Ruzevich race for Congress showcases challenges facing pro-Arab candidates
By Ray Hanania
One of the few races that many people in the Arab American community were very hopeful about was the challenge to unresponsive Congressman Sean Casten in the 6th Congressional District by Joseph “Joey” Ruzevich, political consultant and deputy campaign manager Sawsan Abubaker said in an interview this week.
Abubaker helped manage the Ruzevich campaign. Ruzevich was one of the most articulate and knowledgeable candidates regarding the issues facing Arabs in Chicagoland and the challenges facing Palestinian rights in Gaza and the West Bank.
In a video YouTube interview, Abubaker acknowledged she was surprised at the low voter turnout, including from the Arab community, not just in the Ruzevich race but in races across the region where Arab and Muslim Americans battled to achieve representation for the community.
“I think it’s multiple things. I think racism is a big part of it, because they don’t understand the community. They [elected politicians like Casten] don’t make an effort to connect to the community. Part of it could also be our community losing hope in the political system, and saying, ‘What’s the point of connecting to politicians? They’re not going to listen to us anyway.’ Another big factor is also the money that’s in politics. Politicians are told to focus on fundraising,” Abubaker said, explaining the low turnout.
“You need to have the money to run. You need to have the money to win. You need to have the money to stay in office. So, when individual constituents don’t have the large amounts of money these PACs have, I think then politicians shift focus.”
“PACs like AIPAC or other Israeli lobbies have all this money to filter and to funnel into these political campaigns, then politicians just focus on and listen to the PACs and the special interest groups, and they forget about the constituents,” Abubaker said.
Casten and Ruzevich were the only two candidates in the IL-06 race for the Democratic Party nomination. Only 37,692 voters or 14.21 percent of the 121,284 registered Democrats in the district, voted in the contest. Ruzevich received only 24.1 percent of the vote, or 21,679 votes, while Casten received 68,353 votes, or 75.9 percent.
Many observers noted the low turnout favored incumbents and organizations and that higher numbers would have reflected more participation of more independent voters like Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.
“I don’t know what the real problem is, other than maybe lack of faith in the political system. Maybe not understanding what the primaries are, too, is a big factor. You know, people focus on November, and the General Elections, and people don’t understand what primaries actually are and how important the primary is,” Abubaker said. The primary elections decide who will be on the ballot in November.
She also said it was a major error for many Arabs to only want to support candidates who were Arab, Palestinian or Muslim, explaining this observation came to light after talking to many individuals from the community while campaigning for Ruzevich.
“The point of wanting to support only Arabs or, um, Muslims, to go into office, I think that’s the wrong ideology, the wrong mindset, because if somebody so strongly stands with you the way Joey did, you should have rallied for him,” Abubaker said, noting not many other candidate were as strong in supporting Palestinian rights, speaking out against Genocide in Gaza, or advocating for the Block the Bombs legislation being pushed in Congress that Casten has not supported.
“When you have someone like Sean Casten, who hasn’t done anything, and we have a two-year ongoing genocide, and you have someone running for office and telling you, ‘I’m going to support [Palestinians] and I’m going to sign on to the Block the Bombs Act, and I’m going to do everything I can to stop these wars and to try to stop the genocide that our tax dollars are funding,’ That alone should have rallied our community, and it didn’t, unfortunately. I wish I had the answer for that. I wish I knew why.”
Abubaker noted that the feeling of being abandoned by our elected officials is something Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims share with other voting constituencies in Cook County.
“Historically, Cook County has had low voter turnout. But given the time we’re in, and everything our country is facing, there should’ve been more turnout to change things, not just for the Palestinian and Arab community, but for our society as a whole,” Abubaker said.
“I’ve spoken to many people during this campaign, even those who are not Arab and Muslim or Palestinian, and they also said the same thing: that people in Cook County feel ignored. They don’t feel the urge to come out and vote because they don’t think it’s going to change anything.”
Abubaker said that Casten just didn’t understand the true nature of the conflict and was disconnected from the district’s large Palestinian, Arab and Muslim community.
As a Palestinian who has been “stabbed in the back” by anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, Abubaker said she was inspired by Ruzevich. This is why she volunteered as his deputy campaign manager. Supporting Joey was a moral obligation for her.
“Joey’s views are that Palestinians were being ignored. We’re being ignored by our current Congressman, Sean Casten. He does not talk to his constituents. He doesn’t talk to the Palestinian community. We have to really push,” Abubaker said, noting she tried hard to get Casten to address issues, but Casten kept ignoring her and others who were speaking up for justice for the Palestinians.
“Joey saw that, and he felt like we needed to be listened to. He feels like all his [future] constituents need to be listened to, because from what we learned in this campaign is that Cook County is completely ignored by Sean Casten.”
Abubaker said Casten “focuses on DuPage County and the individuals that will vote him into office. He’s not listening to all his constituents, and Palestinians are a large part of that constituency. The 6th district has the largest Palestinian constituency in the United States. We have families in the West Bank, and a lot of us also have families in Gaza. A lot of people in District 6 have lost families in Gaza, and Sean Casten does not care.”
Ruzevich was knowledgeable on many issues, including the Middle East, far more responsive than Casten, who seemed to embrace only the essential positions that allowed him to avoid internal Democratic Party conflicts. Sean Casten is an establishment politician who caves to his special interest donors that include AIPAC, J-Street, and other Israeli lobbies and donors.
Both Casten and Ruzevich are of Irish heritage but only Ruzevich seemed to connect with the core of the challenges facing Palestinians, reflecting the historic support the Irish people have shown to the Palestinian cause.
“People from Ireland went through the same thing Palestinians are going through right now, and Joey, you know, connected with that. And he also, um, felt with the Palestinians, he knows the Palestinians’ story, the struggle, the occupation. He learned about the Palestinian struggle in 2018 when, um, in Gaza they did the March of Return, and we saw what happened, you know, how the Israelis attacked them. And he basically started connecting with that. And he had friends in high school who educated him about the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Muslims.
“He took a [world] religion class in school, and that just resonated with him, because he doesn’t like to see people suffer. And from there, when the genocide in Gaza started happening in 2023, he protested like we did, he contacted his leaders like we did, you know, his representatives. He was ignored just like we were ignored, and that basically took him to where he started thinking that he needed to take a leadership position to create change.
“What really pushed him over the edge was, um, Aaron Bushnell, when he, uh, self-emulated himself as a protest.” When Joey witnessed Aaron’s ultimate sacrifice, he felt the need to step up and be a leader for change and to fight for justice in our country and abroad.
Despite Casten’s defeat of Ruzevich, he still must run in the General Election, and he will face a Centrist Republican on Nov. 3, 2026, Niki Conforti, who has expressed support for the Palestinian cause, supporting a ceasefire in Gaza and opposing the injection of foreign PAC money to influence America’s foreign policy.
Conforti challenged Casten in 2024, losing to him by a vote of 196,647 to 166,116. With the support of the district’s large Arab population, she could unseat Casten. The voters of the 6th Congressional District are hopeful.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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