More Dearborn residents voted in Tuesday's primary election than any primary on record, casting nearly 25,000 ballots, 71% of them on the Democratic side.
That strong turnout in Dearborn helped Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed reduce opponent Haley Stevens' margin in Wayne County, while propelling candidates Alabas Farhat, Abbas Alawieh and Jalal Abdallah to victory in local state legislative primaries.
Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib also garnered 10,000 more votes than she did in the city two years ago in the 2024 primary election.
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"I think voters are starting to see people running for office that represent the values that want to be represented in government," said Farhat, the incumbent in Michigan's 3rd State House District who won the Democratic nomination to defend his seat on Tuesday.
"In my case, we spent the last two years really trying to make sure we were connecting what we were doing to the voters here at home," Farhat said.
Voters who have felt "overlooked in our politics for so long" saw an opportunity during this election cycle to make a difference in the political process, he said. Many of those voters came out to support El-Sayed's candidacy for U.S. Senate, swayed by his focus on affordability and "anti-war, anti-genocide" views, according to Farhat.
The difference between Democratic and Republican primary votes in Dearborn on Tuesday was the largest of the last decade. Democrats cast 17,253 ballots, more than 5 times the 3,129 ballots cast by Republicans.
Two years ago, the number of Democratic primary votes was just 1.8 times the number of Republican votes.
In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump won the city with 42% of the vote to 36% for Kamala Harris. Another 17% of voters cast their ballots for Jill Stein of the Green Party.
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Abbas Alawieh, former chief of staff for Missouri Democratic Representative Cori Bush and a leader of the "Uncommitted" movement in 2024, won the Democratic nomination for the State Senate 2nd District, capturing two-thirds of the vote.
Alawieh said his campaign "succeeded in trying to expand the electorate through a grassroots-focused campaign and help the party reach voters it does not traditionally communicate with."
He said the campaign focused on appearing at community meetings, churches and mosques.
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"We had volunteers, including my own mom, who would spend the entirety of the workday at local grocery stores ... telling people about our campaign and about the opportunity to expand the political voice of Dearborn and the surrounding communities," Alawieh said.
Farhat and Alawieh both said the Democratic party was in a strong position for the general election in November, emphasizing party unity and continued grassroots organizing in the coming months.
"The [Democratic] party really needs to get back to organizing in our community, showing our faces and knocking on doors," Alawieh said.
Farhat agreed that "more work is needed to bring more voices into the tent" ahead of the general election.
"The mandate of leadership is a real responsibility that requires leaders to be willing to go and meet you where you are," he said. "Democrats are going to prove that we're closer to the people, we're closest to the pain they're feeling."
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Dearborn voters cast record number of primary ballots