Elite Arab American Donors Among Top Biden Bundlers
By: Safa M. Qureshi/Arab America Contributing Writer
For years, Arab Americans were either invisible, or for the most part, sat on the sidelines of presidential campaigns, but not in 2020. This year, they have organized more than ever before. And that includes fundraising too. The weekend before the elections, Joe Biden released his list of bundlers- people who volunteer their time to pull money together to support a candidate. We were thrilled to see that several Arab Americans were on that list.
Biden’s campaign disclosed the names, hometown, and states of each bundler in its Saturday night release. It did not, however, list their employers or occupations. Nearly a quarter of Biden’s bundlers come from donor-rich California. New York bundlers were in second place on the list, followed by those from the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
A complete list of individuals that have raised at least $100,000 for the Joe Biden campaign and affiliated joint fundraising committees are listed in his press release.
Ambassador Edward Gabriel, Hady Amr, Joseph Sakran, Rep. Donna Shalala, and Joyce A. Aboussie are just some of the Arab Americans that make the list of the 817 biggest campaign fundraisers mentioned in Joe Bidens’ press release. Hady Amr, who has served in the Obama administration as a White House appointee and a senior diplomat, has been providing outside informal counsel exclusively to the Biden team.
In addition, we also got the chance to speak with Edward Gabriel, former ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco under President Clinton. Ambassador Gabriel is 100% Lebanese-American. He and his sister are the first from his family to go to high school and college. “We’re really, very proud to be Lebanese Americans, and proud to be Americans and actually been given the gift of the opportunities that America has,” Ambassador Gabriel told us.
Over the years, Ambassador Gabriel has worked in public affairs as well. More recently, he was involved in helping to raise money for the Biden campaign. He was a surrogate to the Arab American community on behalf of the campaign. He wrote several op-eds for the campaign, and met with and participated with many different ethnic groups across the USA, as well as Arab Americans.
“Since I am familiar with President Biden and have known him and his staff for more than two decades, I was able to – as a surrogate for the campaign, speak about who he is as a person and otherwise be supportive,” Ambassador Gabriel told Arab America.
According to Ambassador Gabriel, there are three ways that we as citizens in America can partake in the political system:
- We can give money or raise it to help support a candidate that we like.
- We can volunteer in the campaign to do various kinds of things. Part of that would be publicly writing op-eds where perhaps our voice could make a difference.
- You can run for office yourself.
Ambassador Gabriel tells us that he has been lucky enough since the 1980s to participate in supporting presidential candidates both as a volunteer and by also helping raise money to support candidates. “I believe our community [the Arab American community] raised more than $1 million for the Biden campaign,” Ambassador Gabriel told Arab America. To be more specific, this is separate from the Muslim American community, many of whom have Arab-American donors. The Muslim community raised over $1 million as well.
The elite bundlers on Joe Biden’s press release range from former Obama administration ambassadors, such as Matthew Barzun — a top Obama campaign fundraiser who served as the US envoy to the United Kingdom — to Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and financiers such as John Rogers of Ariel Investments and Blair Effron of Centerview Partners.
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