Former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and recently met with Abbas Alawieh, a candidate for the Michigan State Senate and co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement, which declined to endorse her 2024 presidential campaign over her Israel policy.
According to Axios, Harris called Mamdani privately on June 25 to “talk about the party’s future and plan a longer conversation.”
Harris met in Detroit with Alawieh, who is running as a Democrat in Michigan and previously served as chief of staff to former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is currently seeking re-election after losing her seat in 2025. According to Alawieh, “the meeting came after months of conversations she initiated over multiple phone calls.”
“In my first call with VP Harris, I shared with her that several community members in the Michigan State Senate district I’m running to represent have had family recently killed in Israeli airstrikes with support from our American government, and that my 91-year-old grandmother’s home was destroyed as well,” he wrote. “When I met with her last week, I reiterated what has long been my position: American tax dollars must never be used to target civilians and destroy entire communities.
Alawieh called Michigan crucial for “defeating Trumpism.”
He said he urged Harris and “all our party’s leaders” to oppose “the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza.”
Harris has also reportedly spoken with James Zogby, a Democratic National Committee member and founder of the Arab American Institute who has frequently criticized Israel and its war against Hamas in Gaza. In 2024, Zogby criticized the Harris campaign for not allowing a Palestinian American speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
Harris has not announced whether she will run for president again, though she recently said she was “thinking about” a 2028 bid.
Ellis Bates, an election analysis fellow at VoteHub, stated that “Harris is almost certainly positioning herself as an anti-establishment progressive in 2028.”
“We’ll see how that pivot plays with Democratic primary voters writ large,” Bates wrote.
