Jill Stein wins 22% of vote in Dearborn as Gaza stings Harris: network
Jill Stein won 22% of the vote in the fiercely contested city of Dearborn, Michigan, according to a projection from NBC.
Kamala Harris won 28%, while Donald Trump won 47%, according to unofficial results from the city clerk, reported by the network.
Metro Detroit is home to the nation's largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large proportion of them living in Dearborn. The city—which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin in 2020—has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Stein told Newsweek in September that Harris could not win the presidential election because she has lost the crucial support of Muslim and Arab Americans in key battleground states.
The Green Party leader placed Israel's wars with Hamas and Hezbollah front and center of her campaign.
"The Democrats cannot win without the support of the Muslim American community. And that community has left the station and is not coming back unless the Democrats decide that it's more important to them to win the election than it is to conduct the genocide," Stein told Newsweek.
"So they have to do a 180 on the genocide and they don't appear willing to do that. They could win those votes back, but it doesn't look like that's on the cards. So it looks like they are sacrificing several swing states." Israel denies it is conducting genocide.
Israel invaded Gaza after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack and last month launched an invasion of Lebanon to suppress Hezbollah, the militia that has continuously launched rockets into Israeli territory. At least 43,000 people have died in Gaza, according to Gaza's health ministry, which does not distinguish in its death toll between combatants and civilians.
Michigan has more than 200,000 Muslim voters and 300,000 with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry. Biden won there in 2020 by 154,000 votes, while Trump carried the state with a victory margin of just 10,700—or 0.23 percent—in 2016.
Stein's policy of bringing about an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza via a full embargo on U.S. arms to Israel was seized upon by Muslim and Arab American communities.
She held her first event with a Muslim American group in Illinois in February, but the strength of support grew throughout the summer as Israel intensified and expanded its campaign.
"It was like we were on the same wavelength from the very beginning with the Muslim American community, with a very similar humanistic perspective and a sense of the centrality of the genocide in this election and its importance in our society and in our lives. The bottom line being that we cannot turn away," Stein said.
"The Muslim Americans and Arab Americans have really felt like allies here in our standing up to stop genocide. It's felt like a family affair from the start ... we're very much in-synch. For a long time that community didn't know which way they were gonna go. It's only recently we've been getting these endorsements and pulling ahead in the polls in a very big way."
