Dearborn activists' push to bail on Biden spreads to other key battleground states
The Dearborn, Michigan-based “Abandon Biden" and “Listen to Michigan" movements to disrupt President Biden’s re-election bid are spreading to other key swing states.
DEARBORN, Mich. — The movement to deny President Biden a second term that gained traction in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn has plans to continue a national campaign to target swing states in the general election.
"We’ve mobilized our infrastructure that we’ve been able to build as a grassroots movement in Michigan to support other key states," Lexis Zeidan, one of the lead organizers and the spokesperson for Listen to Michigan, told Fox News Digital.
Some of those states, according to Zeidan, are key battlegrounds such as Wisconsin and Minnesota, which, along with Michigan figure to play a critical role in this year’s election.
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The anti-Biden movement stems from the president’s support of Israel during its war in Gaza, a monthslong campaign in response to the Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish State by Iran-backed Hamas.
But critics in Dearborn, which has the highest per capita Muslim population in the U.S., have accused Biden of supporting what they call a "genocide" in Gaza, leading to a campaign to punish the president at the polls in 2024.
That campaign gained traction and national attention in Michigan, where during the state’s Democratic primary, groups such as Listen to Michigan led over 100,000 voters to mark "uncommitted" on their ballots as a protest against Biden’s re-election bid.
"We went into the primaries expecting or aiming to get 10,000 uncommitted votes, which was Trump's margin of victory in 2016," Zeidan said. "And we ended up with over 101,000 uncommitted votes, where we also landed two delegates in District 12, in District 6, who will be headed to the national convention."
That success carried over into Wisconsin, Zeidan argued, where more than 48,000 voters marked "Uninstructed" in the Democratic primary instead of supporting the incumbent presumptive nominee.
Samraa Luqman, who worked as the Abandon Biden co-chair in Michigan, told Fox News Digital that their organization has always had designs on a national campaign targeting "all swing states."
While the Abandon Biden movement garnered the most attention in Dearborn ahead of Michigan’s primary, Luqman explained that the organization was actually formed in Minnesota. From there, organizers set their sights on targeting a "swing state strategy for the general election to ensure Biden’s loss."
Ronald Stockton, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, told Fox News Digital that the movement gaining traction out of Michigan has the potential to be a major problem for Biden’s re-election bid, arguing that the president has a "real chance" to lose states such as Michigan.
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Stockton noted that while much attention has been given to the concerns of Muslim voters in Dearborn, the movement has the potential to spread "nationally," thanks to the support campaigns such as Abandon Biden and Listen to Michigan enjoy among younger voters across the demographic spectrum.
"Those people below 30 are abandoning Biden, they’re so heavily against this war," Stockton said. "It’s a generational thing, and I am talking nationally now, that’s a national pattern."
That trend could even extend to states outside of what are traditionally thought of as swing states, Zeidman said, pointing out that the Listen to Michigan campaign has also spread to blue havens such as Washington. Meanwhile, a Listen to Maryland spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the campaign there is now mobilizing voters to select "uncommitted" in that state’s Democratic primary.
Both Luqman and Zeidan argued that their respective movements should also be seen as a message to Democrats across the country, warning them to change their stance on support of Israel’s war or face the consequences at the ballot box.
"The grassroots movement we’ve built in the way that people have felt inspired and re-engaged in being politically active, we felt it was incumbent upon us as an organization to keep that growing," Zeidan said. "And so now you’ve seen is we have exceeded goals across the state … and our next stage of the game is to get all our delegates together to continue to take our anti-war, pro peace, pro-Palestinian narrative to the convention in August."
"The President is working tirelessly to end the violence and bring about a just, lasting peace in the Middle East," a Biden campaign spokesperson responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the Abandon Biden and Vote Uncommitted campaigns.