Will Arab-American voters rally around Clinton?

Barbara Slavin

Jun 9, 2016

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton makes a speech during a campaign stop in Lynwood, California, United States, June 6, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake - RTSGAC9 — US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton makes a speech during a campaign stop in Lynwood, California, June 6, 2016. — REUTERS/Mike Blake

عربي

Like many of their compatriots, Arab-Americans are confronting their presidential election choices this year with considerable ambivalence.

Republicans have been repelled by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s vow to temporarily ban all Muslim immigration and his racist remarks about other ethnic minorities.

Many Arab-American Democrats, meanwhile, gravitated toward the candidacy of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who made Palestinian rights and aversion to US military intervention in the Middle East pillars of his foreign policy. However, Sanders on June 7 lost his chance for the nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

For Randa Fahmy Hudome, a lifelong Republican and former associate deputy secretary of energy under President George W. Bush, both Trump and Clinton pose problems.

Will Arab-American voters rally around Clinton?

Arab-Americans tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections, but will the community coalesce around Hillary Clinton despite the attraction of Bernie Sanders’ views on the Middle East?

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