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AAI in the News

GOP Courting Immigrants' Vote

By Nicola White
Herald News
Posted on Friday September 3, 2004

Sherine El Abd sees little difference between President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry when it comes to Middle Eastern foreign policy: Both backed the war in Iraq and both strongly support Israel.

So at this week’s Republican National Convention, she is appealing to Arab Americans to vote for Bush because of his positions on family values, support for small business owners and less government spending. “Most of the people in our community agree with his (Bush’s) moral platform,” said El Abd, an Egyptian-American from Edison who is chairwoman of New Jersey’s Arab American Republican Caucus. “Many people in our community are small business owners and they have actually seen the tax cut benefits with their own businesses.”

By visiting Arab-American community centers and living rooms all over New Jersey, El Abd tries to appeal to undecided voters and Democrats who aren’t fully convinced by Kerry. It’s a tough sell. “When I go to the tough part, which is the war on terror and the Middle East, I remind them that the war on terror has been going on outside our borders now,” she said. And with Israel: “This is not Bush policy or a Republican or Democratic policy. The biased Middle East policy is a U.S. policy that has been in existence for 52 years,” she said.

According to a Zogby International poll conducted in July 2004, less than one in four Arab-American voters surveyed said they would vote for Bush. In 2000, Bush captured almost half of the Arab-American vote. Zogby polls indicate that more than three quarters of Arab American voters said a candidate’s policy toward the Middle East would determine their vote.

On Tuesday night, the Arab-American Institute, a non-partisan organization in Washington, D.C., hosted “An Arabian Night in New York,” a post-convention party at the Dahesh Museum on Madison Avenue, for Arab-American Republicans.

Keynote speaker at the event was Spencer Abraham, a third-generation Lebanese American who is Bush’s Secretary of Energy. He reminded about 100 people attending that President Bush put more Arab Americans in senior policy-making positions than any other president. “It’s important now that we go back to our communities and go back with the message of this convention: that America is stronger today than before,” he said.

Arab Americans could be an important demographic in this November’s election. In the swing states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Arab-Americans represent a likely voter turnout of 510,000 voters (235,00 in Michigan; 120,000 in Florida; 85,000 in Ohio and 75,000 in Pennsylvania), according to Zogby International. In 2000, Gore won Michigan and Pennsylvania by slightly more than 200,000 votes in each state. Bush won Ohio by 165,000 and the two virtually tied in Florida. “If you just appeal to them, on any variety of issues, they will cross over,” said Randa Fahmy Hudome, an American-born Republican commentator for Al Jazeera, the largest Arabic-language television broadcaster in the world. Arab Americans should be natural targets for the Republican party, she said. “By and large, Arab Americans are naturally conservative. They’re socially conservative, religiously conservative, they’re small business owners,” she said.

At the convention on Monday night, however, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s sarcastic remarks about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could drive the last nail in the coffin of Republican Party chances to win over Arab American voters. “Terrorist acts became like a ticket to the international bargaining table,” Giuiliani said in his prime-time speech. “How else to explain Yasser Arafat winning the Nobel Peace Prize while he was supporting a plague of terrorism in the Middle East and undermining any chance of peace?” “It was a huge blow,” Fahmy Hudome said. “But we have to keep in mind that Giuiliani is just one person.”

George Selim, 24, a Republican delegate from Virginia, mobilizes young Arab-Americans to register as Republicans. He, too, thought Giuliani’s remarks were out of line. “I have to call into question anyone who’s going to question the credibility of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. That’s unacceptable,” he said. “He needs to address the Palestinian leader in a diplomatic fashion.”

More Arab Americans voted for Bush in 2000 than they did for Gore, with 45.5 percent of the Arab-American population casting ballots for Bush. But since 2000, with the war on terror and the war in Iraq, the Arab-American Republican base has shifted, Selim said. So he’s been working to get folks back on the GOP bandwagon. “In general, it’s a negative reaction,” he said of his efforts. But when they listen to Selim’s spiel – Bush’s fiscal policies, his inclusion of Arab Americans in key political appointments – they’re sometimes swayed, he said. “Are you guys registered?” Selim asked two young Arab-American men from Oklahoma who came through the doors at the convention after-party. “Great. Are there people like us in Oklahoma? Yeah?” On a table at the event’s entrance, a sign in English and Arabic read, “Our vote is our power: Let’s use it November 2.”