DEARBORN, Mich. — Since starting the Arab American News in 1984, publisher Osama Siblani has witnessed dramatic advances by his community in this Detroit suburb and across this pivotal battleground state.
Once relegated to Dearborn’s south end, Arab Americans are now the majority of its 106,000 residents — the first and largest US city with that distinction. Politicians such as Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud and US Representative Rashida Tlaib, both Democrats, have risen to top electoral offices. And on Nov. 3, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed could make the biggest leap yet.
“The possibilities are there right now for an Arab American and a Muslim American to be a US senator,” Siblani said as he sat on a sofa in the publication’s Dearborn offices, likening the impact to John F. Kennedy becoming the first Catholic president. “We crossed that bridge. Now we have a bridge also that we have to cross.”
But for El-Sayed to become the nation’s first Muslim US senator, he’ll have to overcome the aftermath of a volatile presidential election in Michigan two years ago that inflamed longstanding tensions between Arab American and Black voters.
Former President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza triggered outrage from Arab American Democrats that helped President Trump narrowly win the state in 2024. Trump received more votes in Dearborn than Kamala Harris, creating deep wounds with some Black voters whose support El-Sayed needs to win a tight race crucial to Senate control — especially given his troubles with Jewish Democrats because of outspoken criticism of Israel’s government.
“We have a problem here,” said Rima Mohammad, an El-Sayed supporter from Ann Arbor who was a key player in the events of 2024. “The Black community and the Arab community . . . we’re trying to bring these communities back together.”
El-Sayed has stressed his years of work as a public health official in Detroit and has been doing extensive outreach to Black voters after struggling with them in his slim primary win over Representative Haley Stevens in August. And he’s emphasizing the affordability crisis as a message that cuts across racial, ethnic, and religious lines.
“I think if a lot of us could have . . . 2024 back, we would have thought about things in different ways,” El-Sayed said before an appearance with Harris in Detroit in September to discuss Black maternal health. “And I hope that moving forward, we don’t reinforce the mistakes of the past that break us apart.”
Former President Barack Obama recently filmed an ad for El-Sayed and headlined a rally in Detroit for him and other Michigan Democrats on Saturday night. Three Black congressional Democrats — Boston Representative Ayanna Pressley, Delaware Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, and Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock — also campaigned with El-Sayed this month.
“Abdul earned my support because he wasn’t afraid of hard conversations, including discussing some of those tensions,” Pressley said from Michigan last Sunday after a three-day campaign swing. “I see the coalition — the diverse coalition, people from every walk of life — forming.”
But Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has described his own attempts to lure Black voters as “off the chart.” He’s been visiting Black neighborhoods and churches, recently opened a campaign office in Detroit and released an ad with three Black Detroit area supporters.
“He’s making the Black voter and the Black community a priority,” said Marcus Bowman, a Republican school board member in Pontiac, a Black-majority Detroit suburb, who is supporting Rogers as he did when the Republican lost the 2024 Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin. “I think he’ll do way better than he did in ’24, for sure.”
In the 2024 Michigan Democratic presidential primary, more than 100,000 voters — 13.2 percent — checked “uncommitted” on their ballots to protest Biden’s strong backing of Israel in the war started by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. A nationwide movement that began in Michigan produced about 30 uncommitted delegates, including Mohammad, to the Democratic National Convention.
When Biden dropped out and Harris replaced him shortly before the convention, the movement splintered.
El-Sayed, who had supported the uncommitted campaign, immediately endorsed Harris. Others balked. Trump made a late campaign stop in Dearborn, promised peace in the Middle East, and outpolled Harris there 42 percent to 36 percent, compared to 2020 when Biden won 68 percent of the vote. Green Party candidate Jill Stein got 18 percent in 2024, seen largely as a protest by people angry with Harris and Biden but unwilling to vote for Trump.
The comparatively low support for Harris from Arab American voters angered some in Michigan’s significant Black community, and that spilled into this year’s Senate race.
“I think he really has a chance to heal those wounds, and it never should have been his responsibility to heal those wounds. But that’s what a real leader is,” said Robert Womack, president of the Grand Rapids chapter of Boots on the Ground, a voter education organization that set up four events in the city in early October for El-Sayed to meet with Black voters.
Chris Quezada, 50, a forklift operator from Grand Rapids, was at one of the events at a neighborhood bar and said he liked El-Sayed’s message on affordability and is turned off by what he called “racist” Republican attacks on him.
“They’re trying to stir up more culture wars because they don’t have a message to give anybody. They have nothing,” said Quezada, an independent with liberal views who has voted Democratic in recent elections. But he also worries “there’s too much resentment” among Democrats stemming from 2024.
“I can understand the Muslim community for not wanting to support Kamala Harris because they’re sick of Palestine being attacked by Israel,” Quezada said. “But I can also understand how Black people are like, well, if you had voted for Kamala Harris, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”
El-Sayed and Blunt Rochester, the senator from Delaware, spoke to a full house at the event Quezada attended, then took questions. One person in the audience, JD Chapman, 46, criticized the Democratic Party’s commitment to Black voters before asking, “What makes you different and how do we know we can trust what you say?”
El-Sayed talked about the importance of the Black civil rights movement in his life and ability to run for office: “I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Black folks.” He then pointed to his work in public health in and around Detroit.
“As I showed up for the city of Detroit, I’m aiming to show up for majority Black communities across our state, and to put the responsibility to building a more equitable Michigan at the very front of the work that we do,” he said.
Chapman, who runs a nonprofit that mentors youths and families, told reporters later he wasn’t sold. Although he believes Arab Americans aren’t “kind to Black people here,” his main issue is that he doesn’t feel he can trust El-Sayed. So Chapman, who voted for Stevens in the primary, said he was seriously considering not voting in the Senate race.
Siblani made the same decision in the 2024 presidential election, and his newspaper urged voters to leave the top of the ticket blank.
“We did not support Kamala Harris, not because she’s Black or she’s a woman or she’s a Democrat, [but] because she could not distinguish herself from the person that we were against and she was his vice president,” Siblani said.
He criticized Harris for not visiting Dearborn and trying to address the concerns of Arab American voters about Gaza after she became the Democratic nominee. In contrast, Siblani said El-Sayed is doing “a very good job” reaching out to a community he might struggle with on Election Day: Black voters.
“I don’t agree with everything that he says. But I believe that whatever he says, he means,” Siblani said of El Sayed overall. “He is very genuine, and he will make a fine US senator for a change.”
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.