People keep asking me why Arab American citizens are moving toward voting for Trump. My answer? They are already Trump supporters – and enthusiastic ones. But they aren’t registered to vote and keep telling us they don’t know where or how to vote.
My husband and I started the Conservative American Middle Eastern PAC – or CAM PAC – in October 2024 after a Trump supporting friend told us how much he was hurting financially but that he still wasn’t registered to vote. Seeing this gap in Republican outreach to register Middle Eastern Americans, we couldn’t wait for someone else to solve the problem.
Since launching in Michigan, we have seen people willing to wait in line just to get registered and vote for Trump.
Listen to Michelle Moons Dawi’s interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday with Matthew Boyle:
One case in point is a Christian Iraqi American man named Bashar who approached the registration table we had set up outside of a Michigan grocery store last Wednesday just as we were about to wrap up for the day. Bashar told us that Democrats approached him three times to try to register him to vote for Kamala Harris, but he refused to do so until my group spoke with him and registered him as a Republican. He will now be voting happily for Donald Trump.
“This is the first time I see someone teach me how to vote Republican,” he told us.
Bashar said that before speaking with us, he had assumed that Trump was going to lose because he had not seen any Republican outreach, in stark contrast to all of the Democrats who had repeatedly tried to secure his vote. After registering himself, Bashar got his mother registered to vote too, and she will also be voting for Trump in November.
On Tuesday, an 85-year-old woman and her sister approached our table and registered to vote after her children refused to help her vote for Trump. Both women are now registered to vote in this election for Trump.
Another new voter who registered at one of our tables said he is Muslim and is voting for Trump because he knows that Trump will fix our country.
On Friday, we registered a 102-year-old woman whose dying wish is that Trump wins the 2024 presidential election. She and her friend, who we also registered, pray for Trump every day. One expressed that she was sad to see the assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
One 24-year-old woman who has never voted before, approached our tables specifically wanting to register so she could vote for Trump.
CAM PAC’s co-founder Karim Dawi (right) points to an 85-year-old Michigan woman who, along with her sister standing behind her and the others in the photo, registered to vote for Donald Trump at a CAM PAC registration table outside a grocery story in Oakland County, Michigan, on Tuesday, October 8, 2024. (Photo courtesy of CAM PAC).
Many more who have visited our registration tables have told similar tales that they did not know how or where to vote. One after another of these American citizens, now new voters, said they thought they could just show up with their ID at a polling place on election day and vote. They did not know they had to register first. CAM PAC has registering about 100 people after campaigning in just two locations for just two days alone.
We are also has expanding our registration drive in Michigan beyond the Middle Eastern community. We’ve registered a number of Albanian American voters and are also doing outreach to Michigan’s conservative Macedonian American community after learning that these voters are eager for information on how and where to vote before the state’s registration deadline.
Conservative grassroots activists like Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin and others have worked alongside us to make sure voters get registered and that every vote counts. Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk has also sounded the alarm on his show that Republicans should leave no votes on the table, and he has pushed everyone to register to vote before the deadline expires.
Online registration in Michigan ends on October 21. Mail in registrations must be postmarked by October 21. After that Michiganders can still get registered, but it requires a trek down to their local election office, a trip that is far less likely to happen if they haven’t already accessed the simple online or mail in systems.
Michelle Moons Dawi is a former Breitbart White House correspondent and former Trump administration official. She launched CAM PAC with her husband after hearing from Trump-supporting Middle Eastern Americans who were still not registered to vote.