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Dear John,
Our community's impact this election season was off the charts. Thanks to you, we helped defeat Donald Trump, we protected our allies in the House majority, we elected a record number of Iranian Americans, and in January we will have a chance to flip the Senate.
NIAC Action's 12 chapters recruited over 260 volunteers, organized 28 phonebanks, contacted nearly 70,000 voters, and registered or created vote plans for over 6,000 Iranian Americans as part of the largest Iranian-American voter outreach effort this country has ever seen.
On the fundraising side, NIAC Action PAC hosted 13 candidate fundraisers and meet and greets, raising over $540,000 to elect allies into office.
While there's still a lot of work to do as we gear up for a Biden Administration and as a number of our endorsees head to run-offs (more on that below!), we wanted to reflect on the profound impact NIAC Action and our community had on this election.
Read on for an abbreviated breakdown of our elections successes or read a full breakdown of NIAC Action's impact this election season here!
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This election season, more Iranian-American candidates ran for office than ever before—and NIAC Action was proud to support these rising political stars! Some highlights from our Iranian-American candidate races include:
- Anna Eskamani was reelected to the Florida House of Delegates (D-47)
- Shireen Ghorbani won her reelection bid in Utah for the Salt Lake City Council.
- David Emami won a second term in Oregon as Councilor of the Happy Valley City Council.
- Sepi Shyne made history as the first Iranian American elected to West Hollywood City Council and first openly LGBTQ person of Iranian heritage ever elected.
- Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson won her first election for a seat on the Santa Cruz City Council.
- Yassamin Ansari finished first in a five-way race for Phoenix City Council and is now headed into a run-off election in March 2021.
- Siamak Khadjenoury’s race for the Utah House of Delegates has not yet been called. He is trailing the Republican incumbent by just 235 votes.
NIAC Action endorsees in the House largely swept their races, despite some candidates facing expensive and hotly contested races. Notable wins in swing districts were secured by Tom Malinowski (NJ-7) and Peter DeFazio (OR-4), both of whom faced heavily backed GOP challengers, as well as by Katie Porter (CA-45), who exceeded expectations in what was supposed to be a close race in a traditionally Red district.
Other NIAC Action endorsees in the House who won their bids for reelection in landslide races include Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN-5), Rashida Tlaib (MI-13), Pramila Jayapal (WA-7), Seth Moulton (MA-6), and Ro Khanna (CA-17).
NIAC Action members raised nearly $100,000 for Senate candidates, including for Arizona’s Mark Kelly (D) and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (D), who successfully defeated pro-Trump incumbent Senators, as well as for Georgia's Jon Ossoff (D) and Reverend Raphael Warnock (D) who are each heading into a special election in January that will determine which party controls the Senate. Volunteer to help these two candidates win these crucial seats here.
Now that we've taken back the White House and secured many big wins this election season--with potentially even more to come--the Iranian-American community has never been better positioned to take our seat at the decision making table. So let's take a moment to celebrate our wins before rolling-up our sleeves again as we head into 2021.
Best,
Jamal Abdi
Executive Director, NIAC Action
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