A Democratic state representative said she wouldn’t vote for President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, even after visiting Harris’s home for a holiday party.
“If the election was today … I wouldn’t be voting for Biden,” Delaware state Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton told Politico. Wilson-Anton is a Muslim American and the first to be elected to the Delaware General Assembly. She has been vocal in her opposition to the Biden administration’s role in the Israel-Hamas war.
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“I wouldn’t be voting for Kamala Harris. I wouldn’t be voting for [Donald] Trump, either, or whoever the Republicans’ nominee. I’ll be voting for a candidate for governor. I’ll be voting for myself for state rep.,” she said, apparently unmoved by the visit to Harris’s home.
Wilson-Anton said she was surprised by the vice president’s invite to her home. “I was like, there’s no way this is real,” she said.
The state representative took the opportunity to bring her concerns regarding Israel and its attacks on the Gaza Strip directly to Harris.
At the event on Monday at Harris’s residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, hundreds gathered to join the vice president in celebration. During Harris’s remarks, however, one attendee interrupted.
Wilson-Anton, donning a headscarf, took it off during the event, revealing that it said “Ceasefire.” She shouted out to Harris, asking, “I’m a state rep. from Delaware — did you know that in Bethlehem, they’re not celebrating Christmas … that baby Jesus is under rubble?”
She further questioned why Harris doesn’t support a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
VP Kamala Harris interrupted @ holiday party by Del. lawmaker who calls on admin to support ceasefire.
Harris: In a democracy, there’s the right “of everyone to make their voices heard so I appreciate that u want to be heard but right now I’m speaking.”pic.twitter.com/uEv4OGCaNT
— Eugene Daniels (@EugeneDaniels2) December 12, 2023
“I appreciate that you want to be heard, but right now, I’m speaking,” Harris said before the state representative was quickly escorted away.
According to the Democratic state lawmaker, she was treated well by the staffers who escorted her, and they promised there would be future conversations between herself and the administration on the topic. But Wilson-Anton remains unswayed.
And while she isn’t supportive of the administration going into 2024, she offered a glimmer of hope for Biden and Harris. Wilson-Anton said they aren’t out of time to regain support from Muslims nationwide. “If they want Muslim and Arab Americans to support Biden in 2024, then Biden needs to switch course,” she said.
“He needs to start messaging that he actually cares about Palestinian lives, that he actually cares about human rights, by stopping this continued funding of the Israeli military,” she said of the president.
The Biden administration, amid intense backlash from a section of Democrats across the country, has begun to step back from its initial unabashed pro-Israel stance, stressing more concern over civilians in Gaza.
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This has taken form in a comment Biden made Tuesday during a campaign reception, noting Israel has widespread support but that “they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
The administration has expressed support for “humanitarian pauses” in the war but has shied away from calling for an all-out ceasefire.
