Voting drive among Arab Americans energises community

For more than three million Arab Americans, the US midterm elections are not only about Republicans or Democrats.

Amid racist attack adverts and hate crimes, there is a sense their place in the country could be at stake.

Their response has been to mobilise and throw their weight behind the democratic process. Unprecedented levels of Arab American participation can be seen in work focused on voter registration. More than 60 candidates with Arab heritage put their names forward.

The elections come at a time when hostility and hate crimes against minorities are on the rise in the US. Last year, the Arab American Institute documented 6,213 incidents of what it calls hate crimes across 27 states and Washington DC. The year before, it documented 6,121 incidents across the country.

Maya Berry, the institute’s executive director, said: “There is a sense of a threat, a danger, a genuine sense of concern among the Arab American community of what is going on.”

This worry is driving Arab Americans to participate like no other time in US history, Ms Berry said.

She describes the process as “doubling down on democracy”. Volunteers canvassing in key states or working the phones at the AAI are examples of this activism.

This campaigning could make history by helping to elect Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – two Muslim Americans – to Congress.

Donna Shalala, 77, a Lebanese American, and Ammar Campa-Najjar, 29, who has Mexican, Palestinian and American roots, both have a shot at winning in Florida and California as Democrats, while Chris Sununu, 44, could be re-elected as the Republican governor of New Hampshire.

In 1998, AAI launched Yalla Vote. Making up 5 per cent of the electorate in Michigan, and 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the community could tip the balance in races that typically are won by razor-thin margins. This year alone there were more than 50 Yalla Vote registration events across 18 states. The rise of Arab-American candidates has been met with smears from some opponents.

“Ammar Campa-Najjar is working to infiltrate Congress. He’s used three different names to hide his family’s ties to terrorism,” one such attack advert claimed. Both Ms Omar and Ms Tlaib have been labelled by some on the far-right as having “connections to terror organisations”.

Arab-Americans’ prospects of winning will all depend on turnout, and a surge in young people’s participation is giving organisers hope that this time things may be different.