Republican congressman Duncan Hunter held onto a narrow three-point lead over Democrat challenger Ammar Campa-Najjar in a new poll of the heavily Republican California 50th congressional district.
The three-point lead, 48-45, is down from an eight-point lead in an August poll conducted by the same source, KGTV-TV/SurveyUSA, among 547 likely voters (no margin of error was given).
Donald Trump won the significantly Republican district by fifteen points in the 2016 presidential race.
Hunter has held the seat since 2013. His father, Duncan Hunter Sr., held a congressional seat in the region from 1981 to 2009.
Campa-Najjar has benefited from the fact that his opponent was recently indicted on federal charges of mis-using campaign funds. He has also run a well-funded and spirited campaign.
However, he has faced questions about his background ever since it was discovered that his paternal grandfather, Muhammad Yousef al-Najjar (a.k.a. Abu Yusuf) was a Palestinian terrorist who participated in the planning of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.
Abu Youssef and Yasser Arafat (Yasser Al-Najjar / Facebook)
Al-Najjar (above) was a close aide to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist Yasser Arafat.
Campa-Najjar has since condemned his grandfather’s actions, and says he endorses peace between Israelis and Palestinians. However, in 2015 he referred to his grandfather as a “legend” and a “public servant.”
His father, former Palestinian diplomat and Palestinian Authority official Yasser al-Najjar, recently praised his terrorist father as a “martyr” on Facebook.
In addition, Campa-Najjar, whose mother is Mexican-American, changed his name after the primary election in June from “Ammar Yasser Najjar” to “Ammar Joseph Campa-Najjar,” and changed theme of his campaign committee to “Ammar Campa for Congress” last year — perhaps, critics suggest, to conceal his surname, or to appeal to the district’s Latino voters using his mother’s surname.
Campa-Najjar has also accepted donations from leaders of the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which offered assistance to the family of the San Bernardino terrorists in 2015.
Despite his own conversion to Christianity, Campa-Najjar’s campaign also donated money to CAIR. He also received a donation from a Palestinian ambassador last year, which he has refused to return.
*As Breitbart News has noted: “In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization . The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).”
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook
Joel B. Pollak contributed to this article.
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