‘Uncommitted’ founder who pushed Democrats to vote against Biden over Gaza wins primary

Abbas Alawieh captures Democratic nomination for Michigan state Senate seat without making anti-Israel stance central to campaign; says he recently met with former VP Kamala Harris

JTA — Abbas Alawieh, a founder of the Uncommitted movement that pressured former US president Joe Biden to change his Israel policy, is the projected winner of a Democratic primary for Michigan’s state Senate.

Alawieh rose to national prominence as a key architect of the campaign to withhold votes from Biden during Michigan’s presidential primary in 2024, a protest against the administration’s support for Israel as it inflicted mounting casualties in Gaza.

Alawieh defeated state representative Erin Byrnes in Tuesday’s primary to represent Michigan’s 2nd Senate District, a heavily Arab-American area covering Dearborn and parts of Detroit — and the epicenter of the Uncommitted effort. He won 59% of the vote to Byrnes’s 41% after more than 95% of votes were counted, according to the Associated Press, and is now almost certain to win the solid-blue state Senate seat in November.

Alawieh, who was born in Lebanon and grew up in Dearborn, acknowledged his victory without giving a speech on Wednesday. His staff announced that Alawieh’s maternal grandfather, Hajj Kassem Bazzi, died Tuesday night as they awaited the election results.

“Please keep Abbas’s family in your prayers as they take needed time together,” Alawieh’s team said in a statement. “Abbas will share his own thoughts on the race soon. For now, thank you to every community that made this win possible.”

Alawieh was backed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. He previously worked as a staffer for congressional Democrats, including Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib, former Michigan representative Andy Levin and former Missouri representative Cori Bush, who lost a primary against Representative Wesley Bell on Tuesday.

Alawieh, alongside Layla Elabed, co-founded the campaign urging Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary. The movement attracted a groundswell of support, including from some Jews, and won more than 100,000 votes, or 13% of the overall vote. Biden was beaten by the uncommitted vote in Dearborn, where Arab Americans make up more than half the population.

The Uncommitted movement also spread to other states, rallying more than 650,000 voters nationwide, and crystallized a lack of enthusiasm for Biden, who eventually stepped off the presidential ticket.

Alawieh served as one of the Uncommitted delegates at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where he and other delegates unsuccessfully lobbied to place a Palestinian speaker on the agenda.

Alawieh did not make Israel and Gaza a central part of his campaign for the state Senate seat, instead focusing on supporting working families and investing in healthcare, housing, public transit and education. Still, he told the Michigan Advance in February that his role in the Uncommitted movement resonated with people in his district.

“For the people in real life — not on Twitter — it is clear to them that parties’ focus on prioritizing funding for war crimes was out of touch with what voters wanted,” he said. “The party was undoubtedly wrong about Gaza in 2024.”

While some Democrats blamed the Uncommitted campaign for contributing to President Donald Trump’s defeat of former vice president Kamala Harris, who lost Michigan in her 2024 presidential run, Alawieh and Harris have mended fences enough to recently sit down for a meeting.

Harris “initiated” the meeting after months of phone calls, Alawieh said in July. “I urge VP Harris and all of our party’s leaders to side with peace-loving Americans against endless wars, in opposition to the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, and against the ethnic cleansing campaign in Lebanon,” he said. Alawieh has said that he voted for Harris against Trump in the 2024 general election, while Elabed did not.

The centrality of Israel in Michigan’s primaries has spawned bitter divides between Jewish Democrats and others in the party concerning the threat of antisemitism. In one incident that shook Detroit-area Jews earlier this year, Temple Israel in the suburb of West Bloomfield was rammed by a truck laden with explosives. The man who drove the truck, a US citizen from Lebanon, had recently lost several family members in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon.

Alawieh responded to the attack by declaring his support for Jewish Michiganders.

“We must stand in unequivocal defense of the humanity and safety of our Jewish siblings and denounce this heinous act,” he said in a statement. “My family and I are praying for safety for communities across our state who are feeling afraid right now, and we are holding our Jewish community members extra close.”