In a tight race, Ethiopians and Eritrean voters in Virginia could be the tie-breakers in choosing the state’s next governor

From left to right: Luel Bekele, Yerusalem Work, Tesfa Mekonnen, Ethiopian-American supporters of Terry McAuliffe’s bid to become Virginia’s governor on November 2.

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In 2017 White Supremacists who literally were calling for our community to be sent back to Africa marched in Charlottesville – Donald Trump said they were ‘good people on both sides’ Terry McAuliffe as Governor stood up against wide supremacist and for our community – Glenn Youngkin welcomes support from the very people who want to push us out of our own Country.

At our core we need to stand with those who welcome us – Now we do have other concerns that must be addressed.

With the gubernatorial race for governor of Virginia upon us, the 2021-2 electoral season is upon us. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post have given space to this election suggesting its national importance. According to a recent poll done by the Wason Center for Civic Leadership, the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe and his Republican challenger, businessman, Glenn Alan Youngkin, are in a dead heat, now a few days prior to the November 2 election.

The 2021 and 2022 regional elections are seen as litmus tests for the 2024 presidential contest.It should come as no surprise that major media outlets are watching the Virginia contest. In such circumstances where elections are close, swing voters could make a difference; such is the case with Virginia’s burgeoning Ethiopian and Eritrean Community (who tend to vote similarly). These two communities find themselves working in tandem both in the Horn of Africa and here in the USA. How they vote

The Ethiopian-Eritrean vote in these next few days could decide whether Glenn Youngkin, for all his attempts to appear moderate, nothing less than a Donald Trump surrogate, or Terry McAuliffe, a moderate Democrat with a record to prove it – becomes Virginia’s governor. No doubt, the results will resonate both in 2022 and beyond. Much depends on how these communities vote – historically they vote in large numbers – could determine not only the future of Virginia, but far beyond.

Until recently, as with many other immigrant voting blocks in the USA, Ethiopians and their Eritrean cousins have seen their interests aligned with the Democrats, especially on such issues important to them – immigration rights, eliminating the heritage of racism in America, strong public education and quality affordable healthcare. Whatever limitations Democratic Party politicans might have – and they do – on these core issues, there is no doubt that the Democratic Party has a stronger record than their Republican counterparts. This tendency has only become more pronounced.

In the age of Trump all of these issues have taken a beating.

It would be easy to conclude that given this that the two Horn of Africa immigrant communities would throw their lot decidedly with the Democratic Party camp. However, events in the Horn of Africa since November 3, 2020 have shaken Ethiopian confidence in the Biden Administration with Ethiopian-Americans bolting from the Democratic Party in droves all over the country in protest, including in Virginia.

Protesting what?

Rather than promoting stability and development in the Horn of Africa, Washington is engaged in an active effort to do the opposite: whip up ethnic tensions and undermine the growing regional cohesion in a region, frankly, tired of more than half a century of war. Ethiopian Americans are especially miffed by the Biden administration’s support for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) separatists in its efforts to overthrow Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed central government. The TPLF ruled Ethiopia for nearly thirty years with an iron hand that resulted in the growing impoverishment, repression and ethnic flair ups in most of the country.

The Biden Administration has perpetuated the illusion that the TPLF are the victims, rather than the instigators of chaos, disunity and separatism in Ethiopia. For nearly a year now, The administration has encouraged a broad-based misinformation media campaign against Ethiopia. It is part and parcel of an increasingly aggressive policy against the Abiy government of hybrid warfare to undermine the the Ethiopian government’s legitimacy not unlike those that preceded the U.S. military offensives in Iran and Libya, thus Ethiopian-American disillusionment with the current Democratic administration.

This continues unabated.

But Washington’s current hostility to Ethiopia is not simply a “Democratic Party” affair, far from it. It is, as are most foreign policy issues, bipartisan; responsibility for it can not be laid uniquely at the Biden Administration’s doorstep. In fact, the shift to a more aggressive policy began already – and in a pronounced fashion – during the Republican Administration of Donald Trump. This makes “bolting” from the Democrats to the Republicans as some Ethiopians have, both shortsighted and politically counterproductive, akin, as we say, to shooting yourself in the foot.

It should be recalled that in a startlingly brutal statement, Trump actually encouraged Egypt to bomb Ethiopia’s nearly completed Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and referred to Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al Sisi as his “favorite dictator”. Shortly thereafter, having failed to bully Ethiopia into accepting a lopsided agreement with Egypt over the future of the dam, in September 2020, Trump suspended $130 million in military aid to the Abiy government. Add to this Trump’s infamous, frankly racist comments two years prior, in 2018, referring to immigrants from Haiti and African countries as coming from “shit hole nations.” One of the targets of that remark was Ethiopia.

The point here for Ethiopian-Americans to consider is that while their outrage and disappointment with the Biden Administration’s hybrid warfare against Ethiopia is legitimate, leaving the Democratic Party in response is a political dead end. The Republican Party “alternative” is no port in the storm for Ethiopian-Americans.

Let us remember that while for most Ethiopians living in the USA, their hearts may still be in Addis Ababa – and will remain so – but their feet are in Colorado, Minnesota, Washington State and Virginia (among other places). Such is the case for other immigrant communities in the USA, a country, that is often forgotten, that other than Native Americans, is entirely made of immigrants who have had to find their way in this country economically, socially and politically.

In fact, the Republican Party is, for all African immigrants, “a road to nowhere.” With Donald Trump leading the party, Republicans continue to lurch to the right politically so much so that they have fallen over the cliff in a paroxism of jingoism, xenophobia, and military adventurism. The moderate face mask that Glen Alan Youngkin sports is little more than a sugar-coated political cyanide pill.

Those who understand this should vote accordingly in Virginia’s upcoming gubernatorial race.

Terry McAuliffe with Ethiopian-American supporters in Virginia

Rob Prince is a retired Senior Lecturer at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies where he helped build the Undergraduate Major in International Studies into one of the best International Studies programs in the country over the 23 years he taught there. Prince is a former Peace Corps Volunteer and staff member in Tunis, Originally from a large Jewish family in New York City, Prince has lived in Colorado for the most part since 1969. His wife, Nancy Fey, is a retired nurse. He has two daughters Molly and Abigail Prince and a grandson Theodore “Teddy” Prince Pile. He has written extensively on North Africa and the geopolitics of the Middle East and Africa. His interest in Africa has centered around the post-Colonial political economy of Cameroon, Congo and the history of Ethiopia in the 20th – 21st Century.

Over the past eleven years he has been a political commentator on KGNU’s Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues produced by Jim Nelson along with his long time dear friend Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni. Prince is also producing a series “Colorado and the Horn of Africa” for KGNU