In Michigan, autoworkers offer to fight for Biden, but Gaza protesters want him out

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden joins striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line outside the GM’s Willow Run Distribution Center, in Belleville, Wayne County, Michigan, U.S., September 26, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File

By Nandita Bose and Andrea Shalal

HARPER WOODS, Michigan (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Michigan on Thursday to visit union autoworkers crucial to his reelection bid, as the state’s Arab-American community plans protests over his handling of the war in Gaza.

Biden’s travel to the election battleground state was intended as a celebration after the United Auto Workers (UAW) union recently endorsed his reelection bid. But his trip may be overshadowed by opposition from Michigan’s large Arab-American and Muslim population, which is upset the president has not called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Shortly after arriving in the state, Biden stopped at They Say restaurant in Harper Woods, Michigan, to work the lunch crowd, shaking hands, chatting with customers and posing for photos.

The Biden reelection campaign said he was meeting with Black faith leaders there.

The campaign worked to keep details of the president’s visit private in the face of expected opposition. Across the Detroit area, hundreds of protesters were standing by in cars and vans armed with blue and white “Abandon Biden” signs and Palestinian flags to rush to whichever UAW local Biden will visit.

“We’re ready to go. I have my megaphone in the car,” said Farah Khan, a Pakistani-American who voted for Biden in 2020 but now supports the Abandon Biden campaign in Michigan, told Reuters. “We have 92 Abandon Biden chapters across the country. This is bigger than just Michigan.”

Before heading to Michigan, Biden attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. He said he was working to resolve the Israel-Hamas conflict, including a two-state solution for Palestinians and bringing home the hostages still held following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.

“We are actively working for peace,” he said at the breakfast.

UNION BACKING

In the Detroit area, Biden will meet with UAW President Shawn Fain, who last week gave a full-throated endorsement of the Democratic incumbent and a sharp rebuke of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

Trump blasted Fain afterward, and on Wednesday met with the Teamsters, one of America’s biggest unions representing truck drivers, airline pilots and others, as he competes for their backing ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The auto industry and its labor movement are deeply intertwined with politics and elections in Michigan.

In 2016, Trump earned a level of support from union members that no Republican had reached since Ronald Reagan in 1980, helping him narrowly capture the critical states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Biden rebounded with unions in 2020, with a roughly 16-percentage point advantage as he reclaimed those so-called Rust Belt states, which have been scarred by decades of job losses as companies embraced lower-cost, often non-union locations. He won Michigan in 2020 by some 154,000 votes.

Arab Americans account for 5% of the vote in Michigan and Biden’s margin of victory over Trump was less than 3 percentage points in 2020. An October poll showed Biden’s support among Arab Americans had plunged to 17% from 59% in 2020.

However, Biden’s campaign believes that his support from union workers could overcome any drop in support from the Arab-American community. A Biden campaign official said the UAW’s endorsement will mean more in November in Michigan than the anger among Muslim voters in the state.