Sanders courts Muslim voters for Michigan edge

DEARBORN, Mich. — Muslim and Arab-American voters were critical to Bernie Sanders’ upset victory in Michigan that gave his 2016 campaign a second life.

On Tuesday, he’s counting on them again to help revive his bid for the White House.

The Vermont senator has won endorsements from key Muslim elected officials here, tapped Muslim leaders to be his top surrogates, and held a rally this week in one of the largest Muslim communities in the country. But for Sanders to succeed, it’s not enough for Muslim voters in Michigan to simply support him: He also needs them to come to the polls in droves, something that hasn’t happened among some crucial pro-Sanders voting blocs in early primary contests.

“It’s potentially significant if it’s going to be a close contest between him and Joe Biden in Michigan,” said Wa'el Alzayat, CEO of Emgage, a major Muslim political action committee that has endorsed Sanders. “But the key is turnout. Historically, Muslims in Michigan do not vote at high rates.”

In order for such voters to push Sanders over the edge, however, the race indeed must be as narrow as Sanders’ team thinks it is. According to Emgage, there are between 100,000 and 200,000 Muslim voters in Michigan, which is a small portion of the electorate: More than 2.5 million people voted in the state in the 2016 Democratic and Republican primaries.

After Biden won 10 states on Super Tuesday, including several that Sanders was expected to carry, Michigan’s primary is close to a do-or-die election for Sanders. Michigan has the largest share of delegates out of the six states voting on March 10 — and perhaps even more significantly, a loss in the crucial general election state would shatter his argument that he’s the best candidate to defeat President Donald Trump.

Sanders has long made the case that his economically populist agenda, including his longtime opposition to free trade deals, would enable him to win the industrial Midwest and with it the Electoral College. But Democrats in Michigan, as well as Sanders’ aides and allies, say the race between him and Biden is tight, and a recent poll by Detroit News/WDIV-TV found Biden in the lead by seven percentage points.

“Remember, I’m the one who four years ago this weekend said that to you all I think Bernie Sanders will win my district,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, who represents Michigan’s 12th District, which includes Dearborn, home to a large Muslim and Arab-American population. This year, she said, Michigan “is competitive. … I think the senator is going to have to work hard to keep the victory he had four years ago.”

However, Dingell, who attended a Sanders event Saturday but is remaining neutral in the primary, predicted that Sanders will win her district again. “He’s all over my district,” she said.

Michigan is such a critical state for Sanders that he has canceled events in other states, including Mississippi, in order to blanket Michigan with eight events, including rallies, roundtables and town halls in the week leading up to the primary. Several of Sanders’ top aides have also been dispatched here, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was added to the lineup for his rallies in Grand Rapids and the University of Michigan.

The Sanders campaign tacked onto his calendar a rally in Dearborn, which attracted a diverse crowd and a large presence of Arab-Americans. A Shia imam, a Sunni state representative, a Palestinian surrogate and a Yemeni activist all spoke at the event, and an opening act featured dancers wearing Palestinian keffiyehs.

“The Arab-American community, they’re overwhelmingly supporting him,” said Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, who is backing Sanders. “This district is full of immigrants. They still care about what happens back home. And he talked about having an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s very important to a lot of people.”

Last week, Sanders won the endorsement of the Dearborn-based Arab-American News. The newspaper wrote that his proposals “most closely align with the interests of the community,” citing his health care policy, climate change plan, and bill to end the United States’ involvement in the war in Yemen. They praised him for defending Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim women elected to Congress who have endorsed his campaign, from attacks.

"That will likely net us thousands of votes," said Bill Neidhardt, a Sanders aide sent to Michigan, of the paper’s endorsement. "I view it as a more important endorsement than if the Detroit Free Press came out for us tomorrow."

Sanders has also received praise from Muslim leaders for being the only top presidential candidate to attend the Islamic Society of North America’s convention last year, and for hiring the first Muslim presidential campaign manager in history.

Sanders’ team sent Tlaib and Abdul El-Sayed, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, to campaign for him in mosques in the state Friday. The team is also sharing a new video with Arab-American voters in the state, which features state Rep. Abdullah Hammoud applauding Sanders’ “Not Me, Us” motto and forecasting that "the Arab-American population and the Muslim American population are going to be that swing vote that deliver strong results" in Michigan.

“We have a special multi-layered program communicating directly with the community in different languages,” said Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser to Sanders, of the campaign’s outreach to Muslim and Arab-American voters. “This includes phone calls, texting, digital and newspaper ads, along with special paid messaging directly from Rashida Tlaib.”

Exit polling by the Council on American Islamic Relations showed that 58 percent of Muslim American voters backed Sanders on Super Tuesday. Emgage found that turnout increased in 2018 among Muslims in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia, which the group’s leaders partly attributed to Trump.

At a canvass launch in Dearborn Saturday, Sanders’ field organizers told campaign volunteers, most of whom were Arab-American, that voters were receptive to Sanders’ position on Palestinian human rights and the Yemen war. A woman wore a shirt that read, “Habibi <3 Bernie 2020,” which translates to “my love." Aides passed out pro-Sanders literature translated in Arabic.

“I think we can end up winning or losing by 100 votes in Michigan,” said former Sen. Donald Riegle as he rallied the crowd of Sanders volunteers before they knocked on voters’ doors. “This has to be the turning point. This is our firewall, right here in Michigan. It was four years ago. It has to be on Tuesday night.”