back into the Democratic column by 154,000 votes. Listen to Michigan, one of the groups at the center of the “uncommitted” campaign, has set a target of at least 10,000 votes—Trump’s margin of victory in 2016—to demonstrate how Biden’s position on Israel could cost him in a close election.

Olivia Grantham, 23, came out with her two sisters and father, a Republican, to cast protest votes against the war and express their frustration with the presidential choices overall, she said. All voted uncommitted in the Democratic primary and said they don’t know what they will do in November, though they consider Trump a worse option than Biden.

Mohamed Saaidi, the 35-year-old owner of a trucking company, said frustration with the Biden administration over war and the economy led him to cast his first vote as a Republican—for Trump, whom he expects to support again in November. “I’m done with the Democrats,” he said.

Tensions flared between Biden’s team and Michigan’s Arab-American community last month, when Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez traveled to the state but was rebuffed by several local leaders, including the Dearborn mayor. The Biden administration subsequently dispatched some of its top foreign-policy officials to the state in a bid to quell the outrage. In meetings with elected officials and community leaders, top Biden aides privately acknowledged missteps in the administration’s response to the war and rhetoric around Palestinians.

But any outreach has thus far proven insufficient. Organizers behind the “uncommitted” effort say they are unlikely to cast their ballot for Biden in November barring a significant change in policy. Among their top demands are that Biden call for a permanent cease-fire and end U.S. military funding to Israel—both of which have been rejected by the White House.

The White House has said that a permanent cease-fire would help Hamas remain in power. Biden issued a directive this month attaching human-rights conditions to U.S. military aid more broadly—aimed in part at appeasing congressional Democrats who have called for conditioning military aid to Israel—but the president has long underscored the importance of the U.S.-Israel partnership and the need for continued U.S. funding.

Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, whose district includes Dearborn, said he and his constituents feel abandoned by Biden and need to see him call for a cease-fire.

Baydoun said it was too soon to know what he and others might do in November, but he rejected the message from some fellow Democrats against the uncommitted effort. “They keep threatening us that if you don’t vote for the president, you’re going to hand over the election to Trump,” he said. “You know what? It’s not on us, it’s on the candidate.”

Toula Vlahou contributed to this article.

Write to Sabrina Siddiqui at [email protected] and Elizabeth Findell at [email protected]