Muslim advocates say Rep. Duncan Hunter is running the most anti-Muslim campaign in the country. | Denis Poroy/AP Photo Elections Running anti-Muslim campaigns 'a losing strategy,' report finds

Dozens of candidates, almost exclusively Republicans, have run campaigns this election cycle casting their opponents as national security threats with ties to terrorism. But according to a new study, it won’t help them win.

“It is a losing strategy,” the 51-page report says. “Most of them are on track to lose, if they haven’t already.”


The “Running on Hate” 2018 pre-election report , issued by Muslim Advocates, a civil rights group based in Oakland, Calif., named 80 candidates for federal, state and local office who have expressed anti-Muslim sentiment, based on advertisements and past rhetoric. All but two are Republicans. A dozen of these candidates are safely projected to win in November.

“While many factors contribute to election outcomes, the vast majority of anti-Muslim campaigns have ended in failure — even with clearly credible candidates and in places where President Trump is popular,” the report states.

It analyzed media reports, election results and projections to identify anti-Muslim candidates and the likelihood of their being elected or reelected. It also included a survey conducted by Probolsky Research, a Republican polling firm that found 58 percent of respondents had either no impression of Muslims or a neutral view.

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At least 40 candidates for Congress have run anti-Muslim campaigns, the report found. Twenty-three of them made it to the general election, though 13 are incumbents.

Only one non-incumbent is safely projected to win next month: Tennessee’s Mark Green, who was nominated to serve as President Donald Trump’s Army secretary but dropped out of consideration over past comments about Muslims and transgender people. Green, who said in 2016 that the state wouldn’t tolerate “teaching the pillars of Islam” and “how to pray as a Muslim,” is running for the seat held by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the GOP nominee for Senate.

The Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), ran an ad for Georgia Republican Karen Handel last year tying Democrat Jon Ossoff to Al Jazeera, a news outlet that the ad accused of being a “mouthpiece for terrorists.” Handel won that special election, and Cook Political Report rates her district “lean Republican.”

CLF went further this year for Rep. Dave Brat, a vulnerable Republican in Virginia whose campaign against Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA official, is a toss-up. CLF’s 30-second spot says Spanberger taught at “Terror High,” which it describes as “a terrorist breeding ground.”

Spanberger served as a substitute teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia while she waited for her security clearance applications to be processed. Brat has made an issue of it in the campaign, questioning what else his opponent could be hiding since that role was absent from her résumé.

But Muslim advocates say Rep. Duncan Hunter is running the most anti-Muslim campaign in the country. The California Republican has accused his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Christian, of trying to “infiltrate” the federal government. In an ad , Hunter alleges that his opponent changed his name multiple times “to hide his family’s ties to terrorism” and concludes that Campa-Najjar is a “security risk,” before closing with an image of Hunter clad in military gear.

Brat’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman for Hunter’s campaign called the characterization that it’s anti-Muslim “factually wrong.”

“Congressman Hunter has never identified his opponent as a Muslim, and such reports completely ignore the fact that Congressman Hunter has endorsed another candidate for Congress here in San Diego County, Omar Qudrat, who is a self-identified Muslim,” said Michael Harrison, a spokesman for Hunter.

Harrison added that Hunter hasn’t broached his opponent’s Palestinian heritage “as a negative” but has simply focused on the facts, including Campa-Najjar’s grandfather’s involvement in the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Munich Olympics.

“Again, these facts are not disputed, even by our opponent, and people voting in the 50th Congressional District have a right to know all the facts and decide for themselves who would best represent them in Congress,” Harrison said.

Even Neal Tapio, a South Dakota state senator who finished last in a three-person Republican primary for the state’s at-large district, ran an anti-Muslim ad. His low-budget spot accused the founder of a Sioux Falls mosque — not any of the candidates for Congress — of dressing like a terrorist. The 41-second ad alleges that Mohamed Sharif “wears the same scarf as Hamas fighters” and ends by asking, “Should we be concerned?”

“For years, a small yet resilient anti-Muslim conspiracy has lived on the margins of American politics with a beachhead on the fringes of the Republican Party: that there is an imminent Muslim threat aiming to take over the country through both violent and non-violent means,” the Muslim Advocates report says. “This fringe has had modest electoral success for years, with several standard-bearers in Congress and statehouses, but the election of Donald Trump put one of their own in the White House for the very first time.”

Candidate Trump, after all, pledged to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and had suggested that President Barack Obama was a Muslim years before the real estate mogul ran for and became president. The report says the Trump campaign and presidency has emboldened “a new wave of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists to run for office nationwide and at all levels of government, trying to capitalize on a deeply false premise: that smearing Muslims is a successful campaign strategy.”

Democrats Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are poised to become the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Both “have been viciously attacked” by anti-Muslim activists and media outlets, according to the report. Tlaib has been labeled a “radical Islamist,” and Omar has been accused of marrying her brother to commit immigration fraud.

Scott Simpson, public advocacy director of Muslim Advocates, told POLITICO it was important that this rhetoric didn’t get dismissed as “crazy talk” because it could affect people’s lives, leading to more attacks on and discrimination against Muslims.

“We have to stop the bleeding. Every month — every month — there is something horrific: a mosque gets attacked or there’s a planned attack or there’s a vicious hate crime,” Simpson said. “We really want it to stop. The only real precipitating factor in this is that the rhetoric has gotten so unhinged, and we believe that gives license to sort of this small and hostile sliver of folks to commit really unspeakable acts.”

According to the poll in the report, a survey of 1,000 voters, 18 percent of respondents said Muslims are good people. But 7 percent have a negative view of Muslims in general, while 5 percent believe they are good as long as they aren’t extremists. Two percent said their religion is false, 1 percent said Muslims are different, 1 percent said they are terrorists, and fewer than 0.5 percent said they should leave the country.

Seventy-one percent said it is inappropriate for candidates to speak negatively about Muslims during their campaigns. Fourteen percent said it is appropriate, and 14 percent were unsure or refused to say.

Only 8 percent, however, said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who speaks negatively about Muslims. Fifty-eight percent said they would be more likely to vote against that candidate, though it made no difference to 17 percent.

While “anti-Muslim conspiracy candidates fell flat in 2017 and 2018,” the report concludes, “anti-Muslim candidates and conspiracies are now firmly entrenched in American politics, particularly in Republican circles.”

“Despite the broad rejection of these conspiracies, candidates and the policies that flow from them, anti-Muslim attacks, threats and discrimination continue,” it says. “While shrewd candidates and elected officials will take note of how unpopular parroting these conspiracies is, others will not. Our research has already found 11 elected officials actively stoking bigotry ahead of 2019 and 2020 elections, and, while many of them have already faced significant backlash and pressure to resign, we do not know how they plan to move forward.”

The telephone and online survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.