RIYADH: The US Green Party’s presidential candidate, who is emerging as the most popular candidate among Arab Americans, appears to be coming under fire from allies of Vice President Kamala Harris.
In what appears to mark the start of a disqualification campaign, a member of the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to have Jill Stein removed from the Wisconsin ballot, arguing the party is unelectable, The Association Press reported.
This is the latest move by the DNC to exclude third-party candidates from the election, the report says. In several states, the Democrats are also trying to stop the independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The report was published by various media outlets in the USA.
Jill Stein, known for her vocal support of Palestinian rights, has emerged as the top choice among Arab-American voters, according to a poll conducted late last month by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) ahead of the November 5 U.S. election.
Stein, a doctor and environmentalist, received more than 45 percent of the vote among Arab Americans, beating Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, who received 27.5 percent of the vote. Republican candidate Donald Trump received just two percent, while 17.9 percent were undecided.
The presence of the Green Party on the presidential ballot could make a difference in the swing state of Wisconsin, the report says, where four of the last six presidential elections were decided by margins of between 5,700 and around 23,000 votes.
Jill Stein is expected to be officially named the Green Party’s presidential candidate at the Green Party’s convention beginning Thursday. The party has not yet responded to the DNC’s move.
Why Jill Stein?
Arab-American voters have increasingly been leaning toward Stone since October because of their commitment to Palestinian human rights and opposition to Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip, ADC national executive director Abed Ayoub previously said in a post on social media platform X.
The latest poll shows a big jump from ADC’s last poll in May, when it led with 25 percent support. In that poll, President Joe Biden, who was the Democratic frontrunner before he dropped out of the race in July, received 7 percent of Arab-Americans. Trump received just 2 percent.
Chris Habiby, director of national government affairs and advocacy for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said Stein’s support for a two-state solution and an end to Israel’s brutal military offensive in Gaza boosts her popularity among Arab and Muslim-American voters.
Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which killed over 40,000 civilians, most of them women and children.
“Dr. Jill Stein has made her message against genocide very clear and forceful,” he said on The Ray Hanania radio show, as Arab News previously reported.
In his column at Arab News, Hanania noted that while Vice President Kamala Harris’s poll numbers are significantly better than those of President Biden, her disdainful response to a handful of protesters in Detroit who called on her to support a ceasefire in Gaza may not bode well for her campaign.
“Their response was a major political mistake that sparked heated debates in many swing states. In the Democratic primaries over the past six months, Arabs and Muslims have shown that they can siphon thousands of votes from Biden, nearly wiping out his narrow lead over Trump in 2020,” Hanania wrote.
“Democrats are afraid to acknowledge the anti-Biden votes and the likelihood that those votes will increase if Harris refuses to take the Arab and Muslim community seriously,” he added.
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Veteran pollster John Zogby, president and founder of polling firm John Zogby Strategies, noted that Harris is currently leading the uptrend line primarily because she is new to the Democratic convention and is experiencing a brief honeymoon phase due to her newness as a candidate.
But that popularity could change, he said, pointing out that Arab and Muslim voters have more influence today than at any time since they settled in the country and that the Gaza issue is the deciding factor in their voting decisions.
In 2022, 2.2 million people in the United States reported Arab ancestry in the Arab Community Survey. The majority of Arab Americans were born in the country, and 85 percent of Arabs in the United States are citizens.
While the community has its roots in every Arab country, the majority of Arab Americans’ ancestry comes from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. The four states with the highest Arab American populations are California, Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan.
The DNC’s strange argument
The last time Stein ran for the Green Party in Wisconsin was in 2016, when she received just over 31,000 votes – more than Donald Trump’s margin of victory this year of just under 23,000 votes. Some Democrats credited Stein with helping Trump win the state and the presidency.
The nonpartisan Election Commission in February unanimously approved the Green Party’s presidential candidate this year because the party won more than 1% of the vote in a statewide election in 2022. Green Party candidate Sharyl McFarland received nearly 1.6% of the vote, finishing last in a four-candidate race for secretary of state.
But the complaint filed with the commission by David Strange, deputy director of operations for the DNC in Wisconsin, says the Green Party cannot nominate electors in Wisconsin and is prohibited from putting a presidential candidate on the ballot without those votes.
State law requires those who nominate electors in October to be state officials, including members of the legislature, judges and others. They could also be candidates for the legislature.
The Greens have no one who could be considered as a nominating candidate and therefore cannot name a list of presidential candidates as required by law, the lawsuit states.
Because the Greens could have launched a mail-in ballot campaign for parliamentary candidates in Tuesday’s primary election but did not do so, the complaint could not have been filed earlier than Wednesday, the filing said.
“We take the nomination process for president and vice president very seriously and believe every candidate should follow the rules,” DNC senior counsel Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “Because the Wisconsin Green Party has not fielded candidates for legislative or statewide offices and does not currently have any incumbent legislative or statewide officeholders, it cannot nominate candidates and should not be on the ballot in November.”
This is not the first time that the Green Party’s voting status has been challenged.
In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court kept the Green Party’s presidential candidate off the ballot after upholding the blockade by the Wisconsin State Elections Commission, which could not agree on whether the candidates had submitted the correct paperwork.
This year, in addition to the Republicans, Democrats and Greens, the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party also have the right to vote. The commission will meet on August 27 to decide whether four independent presidential candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, met the requirements for the election. The DNC member is asking the commission to also consider her complaint at that meeting.
In some swing states, including Wisconsin, there are signs that backers of third-party candidates are trying to influence the outcome of the presidential election through fraudulent means—in most cases in ways that would benefit Trump. Their goal is to offer left-leaning third-party alternatives that could siphon off a few thousand protest votes.
The latest Marquette University Law School poll, conducted July 24-August 1, found the Wisconsin presidential race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Trump roughly tied among likely voters. Stein barely made it into the race with about 1% support, while Kennedy received 6%.
