(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Rep. Jamaal Bowman revealed Friday that the Harris campaign sidelined him in their Michigan efforts and deployed former Rep. Liz Cheney instead.
Bowman appeared to mock Vice President Kamala Harris’s allies for their puzzling decision to join forces with Cheney, a self-proclaimed Republican widely unpopular across the political spectrum.
“I then told them … ‘I am ready to be dispatched to any part of the country. Let me know. I want to go to Michigan in particular,’” Bowman said on the Rania Khalek Dispatches podcast about his conversations with the Harris campaign.
“They never get back to me. Even worse, they send Ritchie Torres, Bill Clinton and Liz Cheney to Michigan. … This is what their campaign decided to do: let’s not send Jamaal Bowman,” said the outgoing representative.
Jamaal Bowman tells me he offered to go to Michigan for the Kamala Harris campaign to rally support for Democrats since he’s popular there.
The Harris campaign ignored him and instead sent Ritchie Torres, Liz Cheney and then Bill Clinton to scold Arab Americans.
Pretty… pic.twitter.com/iI0HQs9aTq
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) November 16, 2024
Bowman, who represents New York’s 16th Congressional District, lost his Democratic primary to George Latimer, an AIPAC-backed and pro-Israel candidate. Bowman’s term ends on Jan. 20, 2025.
In the interview, Bowman joked that his large popularity in Arab American communities led Latimer to accuse him of better representing Dearborn, a city with the largest Arab American population in the U.S.
“My opponent said this sh*t in the debate,” Bowman claimed. “He said that because he knows it’s an Arab American community.”
Bowman’s criticism proved accurate, as the Harris-Cheney alliance floundered.
According to the Detroit Free Press, President-elect Donald Trump carried Dearborn with 42 percent of the vote to Harris’s 36 percent. Trump ultimately won Michigan.
This mirrored a national trend, with Trump drastically improving his vote share compared to 2020 and 2016. In 2020, President Joe Biden received nearly 69 percent of the Dearborn vote compared to Trump’s 29.9 percent.
President @realDonaldTrump stops by The Great Commoner 🇺🇸
“Dearborn is Trump Country!” pic.twitter.com/B6srTjrCiz
— Margo Martin (@margomartin) November 1, 2024
Harris did not convince Arab American voters who saw her campaign rhetoric as inauthentic, shifting between support for Palestinians and Israel depending on the audience.
The Harris campaign came under fire for running microtargeted ads aimed at Arab Americans in Michigan, according to CNN.
These ads featured Harris’s remarks supporting Palestinians but strategically omitted her statements backing Israel. In Pennsylvania, she ran ads highlighting her support for Israel while simultaneously avoiding mention of her pro-Palestinian statements.
FRAUD: CNN just exposed Kamala Harris for running anti-Israel ads in Michigan and pro-Israel ads in Pennsylvania. Trump should just run them for her in reverse… pic.twitter.com/sgw5QAG8ok
— @amuse (@amuse) November 2, 2024