Sanders won in Arab Muslim-majority areas of Dearborn

For decades, Dr. Yahya Basha of West Bloomfield has been a loyal Republican, even holding fundraisers for the party's candidates.

But the day before Election Day last week, the longtime advocate for Arab-Americans and Muslims met in Dearborn with Bernie Sanders - who is Jewish and a Democrat - before his speech to a packed crowd inside a city theater.

"He's very positive about Muslims, Syrian refugees, minorities," said Basha, a Syrian-American Muslim. "He's made excellent statements."

Basha's views were seen in the election results in Dearborn, where Sanders won in many of the heavily Arab-American Muslim areas of Dearborn, according to a Free Press analysis of primary results in city precincts.

In the Salina School precincts in the southeast end of Dearborn, where the residential population is at least 90% Arab-American Muslim, Sanders got 67% compared to Hillary Clinton's 32%. The same Salina precincts voted 72% for George W. Bush over Al Gore in November 2000, when the area was, as it is now, almost all Muslim.

Sanders also won in other precincts where Arab-American Muslims are in a clear majority: At Oakman School's two precincts, Sanders led Clinton 70% to 29%, at Lowrey School, 71% to 28%, and at McDonald School's two precincts, 67% to 32%. Clinton did, however, beat Sanders in an election precinct in Hamtramck that's largely Yemeni-American Muslim.

Sanders did better in Dearborn than he did statewide, defeating Clinton 59% to 39% in the city, getting 7,126 votes while Clinton got 4,730. Sanders won in Michigan, 50% to 48%.

The story of Sanders winning in Dearborn made national headlines this week, sparking a conversation about religion and ethnicity in the city. Dearborn, which has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans among cities in the U.S., is known officially as the hometown of Henry Ford, who was anti-Semitic. But local Arab-Americans say it's not unusual for them to vote for someone who is Jewish.

"I was predicting he would win the Arabic vote," said Shiab Mussad, 22, an Arab-American Muslim voter in Dearborn who supported Sanders. "Some people think because he's a Jewish person, we would never want to vote for a candidate like that. But it shows you how great America is, that regardless of religion, we can vote for someone who's the best candidate to represent us and the country."

"You hear all these stories in the media about the tensions between Muslims and Jews, and then you come to Dearborn, and we have such great support for this man. We look beyond differences for the best candidate to help our community. That is the beauty of America."

The Sanders appeal

One of the ways Sanders attracted voters was through his messaging. Sanders' campaign released a radio ad in Arabic aimed at Dearborn's media market. Sanders spoke at two rallies in Dearborn in the past three weeks, attracting many Arab-American Muslims. And he was supported by several local Arab-American Muslim leaders, who sent out e-mails and social media posts urging support.

On March 7, the Monday before Election Day, Sanders met personally with Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab-American News, which had endorsed him. Also at the meeting was Dr. Basha, a Republican, and Ahmad Chebbani, a business leader with the American-Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn. Basha, who opposes the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, wishes that Sanders talked more about foreign policy issues, but supports his views on treatment of minorities in the U.S.

Sanders "made strong statements against bigotry, whereas in this election cycle the rhetoric of the Republican candidates has mainstreamed anti-Muslim bigotry to an alarming degree," said Sally Howell, a professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, who studies Muslim-American and Arab-American communities.

Moreover, some Arab Americans were concerned about Clinton's support for the Iraq war, Yemen conflict, and what they say is her biased view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Still, Clinton has supporters among Arab Americans, as seen at Salina, where she got 32% of the vote.

And in Hamtramck, a city that also has a sizable Muslim and immigrant population, Clinton narrowly won 50%-48% over Sanders, getting 1,002 votes to Sanders' 953 votes. Anywhere from one-third to more than half of Hamtramck's residents are Muslim. In the sixth precinct, which is largely Yemeni-American Muslim, Clinton won 62% to 36%, 103 votes to 59.

Trump wins among Dearborn's GOP

Trump also won in some Muslim-heavy areas in Dearborn and Hamtramck, but it was among a small number of voters, and probably came from non-Muslim Republicans, say experts.

Trump performed slightly better in Dearborn, including its eastern sections, than he did overall in Michigan, where he got 36.5% of the statewide vote, with Ted Cruz at 24.9%. In Dearborn, Trump won among GOP voters in the city with 3,153 votes, or 39% of the 8,047 Republican votes cast, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 30%, 2,406 votes.

Dearborn is about 42% Arab-American, according to U.S. Census figures. But the percentage of them who are eligible to vote, registered to vote and come out to vote is much lower than 42%, said Prof. Ron Stockton of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, who studies Arab-Americans.

Turnout in the eastern sections of Dearborn, which is more heavily Arab-American, was a lot lower than in the western. At Salina, for example, only 14% of registered voters came out, compared to 47% at a precinct at Dearborn High School in the west, and 34% overall for the city.

Trump did better in the eastern section of Dearborn than in the western section of Dearborn. Trump got 41% of the vote in the 23 precincts that make up the eastern part of the city, and 39% of the vote in the western section's 27 precincts, according to a Free Press analysis of the results. The Republican turnout Tuesday was negligible in Salina, only 10 votes total, 3 of them for Trump.

"The Trump numbers in Dearborn caught my attention," said Sally Howell, a professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, who studies Muslim-American and Arab-American communities. "It suggests folks there, as elsewhere in the state and country, are finding his rhetoric powerful."

In largely Arab-American Muslim areas such as McDonald and Maples schools, Trump won, although the overall turnout for Republicans in those Democratic-heavy areas was low. Trump won at the two precincts at McDonald School, getting 27 votes, with 17 for Ted Cruz and 13 for Kasich. At the two precincts at Maples, Trump got 40 votes, Cruz 20, and Kasich 18.

Howell said the Trump voters were probably residents who are not Arab: "I doubt more than a handful of Arab Americans in Dearborn voted for him."

Trump led on the GOP side in Hamtramck, with 192 votes, Kasich with 55, Cruz with 51.

Some Arab-Americans were concerned about Trump winning Dearborn and the state.

"It's very scary that are people in the town that you know, you live with, who are neighbors with Muslims and they're here voting for the guy who wants to get rid of Muslims," said Dearborn resident Majed Moughni, who is Arab-American Muslim.

The concern over Trump's performance among some Arab-American advocates contrasts with the excitement many young Arab-American Muslims felt over Sanders' victory.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in Dearborn voting

Overall, Democrats got more votes in Dearborn than the Republicans, 60% to 40%, including in the western precincts.

At Dearborn High School's two precincts in the western part of Dearborn, Sanders was the top vote-getter, with 280 votes, followed by Clinton at 234 votes and Trump at 177 votes.

Sanders performed about the same in both the eastern and western sections, getting 59.4% of the vote in the eastern part of Dearborn to Clinton's 39.3%, and 58.7% in the western part to Clinton's 39%.

Stockton said "I was not surprised a bit to realize that the Arab/Muslim neighborhoods in Dearborn voted for Sanders."

"I had detected on my campus the remarkable enthusiasm that Muslim students were showing for Sanders," Stockton said. "It became very obvious when he spoke in Local 600 (UAW hall in Dearborn) a few weeks ago. It reminded me of the enthusiasm that young white people showed for Obama in 2008, as if his race were not an issue. These Muslims seemed indifferent to the fact that Sanders was a Jew."

Howell said that Arab-Americans were historically in Dearborn a working-class community that tended to vote Democratic. Some had shifted to the Republicans in the 1990s and still support them, but the tone over the past year of some candidates, such as Trump, has concerned them, driving them to support Sanders.

Sami Khalidi, president of the Dearborn Democratic Club who's on the executive board of the Michigan Democratic Party, supported Clinton, but said "she missed a chance" to reach out personally to Arab-Americans and Muslims.

Bill Clinton did visit a store and restaurant in west Dearborn on March 5, but didn't meet with Arab-Americans, disappointing some.

"Bernie Sanders reached out to the Arab-American community," Khalidi said. "He personally came to them, face-to-face."

Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or 313-223-4792. Follow him on Twitter @nwarikoo