Muslim candidate drew hate; can she draw Dems?
If the #InvestinEd and #RedforEd campaigns here, or the congressional primary upset win by far-left political novice Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, reflect a progressive movement, it has been mostly lost on Deedra Abboud.
Abboud lit up social media a year ago with her announced candidacy for the U.S. Senate as a Muslim woman.
Hate rained down on her, swift and ferocious. Many misunderstood or rejected a campaign post in which she praised the separation of church and state doctrine; many others simply rejected her faith.
The anti-Islam, anti-Muslim uproar has since died down. She notes that on the campaign trail, she’s gone largely from being a Muslim candidate to an attorney candidate. Their questions of her are now more on policy.
If anything, Abboud’s challenge these days is trying to get her grassroots campaign to catch fire within her own party.
She trails badly in the polls, lacks the big bucks in campaign fundraising, and barely registers a blip on the media radar.
A big reason for this may simply be the fact that she’s running in the Aug. 28 primaries against Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, whom the pundits, political donors and Democratic party have anointed as its nominee in the Nov. 6 midterm election.
Abboud has the lowest name recognition in a field that includes Republican congresswoman Martha McSally and former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It also hasn’t helped that this has been an election cycle with an unusually high number of candidates, each competing for voter attention.
All of which is probably frustrating to Abboud, whose voice carries greater resonance on such issues as religious freedom and expression, and the U.S. immigration ban that affects largely Muslim-dominant countries. Her work as a civil rights attorney also gives her insight on police use-of-force complaints and on due process, including those for undocumented immigrants — points of debate on both the local and national scene.
On some of the issues, Abboud stands farther left, and tackles more aggressively, than Sinema.
The separation of families caught at the border, for instance. Children held in cages and appearing before the court without legal representation. (Abboud isn’t the only one who has pointed out Sinema’s muted response to the brouhaha.) Or, police brutality and troubled relations with poor, minority communities. Or, LGBTQ’s continued fights for greater rights and against discriminatory practices.
(Abboud’s progressive stances stop with the #AbolishICE fervor, which she
says represents more a slogan or gimmick – “like Repeal & Replace” – than actual reform. She believes the Department of Homeland Security needs to better track the whereabouts of children.)
“It has’t been difficult to differentiate myself from her, even though she’s supposed to be a progressive,” Abboud said, in a dig at Sinema.
That distinction has given Abboud little distinction where it counts. An Emerson College poll in late June showed her pulling in 7.5 percent support, compared to 50.5 percent for Sinema, 30 percent undecided and the remainder for candidates no longer in the running.
A Data Orbital poll conducted around the same period had Abboud with 6.5 percent support, well behind the 62 percent for Sinema, and the remainder undecided.
If Abboud is discouraged, she doesn’t let on.
She described the campaign as an “extraordinary” process of “planting a seed ... to talk about biases and prejudices,” and to have difficult but honest conversations with adversaries.
“I anticipated it at the start, running against a Republican incumbent (she declared the candidacy months before Jeff Flake announced he would not seek re-election), that this would be an uphill battle,” Abboud said.
She remains optimistic, that the undecided Democratic electorate in the polls suggest they remain open to voting for her and that Millennials, especially, who are committed to technology freedom (net neutrality), the environment and social justice will surprise at the ballot box.
“I haven’t had national Patriots activists demonstrating, protesting me since March,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “That, too, is progress.”