I Watched the Democrats Lose Muslim Support Last Election. This Gave Me Hope for 2026.

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In late May, I joined roughly two dozen Muslim entrepreneurs, community leaders, nonprofit organizers, and student activists, around a very large table for a closed‑door strategy meeting with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. There was no other press, no recording. Emgage Action, a national Muslim American PAC, welcomed me to observe on the condition I didn’t quote anyone without first getting their consent.

We were there to discuss the role of Muslims in the Democratic party. Many in the room had grown convinced that national Democratic leaders prefer the Muslims in their party stay quiet and fall in line. In 2024, national party leaders all but ignored months of protests in support of Gaza, backed on-campus police crackdowns, and then blamed “disinformation” when Muslim and Arab-American voters staged protest abstentions that helped tip Michigan, Minnesota, and key New Jersey counties to Donald Trump. Many in the room saw that sequence as Democrat leadership’s agenda coming down to ‘please hold your nose,’ and proof the party values Muslim turnout but not Muslim input.

Baraka’s counter‑thesis was simple: fight for them, and they’ll fight for you. It is the opposite of what Muslim organizers say they experienced from party leaders in 2024, the cycle Democrats lost to Donald Trump.

When Baraka arrived in the room where we waited, it was just after 8 a.m. He was tieless, wearing a solid‑black dashiki, and he spoke softly at first, almost cautious. If anyone expected the fiery mayor who had dominated cable news earlier in the week—handcuffed by federal agents and hauled into an ICE jail—they found a calmer figure instead.

Five days before this gathering, Baraka had joined three members of Congress at Delaney Hall, the recently re‑opened ICE detention center in Newark, the city he governs. They intended a surprise inspection. Video shows agents ordering them off the property; Baraka complied, stepping back onto the public sidewalk. They arrested him anyways.

By that evening, supporters from civil‑rights and faith groups, including Muslim organizers, rallied outside the detention center where he was held. He was released that night; the trespass charge evaporated in court ten days later. But even as DHS dropped the charges against him, it brought new ones against Representative Imani MacGyver, one of the lawmakers he had been with. The whole thing had been a jarring experience, about which Baraka has been blunt: “It’s just authoritarianism … These people are committed to this foolishness. They’re going to go as far as they can to not look completely ridiculous because what they did was wrong. They had no jurisdiction over there in the first place.”

In that closed-door meeting, the questions posed to Baraka circled three themes: Affordability, taxes, and Palestine. Two of those topics are par-for-the-course, though the Newark mayor certainly has thoughts on them. On Palestine, Baraka had a real chance to differentiate himself from the rest of the Democratic party. When multiple attendees referenced student sanctions and job‑losses across industries in response to their stances on Gaza, Baraka replied that Muslims should criticize U.S. or Israeli policy without being labeled unpatriotic or antisemitic.

Throughout, he linked those answers to a wider critique of his own party. “The leadership of the party has been pretty docile and comfortable and have completely isolated their base across the country.” His prescription was the opposite of caution. “We can’t move in a timid fashion. We have to move with force, with courage, with strength, and we have to move together.”

The room nodded, but the primary electorate had a different answer when it came to the race for the Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor. Two weeks later Baraka lost decisively to Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Navy-pilot-turned-moderate whose campaign leaned on the county machines, saturated the suburbs with ads about property taxes, and avoided Gaza discourse almost entirely. Sherrill’s pitch was electability: she promised to “keep New Jersey blue” without scaring swing voters in Bergen and Monmouth. Baraka, who came in second, couldn’t match her donor network, and party support that still decides most down-ballot races.

New Jersey is home to an estimated 320,000 Muslims, about 3.5 percent of residents. In 2021 Phil Murphy won re‑election by roughly 85,000 votes. Despite those numbers, many of the Muslim community leaders I spoke to voiced their disapproval for how state and national strategists have long treated them as an afterthought—phoning in Eid greetings, skipping hard policy conversations, and assuming they’ll continue to view the Democratic party as their home regardless of outreach or collaboration. Baraka’s strategy was different—he focused on reaching out to them. This, however, seemed to double as a flex to show the problem with complacency: If a bloc this large can be energized in an off-cycle primary, what could it do in a presidential year?

Baraka spent one of his last days before the primary courting the population, and I tagged along. When I ask his main objective for the tour, he said he wanted to “galvanize the Muslim community in New Jersey. If we do that, that will be good.” His theory was straightforward: turn a reliable‑but‑under‑organized bloc into a decisive one and show national Democrats what they risk when they take that bloc for granted.

Baraka’s Muslim itinerary tracks almost perfectly with census clusters and past under‑performance, like Paterson and North Brunswick. I followed Baraka north to Paterson, home to one of the nation’s largest Palestinian communities. The visit was brief. He introduced himself as a candidate for governor in cafés on Main Street and took quick photos with voters. One man called out “Barakah!”—pronouncing it like the Arabic word for blessing—before snapping a selfie. Another passer‑by whispered, “That’s the guy Trump arrested.”

Where party strategists in 2024 feared alienating moderates, Baraka spent his state-wide campaign courting voters the party lost. Where operatives believed Gaza activism endangered swing districts, Baraka argued silence cost more. Muslim organizers note that only a few statewide Democrats have held unrestricted Q&A’s with them since last cycle. Baraka’s willingness to do so anchors his appeal.

Baraka’s grassroots strategy lost—but it still netted 163,563 votes, enough to lift him surprisingly to second place, and to carry New Jersey’s most populous county, Essex. Those numbers didn’t carry him past Rep. Mikie Sherrill, yet they did remind operatives that a bloc the size of New Jersey’s Muslim population matters to the statewide margin.

Now that the governor’s race is over, Muslim leaders sound cautiously optimistic. They want movement—on surveillance reform, on cease-fire resolutions, on small-business aid—before they’ll call this a realignment. But they also say the door is now open. If statewide Democrats walk through it before 2026, Baraka’s unsuccessful bid could mark the start of a voter bloc returning to a party that once counted on them. If they don’t, the silence of 2024 might echo again when the presidential race comes calling.

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