Harris races to win over the minority she can no longer take for granted
Candidates have been barnstorming cities and towns across Michigan in an effort to woo undecided voters and motivate their bases.
In a bustling restaurant on the outskirts of Detroit, a few kilometres from the global headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, Sam Hammoud is taking orders during the lunchtime rush.
On the wall behind him, a giant framed photo sits above the doorway to the kitchen, where the smell of shawarma and cardamom fills the air.
“That’s my mama,” the 39-year-old says proudly, pointing to the well-dressed woman in the picture.
His father, however, is on the other side of the world, trying to stay safe in Lebanon after Israel started bombing the country to destroy installations belonging to the militant group Hezbollah.
Sam Hammoud in Dearborn, Michigan.Credit: Farrah Tomazin
Not long ago, the 79-year-old patriarch bought a sixth-floor apartment there, using the hard-earned money from their restaurants in Dearborn, Michigan, America’s first Arab-majority city.
Now, that property is in rubble on the street, bombed by weapons Hammoud fears were supplied by the US – and therefore effectively paid by taxpayers like himself.
“It’s been 54 weeks since the [Gaza] war started and all we hear is ‘ceasefire’ but nothing has been done,” says the visibly frustrated owner of the Sahara Restaurant on Michigan Avenue.
“If Kamala Harris didn’t do anything under the Biden administration, what makes me think that she’s going to do something under her own administration?”
It’s the kind of sentiment you hear in angry tones right across Dearborn, a slice of the Middle East created by generations of migrants drawn to the area to work in the auto industry.
Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong
At the 2020 election, Dearborn residents – most of whom come from countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and the Palestinian territories – predominantly backed Joe Biden, helping him snatch the swing state of Michigan from Donald Trump, and in turn, the White House.
Four years later, many lodged a protest vote by choosing the option of “uncommitted” on their ballot paper during the Democratic primaries rather than backing the incumbent president.
Now, as the war in Gaza continues to rage and with no shift in policy, Kamala Harris can no longer rely on their support, either.
“I don’t prefer either of the main candidates at the moment,” Hammoud says.
But America’s backing of Israel is not the only challenge Harris faces in Michigan, which is also home to many unionised workers and black voters, for which issues such as inflation and cost-of-living pressures are top of mind.
While these groups have also traditionally been part of the Democrats’ traditional base, there are signs that support is fracturing.
For instance, when car company Stellantis – maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles – announced in August it would lay off 2450 workers at its Warren plant, some union workers pointed to the Biden-Harris administration’s aggressive push towards electric vehicles as a factor.
Now, with less than two weeks until election day, Harris and Trump are on a statistical tie in Michigan, according to FiveThirtyEight, despite the Great Lakes state traditionally being viewed as the bluest of the seven battleground states in this year’s election.
It’s little wonder both candidates have been barnstorming cities and towns across the region, trying to woo what is left of undecided voters as well as motivate their base to turn up in force, which is crucial in a country where millions of Americans choose not to have a say on who their president should be.
Chuck Locklear at a Harris rally in Oakland county, Michigan.Credit: Farrah Tomazin
“At this point, it’s all about getting out the vote,” says Chuck Locklear at a rally in Oakland county wearing a “White Dudes for Harris” T-shirt.
“There is nobody in here that she has to convince. What she has to do is get them excited so that they go vote and get all their family to vote because when people vote, Democrats win.”
Asked why he’s backing Harris as a proud “white dude”, Locklear points to his working-class background with its roots in the United Automotive Workers Union, which he says aligns with Harris’ economic policies.
He also serves as a pastor in a poor community where housing affordability is a big issue and believes her proposal to give people a $US25,000 ($37,700) credit on their first home could make a real difference.
Elsewhere, residents such as Amir al-Ashwar are far less enthused. A son of migrants from Yemen, the 43-year-old does not agree with Trump’s incendiary rhetoric when it comes to immigrants.
But he feels he was better off financially under the former president, before inflation and cost of living pressures spiked. While prices have stabilised over the past year, buying milk in Michigan still sets him back about $US4 a gallon (about $1 a litre), while petrol for his car is around $US3.44 a gallon.
“Trump is racist, but Biden has driven the country down and there are a lot of massacres in Gaza and around the world – and Kamala Harris is a part of that,” he claims.
“I do want to vote, but I just don’t know who I’d vote for.”
Anti-Trump Republicans
It’s shortly after 5pm on a Saturday when a shiny dark bus emblazoned with the words “Republican Voters Against Trump” pulls up outside Brewery Faisan, a former warehouse in Detroit that has been converted into a microbrewery and taproom.
The bus started its journey in Pennsylvania before making its way to Michigan to engage with voters and conduct a series of live events hosted by The Bulwark, the centre-right, anti-Trump website launched by political strategist and lifelong Republican Sarah Longwell in 2018.
Republican voters against Donald Trump and their bus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Credit: Matthew Cranston
Local business owner Jackie Scheller is part of the group and has her face plastered on pro-Harris billboards across the state – something that came as a shock to her Trump-supporting son as he drove along one of Michigan’s highways with her grandchildren that day.
“There have been some stressful conversations,” she admits, when asked how family members have taken her decision to back Harris at this year’s election.
For Scheller, her political evolution was gradual. The 66-year-old Republican voted for Trump twice, “but once the insurrection happened I could not tolerate someone that didn’t defend the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law”.
But as the election neared, the former teacher began researching the policies of both parties using non-partisan sources. To her surprise, she realised how much disinformation was being pushed out on TV and the internet – something she believes is partly why Trump remains so popular.
Anti-Trump Republican Jackie Scheller.Credit: Farrah Tomazin
Now she carries around a folder comparing where the candidates stand on issues such as immigration, abortion, national security and crime. Inside is also a list of past and present female world leaders, including former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, and a four-page document she hands out to conservatives “whenever we get into a heated argument”.
“I did this with one gentleman who’s in a red [Republican] zone in the town I live in, and he was pretty belligerent,” she says. “Three days later, he called me asking for some Harris-Walz signs!”
There were definitely no such signs at the Huntington Place Convention Centre in downtown Detroit as thousands of Trump fans waited in line for a glimpse of their favourite president last week.
Among them was Yasue Erikawa, a die-hard Trump fan who had flown from her home in Tokyo a few days earlier with the sole purpose of following him across every battleground state and attend his rallies.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” she chants enthusiastically, echoing the words he shouted after he was almost assassinated in July. “We love Trump!”
There’s a lot of love inside the convention hall, too, when the Republican candidate finally appears on stage after an earlier campaign stop in Hamtramck, one of the nation’s only Muslim-majority cities, where he was joined by Mayor Amer Ghalib, a Democrat who has endorsed him.
“We will reclaim our stolen wealth, and the days of Detroit’s economic glory will return greater and stronger than ever before!” Trump told the crowd, days after he likened Detroit to a “developing nation”.
UAW boss Shawn Fain can barely hide his disdain whenever he hears such promises.
“Trump stood there in 2016 and promised that he wouldn’t allow a single plant to close,” he says. “But he’s all talk, no action. His record was defined by plant closings, job loss and union-busting under his trade deal, which I call Trump’s NAFTA.”
Back in the Sahara Restaurant, Sam Hammoud faces a tough choice. He definitely won’t vote for Harris, whose campaign has launched Facebook ads targeting Muslims, created WhatsApp channels and distributed fact sheets with her most forceful statements on the war in Gaza in a bid to win back support.
Hammoud doesn’t trust Trump to resolve the conflict in the Middle East either, noting his tendency to say one thing to the Arab community and another thing to other communities.
As such, he is considering voting for third-party candidate Jill Stein, a Greens Party politician whom Democrats fear will help Trump by bleeding votes from Harris.
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” says Hammoud. “But at least if I vote for Jill, I can go to sleep knowing that I did not contribute to a genocide.”
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