Days after he was kicked out of a Kamala Harris rally in Michigan with no explanation, Ahmed Ghanim said he got a call from Donald Trump’s campaign: Would Ghanim be willing to star in a campaign ad?
Ghanim, a Democrat who mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge to a pro-Israel member of Congress earlier this year, said he swiftly turned team Trump down. “I definitely declined,” Ghanim said.
“I definitely declined.”
Still, the strange turn of events that left him receiving a call from Trump’s team crystallized his sense that the Harris campaign is botching its outreach to Arab and Muslim voters. (The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) As insincere as Trump’s recent overtures to Muslims may be, Ghanim thinks they could work.
“Even our presence there is not welcome, at the same time Trump is reaching out and going to take pictures with the imams,” Ghanim said.
The incident involving Ghanim was a dramatic illustration of the high stakes and high emotions for Arab and Muslim voters in the final days of the presidential election. Both campaigns are courting the demographic.
In 2020, Arab and Muslim voters helped Joe Biden win Michigan, but many have soured on him thanks to his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. If Harris loses the crucial swing state, some observers say, it may be due to missed opportunities and missteps like the one involving Ghanim.
Observers of Michigan politics say there have not been many visible signs of outreach to the Arab and Muslim communities.
“I know that the Harris campaign has tried to mend some fences,” said David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University in Michigan. “But it has never been enough to get them — at least as it seems to me as an outsider — back on board in the absence of a policy change in terms of U.S. support of Israel.”
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment on its interactions with Ghanim or its outreach to the Arab and Muslim community in Michigan. Elsewhere, it has described pursuing a strategy of outreach via social media ads and small gatherings.
Unwilling to put daylight between herself and Biden on Gaza, the vice president appears to be losing ground with Arab voters to Trump, according to an Arab American Institute poll.
No Explanation
Ghanim, who was born in Egypt, has been vocal about his opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, calling his primary foe, Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., a “poster child” for the pro-Israel lobby.
“Our tax dollars, which we entrust to our representatives to use for building our economy, investing in educating our kids, and making our healthcare accessible and affordable, are being used to burn kids alive in Gaza,” he wrote on X in May.
Still, Ghanim said his goal was nothing more than to watch and listen when he went to see Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan, on October 24. The event featured war hawk co-headliner Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative who has been vociferous about her disgust for student protesters.
Ghanim said he had been invited to the event, was neatly attired, and had no intention of making a demonstration. After clearing security and sitting down, he was looking at his phone when a woman staffing the event asked him to follow her.
He thought he was being reseated elsewhere when he realized he was being shown the door.
A police officer was waiting for him with a message, Ghanim said: “They want you out, so either you walk out, or I put you in the back of my car.”
Ghanim tried to get an answer from the woman who had shown him the door. “She said the conversation has ended … so I left,” Ghanim recalled.
Ghanim posted on social media about his experience with a video titled “No Muslims allowed at the Harris Rally in Michigan.”
The Harris campaign soon reached out to him personally and sent out a public statement that it “regrets” what happened. Ghanim was welcome at future events, the campaign said.
Despite the outreach from the Harris campaign, Ghanim said he has never received an explanation for what happened at the venue. That has left him with a lingering suspicion.
“I think they kicked me out because of what I represent,” he said. “What I represent as a Muslim leader trying to bring the voice of Arabs and Muslims to the Democratic Party.”
Trump and the Imams
Ghanim said the contrast between the Harris campaign’s interactions with him, and Trump’s strategy in Michigan, could not be greater.
Despite his long history of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab invective, including the ban on travel from Muslim countries that he tried to implement as president, Trump has been on an outreach tour in recent days, sensing an opportunity among the tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan outraged with the administration’s support for Israel.
Trump has taken a permissive stance on Israel’s war on Gaza — “Let Israel finish the job,” he said — but he has seized on Harris’s decision to spend some of her final days on the campaign trail with Cheney to paint the vice president as the true warmonger.
“The father killed more Arabs than any human being on earth,” Trump said in Traverse City, Michigan, referring to Dick Cheney, who as vice president was an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Trump also recently visited Hamtramck, the Michigan city with an all-Muslim city council and a Yemeni-born mayor who endorsed the former president.
Ghanim said he is not convinced by Trump’s recent olive branches to the Muslim community, given his long history.
“I don’t think we can put genuine and politics in the same sentence,” he said. “What we can say is it’s a good move at a perfect time.”
“It’s a good move at a perfect time.”
Ghanim believes that some Arab and Muslim voters may be swayed by Trump’s transactionalism, telling themselves, “‘If you give him votes, he will give you benefits. And that is how we are going to work with Trump.’”
Ghanim said he believes many Arab and Muslim voters are waiting for Harris to give them a sign.
“I think she has to break away from Biden’s policies, advisers,” he said, “and show that she is really a leader that people would like to go out of their way to vote for.”
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