Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1998, pages 16-18

Election ’98

With Most Primaries Completed, 10 Arab Americans Expected to be Running for House in November

By Shirl McArthur

With most of the primary elections complete, it appears that 10 Arab-American candidates for the House of Representatives will be running on the Republican or Democratic tickets in the November 1998 general elections. These include six incumbents who are running for re-election and four challengers. So far, an additional four Arab-American challengers, three of them in California, have lost in their parties’ primary elections, and one of the remaining four challengers, Sam Zakhem, appears to be leading in a tough battle in the Colorado Republican primary in August.

In California, Darrell Issa, the only Arab-American senatorial candidate, lost the Republican primary to challenge Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. Issa received 40 percent of the Republican primary vote but the winner received 45 percent.

In House races, Democrat Charles Ara lost narrowly in California’s 39th district primary with 49.6 percent of the vote to 50.4 percent for the winner.

However, the greatest controversy came in the Republican primary election in California’s 43rd district (Riverside County), where Sarkis Khoury was challenging incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert. Although Calvert won by a whopping 55 percent to 35 percent margin, the race was marred by blatant anti-Arab bigotry manifested in Calvert’s campaign.

In March, a Calvert mailing to constituents emphasized that he was born and raised in Riverside County (Khoury immigrated from Lebanon as a teenager). In April, Calvert’s campaign manager said in an interview that Khoury’s campaign contributions were “almost entirely Arab American” as if that somehow made them sinister, and in the last days of the campaign Calvert sent a mailer claiming that “Khoury lied about not taking PAC contributions,” and listed the names of Arab-American individual (not PAC) donors.

Arab American Institute President James Zogby and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee President Hala Maksoud both denounced these actions, and Khoury has met with officials from the Civil Rights Commission to discuss possible hearings on the matter.

The fourth Arab American who did not survive the primaries was in Kentucky. There Teresa Isaac was one of six Democratic candidates seeking to replace Rep. Scotty Baesler, who is running for the Senate. Isaac, who is vice mayor of Lexington, placed third, with 16 percent of the vote.

Incumbents Running in November

John Baldacci (Democrat, Maine 2nd district) was first elected to the U.S. House in 1994 and, as Northeast Regional Whip, has already achieved a leadership position among congressional Democrats. He was elected to the Bangor City Council in 1978, at the age of 23, and was elected to the Maine state Senate in 1982, where he served until running for Congress. He has also helped manage the family restaurant, Mama Baldacci’s, which his grandparents started in 1933.

Baldacci is of both Arab-American and Italian-American descent, and has been active in both ethnic communities. He serves on the Agriculture and the Transportation and Infrastructure committees. He was active in the campaign to lift the ban on travel to Lebanon, and has been a critic of the FAA’s passenger profiling program.

Baldacci faces a strong Republican challenger in November, but is expected to return to Washington for a third term.

Patricia Danner (Democrat, Missouri 6th district) will be seeking her fourth term in the House, and she says she is “cautiously optimistic.” In 1992 she defeated an eight-term incumbent, and has won by increasing margins since then. However, she is not taking this election lightly, and is always concerned about some unforeseen, last minute surprise, which could cause an unexpected drain on her modest campaign war chest.

She is a granddaughter of Lebanese immigrants; her grandfather came to the U.S. as a young man, and worked long hours at his fruit and vegetable stand for three years before saving up enough money to have his wife join him. Danner is one of the four Arab Americans on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and is also a member of the International Economic and Trade subcommittee of the International Relations committee. In those positions she has worked especially actively to lift the Lebanon travel ban and to modify the passenger profiling program.

Danner is a member of the “Blue Dog Coalition,” or “Blue Dog Democrats,” a group of mostly-Southern, Democratic moderates who believe in fiscal conservatism and budgetary responsibility. In 1994 she was commended by a citizens’ group for her efforts to cut government waste. She practices the same frugality in her own office, and has returned about $250,000 of her office allowance to the Treasury every year since her election.

Chris John (Democrat, Louisiana 7th district) was elected in 1996 to his first term in Congress at the age of 36, but he had already been in politics for 12 years. He was elected to the Crowley City Council in 1984 and to the Louisiana state legislature in 1987.

John, too, is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, and supports fiscal responsibility and policies to encourage, rather than hinder, the development of small businesses and agriculture. He is on the Agriculture Committee and the Energy and Mineral Resources subcommittee of the Resources Committee, where he is well-positioned to look out for Louisiana’s oil and gas and agricultural interests. During the past two years he has also become an active supporter of Arab-American interests and has participated in several events of Washington’s Arab-American community.

John’s victory in 1996 was very close, and he is expecting another tight race this year.

Ray LaHood (Republican, Illinois 18th district) was first elected to the U.S. House in 1994, after several years in Illinois state politics, followed by four years as chief of staff to his predecessor, former House Minority Leader Bob Michel. Therefore, his reputation in the House and his standing among Republicans far exceeds that of the average second-term congressman. He is unopposed in this year’s election.

LaHood is considered a moderate and has worked to improve relations among members of both parties in the House. To this end, he co-chaired the House Bipartisan Retreat, which took place in Hershey, Pennsylvania this March. The retreat, which assembled almost half the House of Representatives and their families, was not financed by public funds.

LaHood is the grandson of an immigrant from Lebanon and the son of a restaurant manager. He is another of the Arab Americans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and also serves on the Agriculture and Veterans’ Affairs Committees. He was a major player in the fight to get the Lebanon travel ban lifted, and he has also fought hard against the FAA’s discriminatory passenger profiling program.

On the negative side, however, LaHood signed the May 1998 letter to President Clinton criticizing the administration for threatening to publicize the American plan for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. He was the only Arab American in Congress to do so.

Nick Rahall (Democrat, West Virginia 3rd district), although only 49 years old, is the granddaddy of all the Arab-American members of Congress. He was first elected in 1976 and has served the interests of his West Virginia constituents and of the Arab-American community well and faithfully since then. He is unopposed in the November election, although he had to fight off a rare Democratic challenge in the primary election. He won with 82 percent of the vote.

Rahall’s grandfather, Nicholas, came to the U.S. from Kfier, Lebanon, in 1903, settling in Beckley, WV, where Nick Rahall was born and raised. He worked as a staff assistant to Senator Robert Byrd before his own successful run for Congress.

Rahall is the ranking Democrat on the Surface Transportation subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and is also a senior minority member of the Resources Committee. He is also a member of the Democratic Leadership Council. Rahall is a 33rd degree Mason, and a life member of the National Rifle Association, Elks and Moose lodges, and the NAACP. He has received numerous state and national awards for his environmental efforts and his promotion of the interests of coal miners and the coal industry.

He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Task Force for Lebanon and has been a long-time warrior in the fight to lift the travel ban on Lebanon. He has also fought against violations of the civil liberties of Arab Americans and others, such as the current anti-terrorism legislation and passenger profiling. In addition, Rahall has been a strong defender of human rights in the Middle East, especially in Israel and Palestine and in cases arising from the Gulf war.

Finally, Rahall has also been a strong supporter of the Middle East peace process, and he has traveled extensively and frequently to the region. He led the Arab-American observer mission to the first Palestinian national elections in 1996.

John Sununu (Republican, New Hampshire 1st district) is another first-term Arab-American running for re-election. He was elected in 1996 at the age of 32, after working for the previous 10 years as an engineer and small businessman. Sununu’s grandfather settled in New York from Lebanon in the 1930s. His father, John Sununu Sr., was governor of New Hampshire and subsequently served as President George Bush’s chief of staff.

Sununu is a member of the House Budget, Government Reform and Oversight, and Small Business Committees, and is also a member at large of the Republican Policy Committee. During his first term, he has already become involved with issues of interest to the Arab-American community, and he has been a strong advocate of policies and programs that support a better understanding of issues affecting U.S.-Mideast relations. He was active in the campaign to lift the Lebanon travel ban and to limit the use of passenger profiling, and urges a fair and constructive approach to the peace process. He voted against the resolution congratulating Israel on the unification of Jerusalem. As a member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee he has been important in efforts to keep ancestry data included in the next U.S. census.

Since Sununu won his first election with just a bit more than 50 percent of the vote, the national Democratic leadership has targeted his seat for priority attention during the ’98 election. However a recent poll shows a sizeable majority favoring his reelection. Sununu is campaigning on a conservative, small-government platform and says that his emphasis in the next session of Congress would be “reforming and repairing our federal government, preserving our retirement security system, and simplifying the federal tax code.”

Challengers in November

Eileen Ansari (Democrat, California 41st district) is, strictly speaking, not an Arab American, but she has been married for 30 years to Azizullah Ansari, a Muslim Pakistani American, and she is vice chairman of the Arab-American Caucus of the California Democratic Party.

Ansari feels very strongly about issues of interest to Arab Americans. She sees the FAA’s passenger profiling program as being similar to the “star chamber” of the Spanish Inquisition, where people were presumed guilty based on their looks or other non-relevant factors. She is also particularly incensed at some provisions of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act, such as the one that allows people to be arrested and held without being able to see the evidence being used against them. In the Middle East, Ansari is concerned about the lack of progress on the peace process, and strongly believes that recent congressional interventions have not been helpful.

Ansari considers herself an independent-minded, moderate Democrat, and she is outspoken in her beliefs. She says that if this causes her to be a one-term congressman, then so be it; but she also believes that she should attract most of the large number of independent voters in her district. She already has the endorsement of all of the district’s newspapers.

Since her opponent upset three-term Republican Rep. Jay Kim in the primary, this is an open seat, so Ansari’s chances seem good. Her opponent is an independently wealthy developer, which gives him a tremendous financial advantage. With this in mind, Ansari says that her biggest problem is to raise enough money to conduct an effective campaign in a district that spans parts of the three California counties of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernadino. She is also concerned that, because of her Muslim husband and Arab-American connections, she might be the target of the same kind of anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigotry as Khoury saw in the 43rd district (see above).

Phil Maloof (Democrat, New Mexico 1st district) lost a widely publicized by-election to Republican Heather Wilson in June, and will face her again in November. Wilson won the June election with less than 50 percent of the vote, defeating Maloof 45 percent to 39 percent, with Green Party candidate Robert Anderson taking the remaining 15 percent. The big question in November is whether Maloof can capture enough of Anderson’s votes to overcome the incumbency advantage the June election gives to Wilson.

Maloof, 31 years old, is the youngest son of a wealthy and well-respected New Mexico family. His father, George Maloof, is especially well-remembered for his contributions to several New Mexico charities. Phil Maloof was elected to the state senate in 1994 and re-elected in 1996. He counts among his major accomplishments the sponsorship of several anti-crime bills, especially the “three strikes, you’re out” law that mandates 30-year prison sentences for repeat violent offenders, and additional appropriations for education projects.

Leslie Touma (Republican, Michigan 12th district) has an excellent chance of unseating eight-term Democratic Rep. Sander Levin. Since 1994 she has served as communications director for Lear Corporation, a major manufacturer of automotive interiors. Prior to that, she served as the executive director of the Michigan International Trade Coalition and, from 1991-93, she was policy adviser to Michigan Governor John Engler on international trade and criminal justice issues. From 1984-91 she was a policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she served at the Pentagon, as a member of the U.S. Strategic Arms Control delegation in Geneva, and at the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels.

Touma is a board member of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce of Michigan, and of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce. Her father, Dr. Alfred Touma, immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon in the early 1920s.

Levin’s hold on the district is weakening, and the 1996 election was a close one, in spite of Levin’s greater than 2-to-1 advantage in campaign contributions. Touma is considered a common-sense, moderate Republican, and she was born and raised in the 12th district, so Levin cannot paint her as an extremist or outsider. Furthermore, the demographics of the district are changing—it is less Jewish and more ethnically diverse than in the 1980s. Money will be important. In each of the last two elections Levin has raised more than $1 million. Touma does not expect to match Levin’s war chest, but she still must raise a lot of money to effectively compete, because the district is the nation’s 12th largest media market.

Probably Running in November

Sam Zakhem (Republican, Colorado 6th district) is one of five candidates running for the seat of Republican Rep. Dan Schaefer, who retired after 16 years in the House. The Colorado Republican primary is Aug. 11, while this issue of the Washington Report is at the printers, so the result will probably be determined before our readers receive this issue.

However, private polls show Zakhem several percentage points ahead of the nearest rival. If these polls prove accurate, he will be favored in November, because this is normally a heavily Republican district. However, he is not taking the Democratic challenger lightly, and is planning an extensive (and expensive) direct mail and TV advertising campaign before the general election. He has amassed a modest campaign fund, but says that he would be grateful for additional contributions.

Zakhem, 62 years old, was born and raised in Lebanon, and first came to the U.S. as a student. After graduation from the University of Detroit, he returned to Lebanon but was discouraged by the increasing violence. He returned to the U.S. in 1965 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1970, the same year he became a U.S. citizen. He was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1974 and 1976, and to the Colorado Senate in 1978. He lost a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1980. In 1986, President Reagan appointed him U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, where he served until 1989.