Hopefully, Arab-Americans will make up for Conservatives' lukewarm support:
February 17, 2004
Arabs in U.S. Raising Money to Back Bush
By LESLIE WAYNE
Wealthy Arab-Americans and foreign-born Muslims who strongly back President Bush's decision to invade Iraq are adding their names to the ranks of Pioneers and Rangers, the elite Bush supporters who have raised $100,000 or more for his re-election.
This new crop of fund-raisers comes as some opinion polls suggest support for the president among Arab-Americans is sinking and at a time when strategists from both parties say Mr. Bush is losing ground with this group. Mr. Bush has been criticized by Arab-Americans who feel they are being singled out in the fight against terrorism and who are uneasy over the administration's Palestinian-Israeli policies.
Yet the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq have been a catalyst for some wealthy Arab-Americans to become more involved in politics. And there are still others who have a more practical reason for opening their checkbooks: access to a business-friendly White House. Already, their efforts have brought them visits with the president at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., as well as White House dinners and meetings with top administration officials.
The fund-raisers are people like Mori Hosseini, the Iranian-born chief executive of ICI Homes, a home builder in Daytona Beach, Fla. Mr. Hosseini is a Ranger, gaining the top designation after raising $200,000 from his family and acquaintances. (The minimum level of money raised for a Ranger is $200,000, while it takes $100,000 to be a Pioneer.)
Never before has Mr. Hosseini been this active politically. But he said he was inspired by Mr. Bush's "decisive" action, especially in Iraq, and Mr. Hosseini's efforts have led to an invitation to a White House Christmas party and a private meeting with the president and a handful of other donors at a recent fund-raiser at Disney World.
"He has saved Iraq," said Mr. Hosseini, who left Iran when he was 13. "He's the savior, if not of Iraq, but also of the other countries around Iraq. They want freedom. I am so sure of this because I am from that part of the world."
Mr. Hosseini's enthusiasm runs counter to what some polls say is a drop in Mr. Bush's popularity among Arab-Americans. In a recent release, the Arab American Institute, a nonprofit organization representing Arab-American interests in government and politics, said Mr. Bush's support had fallen sharply since the 2000 election. A January poll conducted for the group by Zogby International, which is headed by John Zogby, a Lebanese-American, found that Mr. Bush's approval rating among Arab-Americans had fallen to 38 percent from as high as 83 percent in October 2001.
The biggest reason for this drop-off, according to the institute's poll, is concern over Arab-Americans' No. 1 issue, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. To many Arab-Americans, the administration's actions are seen as more pro-Israel than evenhanded, especially its support of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.
In addition, a program begun after 9/11 that required thousands of Arab and Muslim men to register with the immigration officials has sent chills through Arab-Americans, as has the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which Arab-Americans say is a threat to their civil liberties.
Even so, prominent Arab-Americans have kept the money flowing.
"It's like the Catholic Church," said Mr. Zogby, whose brother, James, is president of the Arab American Institute. "The total dollars are up, but the number of donors is down."
One reason may be that Arab-Americans are not a monolithic group. The term is used generally to refer to people from Arab countries, but they may have diverse religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, like Lebanese and other Arab Christians or Muslims from Egypt and Pakistan. Many Arab-Americans left their countries because of political and economic oppression and are now small-business owners or entrepreneurs who say the Republican Party best represents their values.
As with any specific group, it is impossible to determine exactly how much of Mr. Bush's campaign money comes from Arab-Americans.
Fred Pezeshkan counts himself among the Republican hard core. For the past 25 years, Mr. Pezeshkan has lived in Naples, Fla., where he is president of the Krate Construction Company. He is also a first-time Ranger, having raised $200,000 for Mr. Bush. In previous years, except for voting Republican, the Iranian-born Mr. Pezeshkan was not politically active.
But to Mr. Pezeshkan, the invasion of Iraq shows "a strong American interest to go to those countries in the Middle East and bring democracy, culture, education, hospitals and the things that they need."
Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said that the campaign was "working hard to maintain" support given by Arab-Americans in 2000, but that it had no special outreach
programs for them.
George Salem, chairman of the Arab American Institute and a political adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, said the younger Mr. Bush was "a more difficult sell to some segments" of the Arab-American population, especially because of the new antiterrorism law.
Mr. Salem, a Washington lawyer, said Mr. Bush had two big selling points: he was the first president in recent memory to call for an independent Palestinian state, and he made two high-level Arab-American appointments, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., whose father is from Syria.
One of the largest concentrations of Arab-Americans is in Detroit, home to Yousif Ghafari, a Lebanese Christian who came to the United States in 1972 and now heads his own engineering firm.
For years Mr. Ghafari donated to the Republican Party, but this year he stepped up the pace, raising $350,000 to become a Ranger. He said that "the 9/11 situation was a bad situation for us" but that he supported Mr. Bush for "taking the initiative" to oust Saddam Hussein and believed that Mr. Bush had the capacity to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"The Western-educated and business-motivated know that the whole Middle Eastern region has to change," said Mr. Ghafari, who collected donations from non-Arabs as well.
One of those Mr. Ghafari tapped is Tim Attallah, a Dearborn lawyer and a first-generation Palestinian-American. Mr. Attallah, who donated $2,000, said he was having a hard time reconciling his personal beliefs with some of the Bush administration's policies.
In 1993, Mr. Attallah stood on the White House lawn as an invited guest when the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord was signed. But now, he said, he is troubled by the administration's stance in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is concerned about the antiterrorism law and the lack of Republican leaders campaigning for Arab-American votes.
"These are tough times for us, and we have not seen our friends," Mr. Attallah said.
Big donations have brought high-level access for Dr. Malik Hasan, a native of Pakistan and the former chief executive of Foundation Health Systems of Denver, one of the largest health maintenance organizations. In the past decade, Dr. Hasan has given several hundred thousand dollars to Mr. Bush and the Republican Party, including a $100,000 check to the Bush inaugural committee.
This year, Dr. Hasan is a Pioneer. In the past few months he has met personally with Mr. Bush, once at a White House dinner and again at a fund-raiser in Washington. He visited with Mr. Bush at the president's ranch, and Dr. Hasan's wife, Seeme, has been brought into high-level meetings on Arab-American concerns.
The couple say they are still fans of Mr. Bush, even though, Mrs. Hasan said, their American-born son was recently surrounded by the police and detained at an airport for no apparent reason other than his ethnic background.
"As a Muslim I felt it was wonderful that Saddam Hussein was removed," Dr. Hasan said. "The rest of the Muslim countries were standing there doing nothing. Honestly, I wrote to the president and said I adored his accomplishments."
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