Muslim Americans Say Kamala Harris Embracing Liz Cheney Cost Her Election

Kamala Harris’ embrace of former GOP congresswoman Liz Cheney contributed to her election loss to Donald Trump, according to an advocacy organization representing Muslim Americans.
Harris sought to utilize endorsements from Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to court Republican voters who might have been uneasy about supporting Trump. Last month, she teamed up with Liz Cheney for events in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
That strategy proved unsuccessful as Trump triumphed after carrying all three of these “blue wall” states, which President Joe Biden won in 2020.
There had been concerns that Muslim and Arab American Democrats would abandon Harris over the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel’s war in Gaza, particularly in Michigan, which has the nation’s biggest concentration of Arab Americans.
Harris’ decision to campaign with Cheney further compounded the deep anger felt by these voters, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.
Experts previously told Newsweek that Harris’ support among Arab Americans and Muslims could be further eroded because of her teaming up with Cheney since Dick Cheney is loathed by many Arab Americans and the Muslim community, given his role in the Iraq War and shaping U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Harris’ drop in support, compared with Biden’s in 2020, “resulted, in part, from the deep frustration and disillusionment that many young, Muslim, Arab, Black and other voters feel with the Biden-Harris administration due to its steadfast financial and military support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, told Newsweek.
“The vice president’s failure to lay out any plan to end that genocide, such as suspending weapons to Israel, combined with her refusal to let any Palestinian-American speak at the DNC and her embrace of the war criminal enthusiast Liz Cheney, made matters worse,” Awad’s statement said.
The Harris campaign has been contacted via email for comment.
Israel has denied its conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide. Its offensive there has killed over 42,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, when a Hamas attack on southern Israel killed about 1,200 Israelis.
Harris’ entry into the race had given those angry over the Biden administration’s support for Israel a renewed sense of hope, but that quickly faded when she did not distance herself from Biden’s policy on Israel and declined to support an arms embargo.
Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman, a Democrat who is Palestinian, said it was a “mistake” for Harris to campaign with Cheney.
“Liz Cheney, Geoff Duncan and others were never going to bring voters,” Romman wrote on X (formerly Twitter), referring to the former GOP lieutenant governor of Georgia who campaigned against Trump.
Romman went on: “They don’t have a base. Prioritizing billionaires and republicans instead of progressive orgs who do deep organizing work was a huge mistake. They’re the ones who push back on right wing disinformation.
“Instead they were iced out and maligned. This was supposed to be a historic moment but many tonight are reeling and terrified of what comes next. All of us lose tonight. All of us. There’s nothing good that will come of this,” she said.
Romman, who was denied a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, wrote in an op-ed for Rolling Stone that she was voting for Harris but that it was not a vote “for her” but “for the people in my district and state who cannot survive another Trump presidency.”
Romman has been contacted for further comment via an email to her campaign.
The Uncommitted National Movement, which had sought to leverage votes to get the Biden administration to change its position on Israel, declined to endorse Harris but warned that backing third-party candidates would help bring about another Trump presidency.
However, other pro-Palestinian groups and leaders urged voters to rebuff the Democrats by backing third-party candidates such as Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Some Arab American and Muslim voters previously told Newsweek that the Biden administration’s support for Israel made them turn away from supporting the Democratic nominee.
The Abandon Harris campaign, which urged voters not to support Harris because of the administration’s support for Israel, said that a Trump presidency “didn’t have to be inevitable.”
“Democrats had every opportunity to win this election with ease,” the group said in a statement provided to Newsweek. “But instead, they chose to betray their base, to abandon the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and to align themselves with some of the darkest figures in American history—like Dick Cheney.”
Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly attacked Harris for campaigning with Cheney, writing in one post on Truth Social that Dick Cheney had “convinced Bush to go into the Middle East and KILL. Now Kamala wants Arabs to vote for her? I don’t think so!”
The president-elect, who has a history of strong support for Israel, has expressed support for Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job” quickly. He has also pledged to bring peace to the Middle East, despite threats of a broader regional conflict erupting as Israel continues offensives in both Gaza and Lebanon.
Awad also said it was important for Trump to “recognize that most Americans, including American Muslims who supported him, do not want to see more bigotry here at home or more war overseas.”
“During the presidential campaign, President-Elect Trump made efforts to connect with Muslim voters in swing states, pledged to end bloodshed in the Gaza and condemned the Bush/Cheney-era policies that wreaked havoc in the Muslim world,” he said.
“The president-elect should fulfill his campaign pledge to pursue peace abroad, including by ending the war on Gaza. However, this must be a real peace based on justice, freedom and a state for the Palestinian people,” he said.
Awad added that American Muslims “must mobilize in partnership with communities across America to oppose any attempt to harm vulnerable communities, such as launching a mass deportation of all undocumented families, reinstating the Muslim ban or weaponizing the Justice Department against activists, including college students speaking out against the Gaza genocide.”
Update 11/6/24, 2:21 p.m. ET: This article was updated with a statement from the Abandon Harris campaign.