Prominent Michigan Democrats who are angry at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over the war in the Middle East are demanding an apology and explanation after a former Michigan Democratic congressional candidate was removed from a Harris campaign event.
Ahmed Ghanim, who unsuccessfully ran to replace Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the Oakland County congressional district north of Detroit this year, described being removed from Harris’s event with former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday in Royal Oak despite RSVPing and clearing Secret Service security.
“After being seated and sitting there for minutes, a lady comes to me singling me out of this 200 people, and taking me out, and asking me to leave,” Ghanim told reporters Tuesday during a press conference in Dearborn. “I was not given any explanation. Even the Secret Service, they told me, ‘It is not us, it’s the campaign.’ They don’t have anything security wise against me, just the decision came from the venue and from the campaign.”
A national Harris campaign spokesman, plus a spokeswoman for the campaign in Michigan, did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s requests for comment.
Ghanim, who conceded Democrats in Oakland County would recognize him since Royal Oak is in his district, was adamant he was not wearing or bearing anything pro-Gaza or pro-Palestinian, though he has openly and repeatedly criticized the Biden-Harris administration and Israel regarding the war. But he said that “being singled out of 200 people” triggered “a lot of feelings to me as a Muslim American.”
“It’s not just, it’s not about me. It’s about what I represent, what I represent as a human being, what I represent as a Muslim, and what I represent as also a leader in Oakland County, where I represent a big portion of the base of the Democratic Party that [has] left the Democratic Party,” he said. “I don’t mind leaving, but I want an explanation why I was kicked out.”
Ghanim appeared at the press conference Tuesday organized by CAIR Action and AMEEN Action, two Muslim and Arab American advocacy organizations, members of which are part of the Abandon Harris movement over the war.
Rex Nazarko, AMEEN Action’s executive director, contended Ghanim’s removal demonstrated Democrats’s “blatant disregard to our base” and was hypocritical considering Democratic rhetoric concerning inclusion and diversity.
“But when it comes to real action, to genuine community engagement, we are ignored, dismissed, and, as this incident shows, outright pushed aside,” Nazarko told reporters. “This is about a pattern of disrespect towards Muslim Americans that we are no longer willing to tolerate.”
Nazarko advised Democrats they were at risk of irrevocably losing Muslim and Arab Americans’s support, which could decide the battleground state of Michigan.
In February, 101,623 Michigan Democrats voted “uncommitted” to send a signal to Biden related to his Middle East policies. Biden won Michigan in 2020 by 154,188 votes after former President Donald Trump won the Great Lakes State in 2016 by 10,704 votes.
Trump has conducted his own outreach to the Muslim and Arab Americans in Michigan, including a press call on Monday with Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib, Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi, and Imam Husham al Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Center in Dearborn. The trio criticized Harris for bringing Cheney to Oakland County given her father former Vice President Dick Cheney‘s role in the Iraq War.
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Both Cheneys have endorsed Harris.
“To bring this person to our backyard to remind us of all the tragedies that happened in the past in the Middle East is something that tells us that there would be more wars coming if Kamala Harris is elected to be the president,” Ghalib told reporters. “Either it’s ignorance or purposefully insulting the community.”
