DEARBORN, Mich. — Opposite two options She didn’t like it, Suehaila Amen didn’t choose either.

Instead, the veteran Democrat from the Arab-American stronghold of Dearborn, Michigan, backed a third party candidate for president, adding his voice to a notable change that helped Donald Trump win back Michigan and the presidency.

In Dearborn, where nearly half of the 110,000 residents are of Arab descent, Vice President Kamala Harris received more than 2,500 fewer votes than Trump, who became the first Republican presidential candidate since former President George W. Bush in 2000 to win the city. Harris also lost neighboring Dearborn Heights to Trump, who in his previous term as president banned traveling from several predominantly Muslim countries.

Harris lost the presidential vote in two Detroit-area cities with large Arab American populations after months of warnings from local Democrats about the Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Some said they endorsed Trump after he visited them a few days before the election, mingling with customers and staff at a Lebanese-owned restaurant and assuring people he would find a way to end the violence in the Middle East. .

Others, including Amen, could not be convinced to support the former president. He said many Arab Americans felt Harris got what she deserved, but they are not “jubilant about Trump.”

“Whether it’s Trump himself or the people around him, this worries me a lot,” Amen said. “But at the end of the day, when you have two evils running, what are you left with?”

As it became clear from Tuesday into the early hours of Wednesday that Trump would not only win the presidency but likely prevail in Dearborn, Dearborn City Council member Mustapha Hammoud described the mood in the metro area’s Arab American communities of Detroit as “grim.” And yet, he said, the result “wasn’t surprising at all.”

The shift in Dearborn, where Trump received nearly 18,000 votes compared to Harris’s 15,000, marks a striking turnaround from just four years ago, when Joe Biden won the city by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

The results did not arrive out of nowhere. For months, in phone calls and meetings with top Democratic officials, local leaders warnedin blunt terms, that Arab American voters would turn against them if the administration’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas did not change.

The Biden-Harris administration has remained a staunch ally of Israel since the brutal Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages. The war between Israel and Hamas It has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

While Harris softened her rhetoric on the war, she did not propose concrete policies toward Israel or the war in Gaza that differ from the administration’s position. And even if it had, that might not have made much of a difference in places like Dearborn.

“All he had to do was stop the war in Lebanon and Gaza and he would get the votes of everyone here,” Hammoud said.

More voters thought Trump would be better suited to handle the situation in the Middle East than Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. About half of voters said Trump was the best fit, compared to about a third who said Harris.

Among those who opposed more aid to Israel, 58% backed Harris in the presidential election; 39% supported Trump.

Even some Harris voters had their doubts. About three-quarters of Harris voters in Michigan said she was the best candidate to handle the situation. Few preferred Trump, but about 2 in 10 Harris voters said they were equivalent or that neither would be better.

Faced with a lack of support for Harris in the Arab American community, Trump and his allies intervened.

A key part of the Michigan electorate, a state Trump won by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016 before losing by nearly 154,000 to Biden in 2020, Arab Americans spent months meeting with Trump allies, who encouraged community leaders to back him. .

Things began to change in September, when Amer Ghalib, the Democratic Muslim mayor of the city of Hamtramck, endorsed Trump. Shortly afterward, Trump visited a campaign office there.

That was a turning point, said Massad Boulos, the father of Trump’s son-in-law who led his outreach to Arab Americans.

“They very much appreciated the president’s visit and the respect they felt,” Boulos said. “That was the first big achievement, so to speak. After that, I started receiving support from imams and Muslim leaders.”