California Democratic Party officials working for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have authored an election voting guide positively rating votes by Democrat lawmakers. The guide contains a Congressional as well as a legislative scorecard and state-wide proposition recommendations. According to the document:
The 2020 election cycle presents the American Muslim community with an important opportunity to increase its political capacity and presence. To those ends, CAIR-CA has compiled three resources to help guide community members as they plan to vote in the November 2020 Presidential General Election.
Read the rest here.
The voting guide was co-authored by Sameena Usman, the CAIR-San Francisco/Bay Area Government Relations Coordinator, who has, in the past, worked as a field representative for Democratic California State Assemblywoman Sally Lieber. Usman was assisted by several CAIR-CA officials currently or formerly affiliated with the California Democratic Party, including:
- Amer Rashid, CAIR-CA’s Legislative & Government Affairs Manager, who has worked as a Legislative Aide in the Office of California State Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes and serves on the Board of the Arab Caucus within the California Democratic Party
- Fayaz Nawabi, CAIR Policy and Advocacy Manager for the Greater Los Angeles Area, who since 2017 serves as Assembly District Delegate of the California Democratic Party
Another co-author, CAIR-Sacramento Valley Policy and Advocacy Manager Oussama Mokkedem, in the past, has worked as Northern California Regional Coordinator for the Muslim Student Association-West, another group tied to the USMB.
While the guide cannot explicitly claim favorability of one candidate over another due to limitations regarding US nonprofit organizations, it rates each legislator’s votes‘ positive’ or ‘negative’ depending on how closely they correspond with civil rights and social justice priorities identified by CAIR. In the guide, Republican state and federal lawmakers generally scored lower than their Democratic counterparts, while Californian Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and 2020 Vice-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris received a favorable score of eight and nine out of ten, respectively.
Senator Harris has a history of cooperating with CAIR and was also among a group of Democrat lawmakers sending letters of support to the organization in 2018. When Harris ran for the Senate in 2016, CAIR-CA’s political action committee donated to her campaign. In December 2015, Harris hosted CAIR for an interfaith community event following the jihadist terrorist attack in San Bernardino that also featured several other groups tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Muslim Students Association-West.
The Global Influence Operations Report (GIOR) recently reported that CAIR was part of a coalition of Muslim and Arab groups tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood that has launched a voter registration drive aimed at getting voters registered for the US presidential elections and whose leaders are strongly opposed to Donald Trump.
The GIOR also reported CAIR was part of a group of American Muslim advocacy organizations tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood that has undertaken a pre-election “Muslims In America Policy Poll,” surveying 1,500 people in 45 states in which participants were asked to prioritize policy issues.
The Council of American-Islamic Relations describes itself as “a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group and as “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” CAIR was founded in 1994 by three officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine, part of the U.S. Hamas infrastructure at that time.
For more on CAIR, go here.
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