Harris had campaigned with the former GOP congresswoman in crucial swing states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.
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.
