At Al-Hewar Center

On June 6, 2004, Al-Hewar Center hosted a discussion with Dr. James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute (AAI). The event was moderated by Mr. Mazhar Samman.

“We are in the early phases of what will be a very critical election for our country, for our community, and certainly for the world,” stated Dr. Zogby. “Every four years they say this is the most important election in our history, but this year really is. It is very critical, because of 9/11, because of the direction our country took after 9/11, because of the mistakes that were made, quite frankly, and the approach that was taken. America has a real choice of what kind of country it is going to be, in terms of its foreign policy and in terms of its domestic policy.” In the past, said Zogby, the final determinant of an election was usually which candidate best reached into the center of American politics. But this year, he sees that there are two very distinct visions for the direction of the country, and how it is going to be represented by the political parties. As we get into the Fall, he said, those choices are going to become even clearer.

Even though the positions of the candidates and directions of the parties were very clear in February and January, said Zogby, things right now are a little fuzzy and will probably stay that way until September. In some ways, he said, the candidates are trying not to position themselves right now, but rather are focusing on other things. John Kerry wants to raise money, and George Bush wants to stem the flow of negative press. Both of them will be concentrating on tactics between now and September that have nothing to do with the positions that they will finally enunciate in the Fall when the real debate begins.

Zogby pointed out that Senator Kerry has actually taken more issues off the table recently than he even brought into the debate last September, October, November, and December in the run-up to the Democratic primaries. At that point he was trying to show the real differences between himself and George Bush. Now he is trying to focus more on who he is. He’s still having trouble breaking through, said Zogby, but he does not want to begin the campaign in the summer. Both he and Bush are worried that people will get tired of the whole process if it begins too early. So Kerry is building his infrastructure right now and not speaking out about issues. As of Zogby’s presentation at Al-Hewar Center, the candidates had not even hired state campaign directors or budgeted money to do any political work. However, predicted Zogby, in the Fall, we are going to see two months of “knock-down drag-out” politics.

Arab Americans were very excited last year because we were being actively courted, said Dr. Zogby. He proudly reported that all of the Democratic candidates came to AAI’s National Leadership Conference in Michigan last October, except Al Sharpton who wasn’t invited (to avoid marginalizing the community, among other reasons). Zogby was gratified that the candidates were seriously considering how to frame their messages as they spoke to the Arab American Community. They had never done that before, said Zogby, who reminded that audience that in his 30 years of political activism, it has been a real struggle to get the Arab community accepted into the political process.

Zogby was deputy campaign manager for Jesse Jackson in 1984, and that was the first time that Arab Americans were ever involved in a presidential campaign as a community. Prior to that there had been Syrian-Lebanese committees – Carter had one; and Reagan had a Lebanese committee in 1980, but the “Arab American” community had always been disenfranchised. “We changed the ground rules in 1984, said Zogby, “…it had to be Arab Americans.” People fought the concept then, and some people are still fighting it, he said. For example, some people want to exclude certain members of the community, others want to divide the community from the Muslim direction. “But,” he said, “I believe that overall, this identity of ‘Arab-American’ is going to survive and win as the political way we organize and name ourselves, and name the issues that we bring into the political arena.”

In this current election year, the first indication of how well the community is doing was when all the candidates came to the Leadership Conference in October. “Even the chair of the Bush campaign came, and Spencer Abraham came, and the chair of the Democratic party came. We have never had a welcoming like that,” Zogby said. He noted that David Broder wrote in the Washington Post that what we saw in Michigan was the introduction of Arab Americans into the political process.

“Younger folks in the community don’t understand the significance of this,” said Zogby, “but people who have been around for a while understand it. In 1984, Jesse Jackson was the first person to court us, then Pat Buchanan in 1988, then that was it, until 2000. During the primary process, nobody came, except in 2000 Al Gore and John McCain came by video. To this day, Bill Clinton was the only President ever to come and speak at an Arab American event. All of sudden, you come to an Arab American event and all the Democrats are there, and the chair of the Bush campaign… I thought to myself, this is victory.” Before, the candidates just ignored the Arab community. Now that has changed.

Because there is a lull in the process right now, some people are getting disheartened and think we are being written out again, Zogby noted. “But I say wait until September. The campaign has not yet begun…But when they have to focus this election on the states where they have to win it, they will pay attention.”

According to Zogby, the election is not going to get fought in California, which the Democrats have already won. Nor will it be won in New York or Texas. The election, he said, is going to be fought in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida. Those happen to be the states where the number of Arab Americans and numbers in the Jewish community are almost even. This means that by the Fall, the Arab American community will become a serious part of the candidates’ strategies to get votes.

In response, the Arab American community, with the hard work and guidance of the Arab American Institute, is currently building the leadership structure in every state and focusing hard on voter registration and organization so that it will all be finished by September and the community will be positioned to do the work necessary when the campaign really begins.

Zogby believes that this election will be a lot like the 2000 election, where Al Gore won Michigan by about 200,000 votes, George Bush won Ohio by about 200,000 votes, Gore won Pennsylvania by about 200,000 votes, and one of them won Florida by a little bit (depending on which Supreme Court decision you go by). In every case, the margin of victory was about 1% or 2%, he said. Arab Americans make up 5% of the vote in Michigan, 2% in Ohio, 2% in Pennsylvania, and 2% in Florida. The point is, said Zogby, Arab Americans are the margin of victory or defeat in this process.

“If you look back at 2000 and compare it to the polling we are doing now,” he said, “in those states George Bush won by about 44 to 29… If you ask people now how they are voting in those four states, they say about 43 for Kerry, 28 Bush. It is a complete flip. That complete flip represents about 200,000 votes switched from the Republican column to the Democrat column.” But, he added, there are another 200,000 voters in those four states who are contemplating voting for Ralph Nader or no one at all. They are waiting for the two major candidates to state clearly who they are. These are the swing voters who are not voting for Kerry, for example, just because he is not George Bush. They want the candidates to spell out their agendas and take a stand.

Both campaigns are paying attention to the fact, said Zogby, that (1) Bush has lost a lot of support; and (2) Kerry has won some support but there are still a lot of undecided voters he could win. “200,000 voters still undecided in four key states, when the total margin of victory in 2000 was only 200,000 votes,” noted Zogby, “is a whole lot for both sides to worry about.”

Regarding Ralph Nader’s candidacy, Zogby said that Nader believes he is sharpening and enhancing the debate and pushing John Kerry in the right direction. Nader believes that if he weren’t in the debate, Kerry would not be facing the challenge. Zogby stated that he worries about Nader’s legacy. “I want people to remember what he did for auto safety, consumer product safety, the environment, and health care rights... I don’t want him to be remembered as the person who cost Al Gore the election, and I am worried that he might do it again. But at the end of the day, this election is not going to be about Ralph Nader vs. George Bush. It is going to be about John Kerry vs. George Bush, and we are going to have to make a decision. On some issues, we may not find one better than another. On Syria, for example, both of them are bad. John Kerry led the fight for the Syria Accountability Act; George Bush and the neocons supported it. But the question that we have to ask ourselves is, in the construct of our vision for foreign policy, who is going to move in the direction that is less likely to get us into trouble? It is important to have debate and discussions, and have people weigh all these issues, and then make their choice.”

“Another interesting thing that happened during our October conference,” said Zogby, “is that one of the candidates said to me, ‘I’m going to start by talking about the economy and health care, and then I’m going to focus on your issues, is that okay?’ I told him that (1) the economy and health care are our issues, and (2) the our issues are also your issues. What kind of America is it that doesn’t care about civil liberties and the Constitution? You, sir, have done nothing but talk about the war in Iraq, unilateralism, and the image of America overseas. Those aren’t my issues, those are the issues for all of us.”

This election, stated Dr. Zogby, is going to be about what the definition of what kind of America we are going to be. The debate in this election is about values. Are we an America that will lead because, in fact, people follow us, or are we going to lead simply because we have power? Are we an America that will strike out against people of color, or people who are different, or people we are afraid of, and suspend the Constitution?

“The community ought to be positioning itself so that we can shape this debate,” he said, “so that we are part and parcel of the discussion about what kind of policy the U.S. will have in Iraq, on the Arab-Israeli conflict, what kind of policy toward the whole Arab world, democracy and reform.”

In recent polling in the Arab world, he said, people were asked if they want democracy and reform. They said “yes.” But when they were asked if they wanted America to be the agent for that reform, they said “no.”

“It ought to hurt every American to hear that,” said Zogby, “because our country ought to be able to lead on those issues. But we can’t because we are not trusted or believed, nor do we have the moral authority or credibility, because we have not practiced the values that we want to project. George Bush said after 9/11 ‘they’re attacking us because they don’t like our values.’ That’s not true. Arabs like America’s values; they just don’t believe that America’s values apply to them,” Zogby said.

“We have a lot to do,” he said, “but we have to continue to focus on the immediate challenges of this election as our ‘coming out party.’ This is an opportunity for us not only to be center stage in the election as an organized community, but also center stage as the community that helps to define the direction that America is going to take. We are not incidental to the politics or policies in this election; we really are a centerpiece in it all,” he concluded.