[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And today we have a little experiment in democracy ...

JAD: Diversity ...

ROBERT: And division.

JAD: Yeah. Comes to us from our reporter, producer Simon Adler.

SIMON ADLER: Okay.

JAD: All right, Simon.

SIMON: Okay.

JAD: What—what do you have to tell me?

SIMON: So couple months back, I took the train down to Southern Brooklyn to a little neighborhood called Bay Ridge. Best known for its portrayal in the movie Saturday Night Fever.

JAD: You weren't heading there for disco?

SIMON: Uh, no. Not exactly.

SIMON: The auditorium appears to be filling up.

SIMON: I was actually down there to go to this Catholic high school auditorium.

ROBERT: Huh.

SIMON: How you doing?

SIMON: Sort of the classic high school auditorium, sloping down with the stage in front and, like, an American flag on one side of the stage and a New York state flag on the other. Maybe a thousand seats, and I would say half of them are filled. Like, surprisingly there's a big turnout for this thing.

WOMAN: You look familiar.

SIMON: I look familiar? Have you seen me before?

WOMAN: Well, maybe because you're handsome.

SIMON: And it would not be unfair to say that the crowd has an average age of 62.

SIMON: The reason I was there ...

SIMON: So what brings you here tonight?

MAN: I've come see the debate

SIMON: ... was to watch the local candidates for the New York City city council duke it out.

SIMON: Who's most likely to do something for you, do you think?

WOMAN: I have no idea. I've been hurt on both sides.

SIMON: And ...

SIMON: Can I ask you a question or two?

SIMON: ... as I was talking to people beforehand, weaving in and out of the rows of chairs, the issues that people were concerned about were really what you would expect ...

WOMAN: I'll be in this neighborhood for five years. I've been fighting for a light.

SIMON: ... at this level of politics.

WOMAN: In the meantime, I get aggravated. We have to run for our lives when we cross the streets here. It's horrible.

SIMON: You know, small stuff.

WOMAN: Taking away the five cent bottle tax.

SIMON: Do you drink a lot of Mountain Dew or something, so the five cents are gonna ...

WOMAN: My water bottles. It jumps up the price when I buy those 24 packs of water.

SIMON: But ...

MODERATOR: We're about to begin.

SIMON: ... eventually the MC for the evening, this woman in her '70s, dressed from head to toe in pink, walks out onto the stage.

MODERATOR: This Is America in action. We've got a great selection here.

SIMON: She invites the candidates up, five Democrats, four Republicans. They sit down at their respective tables and ...

MODERATOR: Okay, we're ready.

SIMON: ... it gets underway.

MODERATOR: Get on our mark, get set, go.

SIMON: And at first ...

COUNCILLOR: As your city councilwoman, I will help to make sure that those that have limited income or fixed income ...

SIMON: ... it's pretty dry.

COUNCILLOR: ... will have enough resources and be helped to take care of their pets.

ROBERT: Pets?

SIMON: Yeah.

COUNCILLOR: So they—you don't have to put them down, and they don't have to put them out in the streets.

SIMON: But then about an hour, hour and a half into it, there's this moment where ...

WOMAN: What are your solutions for the overcrowding in schools in this district?

MODERATOR: Bob Capano?

SIMON: One of the Republican candidates, this guy Bob Capano, goes off on this riff.

BOB CAPANO: It's a matter of budgetary priorities. It takes money to build schools, so perhaps if we put an end to some of the city—sanctuary city policies, like spending the $27 million to defend those here illegally who commit felonies for deportation, perhaps you would have more money to build more public schools.

SIMON: And then just as it seemed like people were settling down ...

MODERATOR: We're gonna go to the next question.

MAN: [shouting]

SIMON: ... this man on the far right side of the auditorium stands up, and then goes on to say, "Get the Arab people and the frickin' Asians out of here."

MAN: [shouting] Why are you selling your houses? You're letting everybody take over.

SIMON: "Why are you selling your houses? You're letting everybody take over." Everybody sort of sat up in their seats, and nobody was quite sure if this thing was gonna escalate. And shortly after he said this, one of the candidates up on stage, this tall guy, like, 6'3", salt and pepper beard, stood up from behind the table and actually walked out in front of it ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And I want to say something. Please forgive me.

SIMON: ... and said ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: There is an elephant in the room, and it's called racism and discrimination in this community right here. You have to send a message to Trump and to the world that the people of the 43rd district are not afraid to send the first Arab American city councilor to represent them.

[audience cheers]

SIMON: So the reason I was at this debate is, like, it feels right now like America is just at its own throat. It's certainly as divided as I've ever seen it. And I just keep wondering, like, in this moment, can one person stand for all of us anymore? And here you've got this guy, the guy you just heard, Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian American, trying to win an election in one of the most conservative and most divided neighborhoods in New York. And he's running on behalf of a group of people who currently are at the flashpoint of those divisions: Arab American Muslims. And just to make things a little more complicated, Khader El-Yateem is a Christian.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit.

SIMON: A Christian minister.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Do you want to go in the office?

SIMON: Yeah, is that okay? Check, check, check.

SIMON: I sat down with him in his office for the first time this past March.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I am an Arab American Palestinian Christian Lutheran pastor in Southwest Brooklyn running for office.

SIMON: Wait, wait, wait. Slow that down. Say that for me again. [laughs]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: [laughs] Sure! An Arab American Palestinian Lutheran pastor in Southwest of Brooklyn who is running for city council because I want to bring a new, bold, fresh, inclusive, powerful voice to represent our district and city council.

SIMON: You've got a nice cadence there.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You know, being a preacher, you know, it helps a little bit, too. [laughs]

JAD: What's this guy's backstory? Like, how did he end up being in Brooklyn and running for the seat, for city council?

SIMON: Well, so he was born and raised in Bethlehem on the West Bank.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: In a Palestinian Christian home into a family that was poor to middle class.

SIMON: His father was a carpenter, and made most of his money carving, you know those little, like, nativity scenes with the wooden camel and the wooden Christ?

JAD: Uh-huh.

SIMON: He carved those for a living.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: My mother was a housewife, and she helped my father in the factory. They worked extremely hard to provide for us a good life. So it's—it was amazing, wonderful, simple life. It wasn't complicated. So I went to school, grew up in the church.

SIMON: And after high school, El-Yateem went into the seminary.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: The Bethlehem Bible College.

SIMON: And then when he was in his second year, this was 1989 ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I was arrested by the Israeli soldiers. I was picked up from my bed from home at three in the morning and they took me to prison.

SIMON: And for what reason?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I don't know. I've never been given a reason why I was arrested. I never been convicted of anything. I was picked up from my bed at three in the morning from my father's house and taken to prison. I was in solitary confinement in a small cell.

SIMON: He says that the Israeli soldiers basically tortured him.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Hitting me, and putting me outside against the wall with a bag on my head under the rain and the cold. And they kept asking me, "Tell us what you did wrong, tell us what you did wrong." I said, "I have nothing to tell you." And ...

SIMON: A few months later, he was released with no explanations.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: It just was a bizarre experience.

SIMON: And when he got home ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: After I came back from—came out from prison, there's a lot of people came to our house. They say, "Oh, look. See what they did to you? Now you have to do this to them."

SIMON: What would this be?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You know, they'd come to recruit you, to belong to a political party.

SIMON: In this case, it was the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which at the time was explicitly an armed resistance movement that often targeted Israeli citizens.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And they will say, "Oh, look, see what they did to you? Now you have to do this to them." And I said, "Absolutely not." This is not the way I want to live the rest of my life. You know, I always wanted to be engaged in a place where I can bring hope, I can help people. And the only way I can do that was through being—become a minister.

SIMON: So he doubled down on his studies, finished seminary, was working in Palestine. And then in the early '90s, he was actually sent to start a new Lutheran church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: So I came to Brooklyn in 1995. I remember on the first day I was shocked.

SIMON: Because ...

SIMON: Biking down Fifth Avenue.

SIMON: ... if you take the whole neighborhood in ...

SIMON: And we are in Bay Ridge.

SIMON: ... which I actually did not too long ago on a bike, what you notice is ...

SIMON: On the right we have Leif Erikson Park, a nod to the neighborhood's Scandinavian past.

SIMON: ... this sort of crazy mix of different kinds of people.

SIMON: The Bay Ridge Bakery. Beautiful neon sign. Looks like it hasn't changed much since the 1960s. Johnny Pump's, a fireman bar, firefighter bar. [bleep] Did I hit record? I did hit record. All right. Skinflints Pub.

SIMON: It's sort of like looking at a geological cross-section of the neighborhood's history.

SIMON: The Bean Post Pub, with a schnitzel house on the left.

SIMON: You can see how groups of people layered themselves on top of groups of people, making themselves part of one of the most deeply mixed neighborhoods in the country. And when you get just a little bit south, it's impossible to not notice one of the latest groups trying to settle in.

SIMON: Abu Akram Furniture. Almost got hit by a car. Whoops! The Yemen Cafe. El Zahar Halal Meat. Women walking around in hijab. Got a hookah lounge. Hookahnuts. That sounds nice. Turkish kebab. And how large is the Arab community in the 43rd District?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We don't have the exact, because ...

SIMON: Again, Khader El-Yateem.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: ... when the Census Department came 10 years ago, they told the Arab community if you are an Arab, check 'white.' So we don't have specific numbers.

SIMON: But the estimates I heard are somewhere between 20 and 30,000.

JAD: Wow!

SIMON: Living in Southwest Brooklyn.

JAD: That's a huge community!

SIMON: Yeah. I mean, that's only about 10 percent of the total population, but in a Democratic primary for city council ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We need only about 4,000 votes to win.

SIMON: 4,000 votes total.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah.

JAD: That's it?

SIMON: That's it.

ROBERT: Wow!

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah. I mean,the turnout is very low and we have an open seat, so we'll have a bigger chance winning because we're not running against an incumbent.

JAD: How—what's the margin of victory typically?

SIMON: They can be squeakers. I mean, just several years back, the race was won by just 31 votes.

JAD: [gasps] What?

ROBERT: 31.

SIMON: Yeah. So it would seem that if this guy can just do well despite the fact that there's never been an Arab American on city council before, it seems that if he can get out the Arab American vote, he's got a shot.

ROBERT: Well, shot. I mean, you just told us there's a lot of Arabs there, so he should—he should own this election.

SIMON: Well, yes. But at the same time ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: This neighborhood is such a microcosm ...

MAN: I think—I think that Islam is an evil ideology. That's what I think.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: ... of, like everything that's going on.

SIMON: This is Kayla.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Kayla Santosuosso.

SIMON: She's the former deputy director of the Arab American Association of New York.

MAN: I'm what you call an American.

SIMON: And she said if you look around the neighborhood, you'll see all these sort of national level issues playing out on the ground.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: It's like a—you know, like a shadow play or something.

SIMON: Take the travel ban. I mean you've got ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: One of the largest Muslim neighborhoods in the country, right?

SIMON: ... right next to all of these people who voted for Trump, who support the travel ban.

MAN: No immigration whatsoever. None. Zero!

SIMON: And shifting national demographics ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We're one of the last remaining New York City neighborhoods where there is still a strong, white working class that is in the process of being priced out.

SIMON: Gentrification is really hitting white people hard, and so clearly there's gonna be tension there.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Like, we've just got a lot of the elements of the struggles and the anxieties that are going on on a national level.

SIMON: So ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: Candidate's log, 1:10 am.]

SIMON: ... with all of this in mind ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: We're still out there in search for new voters.]

SIMON: ... Khader El-Yateem ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: Candidate signing out.]

SIMON: ... along with the help of his campaign manager ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: He's full of dad jokes. It's kind of amazing.

SIMON: ... the woman you just heard a couple of seconds ago, Kayla ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Now I'm the campaign manager for El-Yateem for City Council.

SIMON: Have you guys become, like, best friends?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: She's my mother-in-law.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Why do you call me your mother-in-law?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Because I love my mother-in-law.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: [laughs]

SIMON: ... set out to represent the Arab community.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: I am a candidate going where no other candidates have gone before. [laughs]

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Oh my God, here we go!

SIMON: Captain Khader.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: See? Captain.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Simon, don't encourage this behavior.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Captain Kirk, Captain Khader. What's the difference?

SIMON: But dead joke aside, it's true. He really is trying something that's never been tried before, and one reason that it's never been tried before is that those 20-some thousand Arab Americans for the last 20 years, they've been hiding.

LINDA SARSOUR: Like for me, just it's been unnerving to—to be in a district where you don't feel like people are watching out for you in your community.

SIMON: This is Linda Sarsour.

LINDA SARSOUR: I'm a Palestinian Muslim American community organizer, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

SIMON: And she says the key thing to know is that not long after the 9/11 attacks ...

LINDA SARSOUR: The US government in 2003 did engage in a registration program.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: A registry called NSEERS, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.]

SIMON: Which meant that ...

LINDA SARSOUR: Males over the age of 16 who were from these, like, 29 countries of origin ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Countries that had a historic connection to terrorism ...]

LINDA SARSOUR: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt. Go down the list.

SIMON: People from those countries that were visitors, temporary workers, non-US citizens had to come and formally register with the federal government.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, protester: FBI told me, "Give me people, Muslim people."]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: They're treating us like animals. That's it!]

SIMON: Linda was there with some of these men providing translation services in this post office-like room.

LINDA SARSOUR: Where there are all these windows.

SIMON: The men would be called up one at a time, photographed, fingerprinted.

LINDA SARSOUR: Look at their passport, ask them general questions. And I noticed that at one point that there were some men that were being told to either leave or just go home, and got some stamps in their passport with future appointments. Or they were telling them to go to the 10th floor. That's when my—like, something like I got punched in the stomach. Like I felt really nauseous. I was like, "What's going on here?" So when I went to ask the officer ...

SIMON: She was told ...

LINDA SARSOUR: The 10th floor was the FBI headquarters.

SIMON: This wasn't just some information-gathering operation. They were planning to deport people. And as this realization sunk in throughout the waiting room ...

LINDA SARSOUR: I can't tell you the faces that these people had. Like, they didn't know what their destiny was. And in fact, about 10 percent of those that did go register were put on deportation proceedings and many of them were deported.

SIMON: No going home, no packing a bag.

LINDA SARSOUR: And I think that's where the divide starts.

SIMON: And so the Arab-American population in New York and in Bay Ridge learned it was better to not show up, to not be counted.

LINDA SARSOUR: Yeah.

SIMON: And then just a few years later ...

LINDA SARSOUR: The Associated Press came out with their investigative report.

[NEWS CLIP: The Associated Press reports details how police used informants.]

[NEWS CLIP: The New York Police Department has operated an intelligence unit targeting Muslims.]

MATT APUZZO: Turns out that after 9/11 the NYPD was putting large sections of the community under varying degrees of surveillance.

SIMON: This is Matt Apuzzo.

MATT APUZZO: I'm a reporter for the New York Times based in Washington.

SIMON: And he, along with this team at the AP back in 2011 broke this story.

MATT APUZZO: We found out there was a unit called the demographics unit.

[NEWS CLIP: Secret team of NYPD intelligence officers.]

MATT APUZZO: These detectives, they were mapping the human terrain of New York.]

SIMON: Snooping around neighborhoods, going into different shops.

LINDA SARSOUR: All the Muslim butcher shops, the cafes, the ...

[NEWS CLIP: Bookstores, bars and nightclubs.]

LINDA SARSOUR: ... restaurants.

[NEWS CLIP: Hookah bars.]

SIMON: Marking down things like ...

MATT APUZZO: They play Al-Jazeera, and it's this far from a mosque.

[NEWS CLIP: Informants known as "mosque crawlers."]

LINDA SARSOUR: Our mosques were under surveillance.

SIMON: And so the Arab community in Bay Ridge, who had done nothing wrong, they were terrified. I mean, the police were even keeping track of their kids.

LINDA SARSOUR: Like, which parks do our kids—were playing soccer?

SIMON: Couple of things worth noting here: one, in the end, the operation never turned up any terrorists; and two ...

LINDA SARSOUR: When those things happened ...

SIMON: None of their local representatives ...

LINDA SARSOUR: No state legislator, no local elected officials stood up and said, "This is wrong. Don't target my constituents. You know, these are—these people are from my district." Nothing. And what that does is it makes you feel like the people quote, "in power" don't care about us. Like, we were out on our own. And I started realizing that there was going to have to be a moment where we had somebody in the local area ...

SIMON: Somebody who was Arab.

LINDA SARSOUR: ... stand up and protect us.

JAD: And this is where El-Yateem steps in?

SIMON: No, not quite yet. So first, Linda started to raise these thoughts with imams and business leaders.

LINDA SARSOUR: A whole bunch of leaders from different institutions.

SIMON: And they decided the first step was ...

LINDA SARSOUR: To run a candidate for the New York city council.

SIMON: The idea was start small, and start in a place where they have a strong base—Bay Ridge—which also happened to be Linda's neighborhood. And according to her ...

LINDA SARSOUR: A lot of the unions and a lot of the people in politics were like, "Linda, this is your seat. You have to run for this seat. So I saw it, like, unfold before my very eyes. But ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.]

LINDA SARSOUR: ... the politics changed.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: I think Islam hates us. You know, nobody talks about it.]

LINDA SARSOUR: We need American Muslims on our front lines.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: Yes, we have to look at mosques.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: Not politically correct.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Radical Islamism.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: We have to see what's happening.]

LINDA SARSOUR: And ...

[NEWS CLIP: Joining me now is Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab ...]

SIMON: In this new political climate ...

LINDA SARSOUR: My profile grew.

[NEWS CLIP: Linda Sasour.]

[NEWS CLIP: Linda Sarsour.]

[NEWS CLIP: Linda Sarsour.]

LINDA SARSOUR: I started doing a lot of national work.

SIMON: She was on all the cable news shows, became a national figure—and really a polarizing one.

JAD: But why is that?

SIMON: Well, in large part because—and I'm sure she would hate me saying this, but her brand, oddly, is very similar to Donald Trump's. She can be very reactive. She's just going to say it like it is.

LINDA SARSOUR: I'd say straight. I'm very Brooklyn, and maybe too, 'cause I was born and raised here, but I tell it like it is, I don't really ...

SIMON: And more than just telling it like it is, she's a provocateur. She's tweeted some tongue in cheek posts about how Sharia law wouldn't be that bad. More recently she called CNN anchor Jake Tapper, a member of the alt-right. I mean, she's brash and ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Feminist poster-child Linda Sarsour ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Linda Sar-sour. Linda Sour-tits.]

SIMON: ... the conservative media ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I don't need counseling after I hear Linda Sarsour speak. I just need a bucket.]

SIMON: ... jumped all over her for it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alex Jones: There is the witch. Linda Sarsour.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: She is a radical anti-Semite.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alex Jones: I will not submit to you!]

SIMON: Taking these missteps, and warping them into totally unfounded claims.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Linda Sarsour, she is an extremist who has backed terrorists in the past.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: This bitch won't be happy until this whole goddamn country is Muslim.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alex Jones: You make us assimilate! Thank you for being truthful, witch!]

LINDA SARSOUR: So it just didn't feel right at the moment. I didn't want to run for the New York city council.

SIMON: And so after four or five years of planning, organizing and laying the groundwork so that Linda Sarsour could run and represent the Arab community, there was suddenly this moment of ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: [sighs]

SIMON: Oh God.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: What are we gonna do, you know?

SIMON: This, by the way again, is Kayla Santosuosso, who at the time was working with Linda at the Arab American Association.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: And then I remember a moment when at the association, I walked in and I said to her, like, "I just got out of a meeting that Father K was in." And I was like—well, at that time I was, like, I think I was calling him Reverend El-Yateem. I don't remember what—what I was calling him, but I was like, "Don't you think he'd be a great person to run for council?" And she, like, slammed her hand down on the table and she's like, "Kayla, I was just thinking about the same thing." It was like a light bulb went off. [laughs] So we both, like, started going through our heads of, like, why. He meets us in the middle, he's got all these connections with people outside of the Arab community. He's a parent of public school students. He worked at an Orthodox Jewish hospital. He's clergy liaison to the NYPD. He's Lutheran. He's Arab, but he's Christian,

SIMON: He's not Muslim. And they started thinking, like, he's going to be able to get votes that no other Arab could.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Like, Oh my God, he's like the most intersectional. Let me not use that jargon-y term. He's like the person with the most complex identity, that might just be so complex that it'll work.

SIMON: And so...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: They reached out to me and they said, "Listen, we want you to do this."

SIMON: And, you know, he thought about the fact that doing this, it would require him to quit his job, it would be tough on his family. But it felt again like here was an opportunity to help the people around him.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: To help the people in my community. So—so I think, I'm not sure if it's like the end of December where I became like, yes, 100 percent.

SIMON: And so ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: I will bring a voice to city council.]

SIMON: ... a couple months later ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I announced on February 26.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: This is not only my campaign. This is your campaign.]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: At Le Sajj Restaurant.

SIMON: A local Lebanese restaurant.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: This is your campaign.]

SIMON: He is up front, shouting into the microphone, blowing out the speakers.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Every single seat was filled.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: We are going to win. We are going to win!]

SIMON: And his message to them was essentially ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We cannot sit and live in the shadow anymore. We have to be engaged, we have to be involved, we have to be part of the decision-making of this country. We have to bring our perspective to the table, because the fact is other people cannot represent us.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: So let us make history together.]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We have to present ourselves.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I'm really getting lucky with the parking spots.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: It's your relationship with God.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I think so.

SIMON: And pretty much right off the bat, those words like "us" and "ourselves," they presented a series of challenges for Father El-Yateem. The first one being ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: There is a large number of Arab Americans who are American citizens, but they are not registered and they refuse to be part of the political system in this country because they don't trust it.

SIMON: Like, here is a community that has avoided government to the Nth degree for the past decade and a half.

JAD: So what does he do?

SIMON: Well, during the month of Ramadan ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Which is the holy month.

SIMON: ... three or four nights a week, he would show up to the mosques with a stack of literature and a larger stack of voter registration forms.

SIMON: You mind if I leave my backpack in the car here?

SIMON: On the night I tagged along with him and his campaign manager, Kayla ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: This mosque is actually technically outside of ...

SIMON: ... it was hot, muggy. El-Yateem was dressed in his minister garb, you know, suit and collar.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Listen, you take the clipboards.

SIMON: And as we walked into the mosque ...

SIMON: Do I take my shoes off here?

SIMON: ... it wasn't at all clear to me how this was going to go.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Considering what's happening in the Middle East, the war and the division and the different groups, I was not sure if they were ready to support the candidacy of an Arabic Christian to represent them.

SIMON: So we're standing in the back of this huge room that has, like, green carpet and a low, low ceiling. There are, like, 700 people there standing shoulder to shoulder, all praying in unison.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: They have to do this ritual four times.

SIMON: And then there was a break in the prayer.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: They are going to allow me to speak to address the people, so they know that I am here.

SIMON: So we sort of tiptoe through all these people.

SIMON: We are up at the front of the mosque.

SIMON: They introduce him.

SPEAKER: Father El-Yateem.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Salaam Alaikum.

SIMON: And he launched into this speech ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: [speaking Arabic]

SIMON: ... basically saying, you know, this is our historic opportunity for the Arab community to send their first ever Arab American to city council.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: [speaking Arabic]

SIMON: And even with the language barrier, you can hear the passion in the speech, and the response that was ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: [speaking Arabic]

SIMON: ... tepid at best. So when he was done, we headed out to the front of the mosque, and as the service led out, this sea of 700 people come crashing out of the mosque.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Salaam Alaikum.

MAN: Good luck.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Man, come here!

SIMON: And their excitement for him is on open display. They're giving him hugs, they're saying we're behind you. We love you.

MAN: I believe in this guy. I think he is the best candidate in the field, and he will—will represent the community.

SIMON: Only you can represent the community. We are behind you 100 percent.

MAN: Inshallah. Good luck, man. Congratulations. Good luck, man.

SIMON: And that evening ...

SIMON: 12:25 in the morning. We're at mosque number two.

SIMON: ... We went to a second mosque ...

WOMAN: Good luck. Inshallah.

SIMON: ... and then a third.

MAN: How you doing?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Good to see you.

SIMON: Each time, that same energetic response.

SIMON: People just pouring out, he seems to know everyone.

SIMON: And most importantly ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Where did all the pens go? I had 10 pens.

SIMON: ... people were signing his petition to get on the ballot.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Okay.

WOMAN: Address, 39 Auburn Avenue.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Okay, so just sign here.

SIMON: And registering to vote.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Register him, please. Register him.

SIMON: So you just registered to vote?

WOMAN: Yes. This is my first time registering.

SIMON: Many of them for the first time.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You're the best.

SIMON: Did you just register?

MAN: Yeah, first time.

SIMON: First time!

MAN: Yeah. Only for him.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Registered voter? You know what I mean?

MAN: Oh, what's up brother? 100 percent!

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Ultimately, everybody thinks we're insane when we say we're investing a fair amount of our resources in people who have never voted before, and people are kind of like, "What? You know, like, don't do that. It's a waste of money."

SIMON: Because for many of these people, the whole thing about registering and then later voting ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: It was a foreign language to them.

SIMON: Sometimes when he'd ask people to register to vote, they'd respond ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: But why? We already gave you money." And I said, "I understand, but this is the process."

SIMON: Other people thought that registering to vote was the same as voting for him.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I said, "No, no, you did not vote for me. The poll is September 12th." He said, "But I signed the paper two weeks ago."

SIMON: And on top of that ,we did see signs of that mistrust of government.

MAN: I have to register?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Well, you don't have to. Do you want to get the first Arab American in city council?

MAN: Yeah, sure. But I don't know about doing this.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: It's okay. It's all right. It's the first time for a lot of people.

MAN: I'm kinda hiding under the radar right now, you know?

SIMON: But still ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: : This is crazy. I didn't think that we would get this much.

SIMON: ... after going from mosque to mosque through all of Ramadan, by, like, three months before the election ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We have registered close to 300 voters. So ...

SIMON: Just at the mosques?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah.

SIMON: Do you think—do you think you can get those 4,000 votes from the—from the Arab community alone?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We—we are, you know, not counting on the Arab. We're counting about 1,000 votes from the Arab community.

ROBERT: Wait, only a thousand votes?

SIMON: Yeah. Just a thousand.

ROBERT: But didn't you just say there were tens of thousands of Arab Americans living there?

SIMON: Well, yes, there are. There are.

ROBERT: So ...

SIMON: But first of all ...

LINDA SARSOUR: If I get this correct, about 250 Arab-American votes were cast in the last council primary. 250.

SIMON: ... even getting to that 1,000 number was going to be a heavy lift. And there's one more wrinkle here.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: So in Brooklyn, we have about 800 families that attend our church.

SIMON: The folks you might expect to be his most ardent supporters, other Arab-American Christians ...

SHERIF: We are main Orthodox church in Egypt.

SIMON: ... like Sherif here ...

SHERIF: Sherif, S-H-E-R-I-F. I am a deacon in the church.

SIMON: You're gonna vote for El-Yateem?

SHERIF: I don't know yet.

SIMON: ... they were really uninterested in supporting him.

SIMON: Will you be voting for Father El-Yateem?

MAN: No, no. I don't know him.

SIMON: No, you won't be?

MAN: No.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: The beginning of my campaign, I tried to reach out to them.

WOMAN: No. For me personally? No, I haven't.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And I feel pushback.

MAN: No.

MAN: No, I don't know.

SIMON: Why is that? And what—what's going on?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Well, the Arab Christians in our districts are—the vast majority are Republicans. So yeah, I will say 95 percent of them are Republicans. So that's number one. Number two, you have the situation in Egypt where Christians are being attacked.

[NEWS CLIP: 44 now have been killed after bombing Christian churches in Egypt.]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And churches are being burned ...

[NEWS CLIP: St George's Church in Tanta ripped apart.]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: ... by these radical groups.

[NEWS CLIP: ISIS claiming responsibility. Many of the dead are children.]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You see, there's tensions.

SIMON: Well, and so is there a level of distrust in the Christian Arab community of you because you are so close with the Muslim Arab community here?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I mean, I will give you an example. I have a very close friend of mine, his name is Francois. And so people went out to him and saying, "Oh, we could not support him." And he said, "Why not? Why?" He said, "Because he's very close with the Muslims, and they will take advantage of him." So—but this is the dynamics. This is what's happening.

SIMON: So eventually they decided only going after the Arab vote ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: It wasn't the right numbers game. Like, that's just not—it's just not gonna work.

SIMON: And so what that meant was ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I need to get 3,000 votes from the Arabs in the district to win this election.

SIMON: In other words, he was going to have to convince the majority white voters that he could represent them too, which wasn't gonna be easy.

SIMON: All right, walking down Fifth here.

SIMON: As I discovered when maybe a month before the election, I went on a stroll to try to take the pulse of some of the neighborhood's white residents.

SIMON: Have you lived here in Bay Ridge for a while?

WOMAN: All my life.

SIMON: Has the neighborhood changed a lot?

WOMAN: Yes. It's more—it's more foreigners than American. And it's scary!

WOMAN: Listen, you're talking to a 78-year-old Irishwoman. You have newcomers coming into our district. What do they know about it? Nothing. They do not know.

SIMON: And when I asked them about Father El-Yateem specifically ...

SIMON: What do—do you know anything about him?

WOMAN: No, I don't. And I don't care to.

MAN: Honestly. I'd never heard of him.

WOMAN: The one that's running?

SIMON: Father El-Yateem.

WOMAN: Right. He's Egyptian.

SIMON: He's Palestinian.

WOMAN: Okay. Pales—still Egyptian. That's how I feel. It just completely turns me off.

SIMON: And just to be clear here ...

SIMON: You're a Democrat?

WOMAN: Yes.

MAN: Yeah. Yeah.

WOMAN: Yeah.

SIMON: ... these are Democrats.

WOMAN: If anybody asked me to vote for Donald Trump when he was running, I would turn around and say, "Hell, no." But I feel this is our country. This is America. And I feel an American person should be in for office.

ROBERT: Was that representative of what you heard? Was that ...

SIMON: On that street, on that day, yes. But clearly, it's not like everyone down there has these opinions. And this by no means excuses their behavior or language, but I think it explained some of it, that they see rent prices going up and dozens of new Arab folks moving into the neighborhood every month.

JAD: But these are not the gentrifying force, though. This is ...

SIMON: Oddly enough, the Arab immigrants, and even more so the Chinese immigrants, they in some ways are.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Liam McCabe: Let's talk about the issues that I hear, and every issue ...]

SIMON: Jumping back to the debate from the top of the piece, this is one of the Republican candidates, Liam McCabe.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Liam McCabe: Overcrowded schools, whether it's infrastructure and transportation, it can be traced to one particular issue in South Brooklyn, and that is illegal home conversion. Absolutely my solution ...]

SIMON: Developers or landlords are taking these single family homes, knocking out all the walls on the ground floor and the second floor, and then putting up these—these temporary walls, building these very tiny cramped domiciles that they can then rent out to 10 or 15 families.

JAD: Oh, wow!

SIMON: And what that does is first of all, it's incredibly unsafe for the people living in the house, but also it's putting stress on the sewer system and streets. It causes classroom sizes to go up. Housing prices go up because there are just less actual single family homes on the market. It's making the neighborhood more dense than it was ever meant to be. And so for a lot of these people who have lived in this neighborhood for a long time, I think it feels like their daily lives are being affected by these forces outside their control, and they are reacting emotionally to those things.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Liam McCabe: So you're fighting for ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Khader El-Yateem: I'm fighting for the district, fighting to make sure the quality of life ...]

SIMON: Just one example: a couple of months before the election, El-Yateem was going around, knocking on doors.

MAN: And what are your views on illegal immigration?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We need to do immigration reform. We need to make sure the undocumented are protected in our sanctuary city.

MAN: No. No, you don't have my vote. This is not a sanctuary city. If you're not interested in following federal law, get the fuck out of my sight.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: All right. Thank you. Thank you.

MAN: Get the fuck out of my sight.

KHADER El-YATEEM: Thank you.

MAN: You obey federal law.

SIMON: And several of the Republican candidates ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Liam McCabe: You know, I deeply believe that illegal immigration has—is a big root cause of this.]

SIMON: ... are trying to harness those emotions.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Those who come here illegally get a handout of public health benefits. That must stop!]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: One Republican candidate wrote about me I am a radical leftist Palestinian cleric. [laughs]

SIMON: Presumably they're using the word 'cleric; insinuating that you're not, in fact, Christian, but you are Muslim. Is that the insinuation there?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah, I mean that is part of their plan. They're trying to use the fear of the people against my candidacy. Then the comments underneath that post, it is just terrifying. "I'm gonna hang him," for example, one guy said. Or this one, I cannot read it on radio, but I will show it to you.

SIMON: I'll read it. "He—he's a fucking asshole, and should be treated as such."

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I have lived in this community for the past 22 years, and never in my life faced anything like this. And it's very interesting because the attacks are not only coming from Republicans but also coming from Democrats in the race. But the Democrats, they do that kind of under the table.

SIMON: El-Yateem claims that some of the Democrats are making the argument that yes, he might be able to win a Democratic primary, but because he's Arab, he won't be able to win the general election so don't waste your vote on him. And Justin Brannan, who's really the establishment Democratic front runner in the race ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: His fliers and his lit says, "Our neighborhood, our guy." So for me as an Arab American who's living here, what's that supposed to mean? It is dog whistling. A statement of exclusion.

SIMON: I'll just say on that, as a white dude from Wisconsin, when I see that flier, I don't see that division in that. Am I just blind to it?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We—you have to understand the context of the neighborhood. And the context is everything wrong in the neighborhood is blamed on the Arab and the Chinese, you know? If the street is dirty because of these damn Arabs, you know? Like, when I go out and say, "I'm fighting for the community," and they say, "Oh, see? He's just only fighting for his community." That means only the Arab people. But if somebody else said the word 'community,' it's okay. It means everybody.

SIMON: And I don't mean to push back, but it seems like ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I want you to push back. [laughs]

SIMON: Okay. It seems like you two are essentially doing the same thing to one another, yeah? He's saying when you say the word 'community,' it's only about the Arab community, and when he says 'our neighborhood,' you're saying he's just talking about the white folks in Bay Ridge. Isn't it the same thing happening in both directions?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: [laughs] Well, it could be, but we need to understand the backgrounds. We have a president who use so much rhetoric. He came up with the Muslim ban and building the wall, and—and attacking minorities and people of color. Our councilman and his staff never took a stand on these issues and came out in support of the Arab and Muslim community. That's—you have to look at the history.

SIMON: And well, it seems like maybe his opponents are playing up this kind of identity politics. Over and over again, I saw El-Yateem making explicit attempts to reach out across those boundaries.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: These are Republicans for El-Yateem, you hear that?

SIMON: Take this for example: at this noisy firefighter bar, he strolled up to this table of burly white men and just started giving hugs. And I mean, just listen to how Brooklyn he sounds here.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: How you doing?

SIMON: Let's hear that once more.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: How you doing? Is he behaving ? Can I give you a kiss, at least?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: The whole thing has been a really delicate line.

SIMON: Kayla Santosuosso.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Because we really want it to be honest, and—and not adjust too much but while also, like, letting people know that this campaign wasn't just for the Arab community, it was for them as well.

SIMON: And so the campaign was also focusing on things that—well, things that mattered to everyone.

SIMON: What's happening here?

WOMAN: They're doing a complete renovation of the station.

WOMAN #2: There's no R train at the station.

SIMON: You know, real daily life concerns.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: The station is going to be closed for at least five months. As you see, it's chaotic.

SIMON: On a cloudy morning, El-Yateem set up a podium right in front of the cordoned off staircase of a closed subway station, and railed against the MTA for doing with next to no warning at all these repairs that were really just cosmetics, weren't needed at all.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We think about our students, we think about our small business owners, the mom and pop shops who will be affected and impacted for the closing this station for no reason.

SIMON: I mean, what's more unifying here in New York than complaining about the subway? And he also went after specific groups, groups who were traditionally white.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I just want to say thank you so much for this opportunity to invite me to be with you tonight.

SIMON: Like on this rainy Thursday night in this YWCA multipurpose room that felt a lot like an elementary school cafeteria.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And I thank you for inviting me to share my reasoning why I'm running for city council. And also to tell you that I will be very proud to be the first one to represent the democratic socialists in city hall.

ROBERT: Who—who are the democratic socialists?

SIMON: These are the Bernie Sanders people.

JAD: Oh.

SIMON: And the important fact to know is there are lots of anti-establishment white people in this district.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: This neighborhood in the presidential primary went Bernie and went Trump.

ROBERT: He beat Hillary.

SIMON: He beat Hillary in this district.

ROBERT: So El-Yateem has to put on the clothes of Bernie ...

SIMON: Yes.

ROBERT: ... a Brooklyn Jew of all people.

SIMON: Yes. And watching him try to do that, a couple of things struck me.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: As I said, I was born and raised in Bethlehem, Palestine. And my father actually also carpenter. No relation. No relation, no relation.

[audience laughs]

SIMON: First, how he was intentionally bringing parts of himself to the fore while pushing other parts into the background.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: So I'm going to tell you that we have some commonalities together.

SIMON: And second ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: We are committed to justice. And I think that's why you are here tonight, right? Otherwise you are in the wrong room, no?

SIMON: How he highlighted specific policies that represented those parts of himself.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Issues like economic justice. A free education in our universities. I have two daughters in college, and I know how much it costs me. I know that my wife and I, we have to get a second job to be able to pay for them to go to college.

ROBERT: So did they decide to support him or no?

SIMON: Well, in fact, they did. He is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America—both the local and national chapters of the organization, which was a huge deal.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yes.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: 100 percent.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And I was like, okay, we are in business.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Now it's—now it's interesting, right?

SIMON: Because with that endorsement came some real support.

WOMAN: I came to the campaign through the DSA.

MAN: DSA seemed like a good conduit.

WOMAN #2: I am Democratic Socialist.

SIMON: Locally, they committed hundreds of volunteers.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We had 150-200 volunteers yesterday.

SIMON: The sort of manpower that allowed them to flood the neighborhood and knock on thousands of doors ...

MAN: My name's Michael ...

WOMAN: My name's Tasha.

MAN: I'm working for El-Yattem's campaign.

SIMON: ... trying to convince people to vote for him.

WOMAN: When people understood his stances on the legislation, I think people were really excited about that.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I'm feeling good, da da da da da da dum! [laughs]

SIMON: And more than just helping them knock on doors, because of the national endorsement, on many evenings of the week they actually had folks from all over the United States phone banking for him, calling from places like Florida to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, again, pitching people to vote for Father El-Yateem.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I'm trying to show that my candidacy for city council, it is for everyone in this district.

SIMON: And this is—I find this so fascinating about you, that I see such a contradiction in everything you're saying there. That you're saying you want to represent the whole community, which I'm sure you do, but at the heart of it, like, what's motivating that is wanting to give voice to this group of people that don't have a voice.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Absolutely. I mean that is 100 percent and I cannot deny that. I mean, one of the most motivating factors in me running because I wanted to make sure my community has a voice and has representation, but I'm running to represent everyone, you know?

SIMON: But it's this weird ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah. I mean, it is weird because you know ...

SIMON: Wasn't that a question in your mind going into this, like, how do I walk this incredibly tiny tightrope of telling the Arab community, "I am you and this is our moment," but simultaneously telling the majority of the neighborhood, like, "But I'm still you too. Like, don't worry. I can be both."

KHADER EL-YATEEM: People have to understand my identity. I mean, I went and knocked on thousands of doors. We talked to people, and my—my talking points at the door was always I'm a father of four, my wife is a school nurse, I love this community. And then I didn't speak only about the Arab and Muslim community. I spoke about affordability and livability in the community. We spoke about transportation, we spoke about police accountability. We spoke about things that people in the community said—in this district said, "Yes, we are going to support you. We need somebody like you who can go in our behalf." So at the end of the day, my identity is who I am. I am running as who I am, and I will not allow anybody to take that away from me.

SIMON: And so, just a couple of days before September 12, before the election, I checked in with Kayla to see how things were looking.

SIMON: How many days do we have left here?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Five days. [laughs] Yeah.

SIMON: And apparently, she told me, as El-Yateem and his canvassers had been going around to all of these doors knocking, they had been taking notes on people. And in those notes, each person was given a number from one to five.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Based on their level of support. One is like, that person was so pro El-Yateem you didn't even need to go to that door, you're just marking them down. Five is like, "Sorry, I'm voting for somebody else." Twos and ones are positive IDs.

SIMON: And just a couple of days before the election, an election I'll remind you, they only need 4,000 votes to win, the number of positive IDs they had was ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: 5,500.

SIMON: So you currently have 5,500, give or take.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Yeah, ones and twos.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: So it will be very interesting to see how the primaries will be translated in numbers when September 12 comes.

JAD: Okay, well we're gonna take a break, and when we come back ...

ROBERT: It'll be election day.

JAD: Election day.

[LISTENER: This is Jeffrey and this is Marjorie from Boise, Idaho. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

JAD: Jad.

ROBERT: Robert.

JAD: Radiolab.

ROBERT: And we're gonna go back to Simon.

JAD: Adler.

SIMON: Should we do election day?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Yeah, let's have an election.

SIMON: Okay.

JAD: What happens?

SIMON: So the election, this is September 12.

SIMON: All right, so it is six in the morning.

SIMON: 2017.

SIMON: The sun is yet to rise. We are outside the El-Yateem get out the vote headquarters. Here we go.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Where is the list that we're using for this?

MAN: I got no map.

SIMON: And so I show up at six in the morning, and everything is already abuzz.

SIMON: Party over there. It's crazy!

SIMON: There were dozens of volunteers, staff workers ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: You're all so amazing. Thank you for coming this morning.

SIMON: ... hovering around these plastic folding tables that were set up everywhere.

MAN: Hey, don't leave without one or two signs.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: So what we're gonna do is we're gonna give you a giant stack of literature.

MAN: Make sense? All right. Sweet.

SIMON: And shortly—shortly after I got there, Kayla and Father El-Yateem both arrived.

[applause and cheering]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Here we are. Hey!

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We're matching. That's pretty awesome.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You know, I got the memo.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Yeah, right?

SIMON: They were in matching Democrat blue, Kayla in blue jeans and a blazer, Father El-Yateem in an Oxford with the white collar.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And blue is we are saying today's election day.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: [laughs]

KHADER EL-YATEEM: So here is to say, September 12, September 12.

SIMON: And as quickly as he arrived ...

VOLUNTEER: No opposition in sight. And enjoy yourselves.

SIMON: ... he was sent out to start the day.

VOLUNTEER: Yeah 86th.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Beautiful day in the neighborhood.

SIMON: And so ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

SIMON: ... we hopped into the car, and that was sort of the beginning of the day. And really, his job was just to shake as many hands of as many people as he could in as many different disparate parts of the district as possible.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Are you voting today? Do you speak Arabic or English?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: What should be the basis of whether or not you win a race is ID and pull. ID as many positive IDs as you can. Pull out as many of those people on election day.

SIMON: Pull out, meaning pull them to the polls.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Exactly. Get as many of your positive IDs out to the polls as you can.

SIMON: And for their campaign to do this ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We have to effectively have two different operations.

SIMON: First and foremost ...

WOMAN: Hello. Salaam Alaikum.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Salaam Alaikum.

WOMAN: Do you speak Arabic?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: There's gotta be an Arab community operation.

WOMAN: Did you vote?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: So we have likely Arabic speakers.

SIMON: Their assumption was that an Arab voter is going to need their hand held much more tightly to get them to the polls.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Like a lot of these people have never been to the polls before.

SIMON: And so ...

VOLUNTEER: Okay, can you just give her a message then?

SIMON: ... they had, like, six people on their phones just going down these lists ...

VOLUNTEER: I'm calling to speak to Aranna.

SIMON: ... calling people saying, "Have you come out and voted today?"

VOLUNTEER: Bring all the family. Thank you so much.

SIMON: Simultaneously, that same person who has been called ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: I'm basically the person that actually makes sure that you go vote.

SIMON: ... is being flanked by a group of canvassers ...

VOLUNTEER: All right. This is Mohammad.

SIMON: ... marching up to their apartment and banging on their door saying ...

VOLUNTEER: 1C, 2E, 3D, 4A and 4D.

SIMON: "... come out and vote."

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We're gonna pull you out.

VOLUNTEER: We're coming to you guys.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We're gonna say, like, "What time are you going to the polls?"

MAN: What time, 9:00 or ...?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Yeah, 9:00. We need you to go vote. Father K needs you to go vote.

MAN: I met him a couple ...

SIMON: They had this very long script they would go through, and I don't remember all of the Arabic, but they would often say, "So are you going to the polls today?" And the response would be "Inshallah."

JAD: Mm-hmm.

SIMON: Like, "God willing." And they weren't supposed to accept that. They'd have to say "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Inshallah, tomorrow. Today, not God willing, you willing." And then they would have to get them to say either like, "I promise on my head," or, "I promise on my heart." And if they got either of those, then they felt like they had imposed social pressures that would work on the Arab community.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: And then ...

SIMON: On top of all this ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We have to do the standard operation of get out the vote with the triple prime voters, which is like the voters that have—that reliably vote in primaries in this community—largely white, largely over the age of 50.

SIMON: All right. St. Nicholas old folks' home.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: He voted.

WOMAN: You're sneaking back again!

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I am back again.

SIMON: Going into nursing homes, sending out even more canvassers, and even ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Whoo! Team El-Yateem!

SIMON: ... the occasional shout out the passenger window of your car. And early on in the day back at the campaign headquarters ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I need somebody who's free.

VOLUNTEER: Now what do you need?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I need someone to go pick up a voter.

SIMON: ... it was clear just how complicated and resource intensive running these two parallel campaigns was.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Just a couple of people to vote.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Where?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I am gonna send ...

SIMON: El-Yateem had just received a call from several Muslim women saying that they needed a ride to the polls. His wife Grace was going to go pick them up, but she needed someone to go with her.

GRACE: And, you know, I'm gonna go with them to get the voters.

SIMON: So this organizer Haddad said she would do it, but ...

ANDY: No, no, no, you can't. You can't leave the table. You gotta—yeah, I'll deal with it.

SIMON: ... one of the campaign directors, Andy, said, "No, you've gotta stay here."

ANDY: What's up? What's up?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I need somebody to go with Grace.

ANDY: I'll take this one.

SIMON: "I'll take care of this."

ANDY: So you can pick up a voter?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yes.

ANDY: Mohammad? Can it be Mohammad?

SIMON: Like, just send Mohammad.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: He doesn't speak Arabic.

SIMON: But turns out Mohammad doesn't speak Arabic.

ANDY: You need somebody who speaks Arabic?

SIMON: Which ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: No, not necessarily.

SIMON: ... eventually turned out to not actually be a problem.

ANDY: So why doesn't Mohammad go?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Please just do it. Please.

ANDY: I know, I know, I know. So why doesn't Mohammad go?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: This has taken so much.

ANDY: Mohammad, Mohammad, go with—come here. So go.

SIMON: But then Haddad pointed out that if these are women, it would be more appropriate for all those going to pick them up to be women.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: But, you know, cultural stuff. Mohammad can be here. Mohammad can take my place for a little bit.

ANDY: I'll take your place.

SIMON: And so finally ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Busy day. Hectic.

SIMON: ... they said, "Haddad, just go." And this was all for just two votes. But I will say despite all that, midway through the day, it did appear like this two-pronged approach was working.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: This is his first time voting.

WOMAN: I voted.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You did?

WOMAN: Yeah.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Good.

MAN: Yeah, I did. Yeah.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: You did? Yes! That was 50 doors?

LINDA SARSOUR: That's 50 doors. Yeah, 71 people.

SIMON: The canvassers were getting good feedback. And on the street ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Da da da da da. Da da!

SIMON: ... both ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: First time voter. We registered him.

SIMON: ... Arab folks and ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Hello!

WOMAN: I voted for you already.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: You did? Thank you!

SIMON: ... white folks we're coming up to him and saying, like ...

WOMAN: That's what I'm talking about.

SIMON: "... Hey, we voted for you."

RABIA: Father El-Yateem. Father El-Yateeem.

SIMON: This is Rabia, a canvasser who's been with the campaign from the beginning.

RABIA: You don't understand what this means for the Arab-American community. You only know what it means. So it's pretty personal. Have you voted today? Great. I'm gonna get all emotional.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: You're getting emotional?

RABIA: I don't want to be emotional. My husband is banned in Malaysia because he's from Yemen. Okay, can't do this 'cause I'm ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Thank you.

RABIA: So yeah, it is very personal.

[phone rings]

SIMON: But then ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Hi, how are you?

SIMON: ... in El-Yateem's car at about two in the afternoon ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: How's the numbers looking?

SIMON: ... they got their first sense of what voter turnout was looking like.

MUHAMMAD KHAN: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So the numbers said that we're underperforming in a few poll sites where we should be doing better. And you know—sorry, let me start that again. I'm, like, frazzled now. Um ...

SIMON: This is Muhammad Khan, the campaign's treasurer.

MUHAMMAD KHAN: Yeah. The number said that, you know, poll sites where we have strong support are showing lower turnout than we were hoping for. So obviously we don't know who people are voting for, but we're guessing that since less people are voting there overall, that means that less folks are voting for us. And then poll sites where we know our opponent has strong support, we're seeing higher turnout.

SIMON: And so what are the strategies to remedy that?

MUHAMMAD KHAN: So we just need to allocate more canvassing resources to areas where we see underperformance so we can turn more people out to vote.

SIMON: So go knock on those doors hard.

MUHAMMAD KHAN: Knock on the doors, pull people out of their homes and make sure they vote.

SIMON: And so with about four hours remaining ...

LINDA SARSOUR: Right now it's all about talking to individuals, dragging people off the street.

SIMON: ... all of the leaders of the campaign, including Linda Sarsour ...

LINDA SARSOUR: You literally got to find people that are recognizable.

SIMON: ... hit the streets ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Barber shops. I've got three of them.

SIMON: ... of North Bay Ridge. They were literally going into Arab-owned stores ...

LINDA SARSOUR: Telling them, "You gotta go to the polls. And if you did not, I'm taking you right now."

SIMON: Barber shops, delis, hookah lounges.

LINDA SARSOUR: Yeah, he's gonna go vote.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: He's changing his clothes.

LINDA SARSOUR: You gonna vote?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: See? He's taking her to vote.

SIMON: And while this was happening ...

VOLUNTEER: Yeah, I don't live in your district. I'm here to help out.

VOLUNTEER: I'm here to canvas for you.

SIMON: ... the final push of volunteers were showing up.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: It's a good time to push again, yeah.

VOLUNTEER: Do we go a fourth pass?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Yeah. Go go go go go.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: All right, people. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Come on!

SIMON: And when they got the updated turnout numbers ...

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We have two of our poll sites that have been hit at 115 percent of turnout already.

SIMON: ... it seemed to be working.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: So we just gotta keep that up.

SIMON: What's—what's the emotion at the moment?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a close race. Like, at least it feels like it. Based on the turnout numbers that we're seeing and the way that turnout's happening, there's basically two strongholds that are currently developing: North Bay Ridge, South Bay Ridge.

SIMON: So South Bay Ridge, which is largely white, seems to be turning out hard for the establishment candidate. Justin Brannan. And North Bay Ridge is where the majority of the Arab Americans live. And in that moment, the campaign makes a decision.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: So at this point we're zeroing in all of our efforts on just, you know, everything north of 75th Street.

SIMON: That the only way to win is to push hard to get as many votes as they can in those Arab-American neighborhoods, and essentially write off trying to convince the white voters.

ROBERT: So this is like, you know, we gotta—it's our people are gonna make the difference so we go for our people.

SIMON: Yes.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We're doing good. We've got to stay in our town.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: That's it.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Andy?

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Focus on our part of town.

SIMON: And so with, like, an hour remaining, everyone went out ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Let's do this!

SIMON: ... for one final push. Cars were driving by honking their horns for him.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: This is Brooklyn.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: It really is.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Do you believe this? Look at this. It's incredible. Just broke the 12-hour shifts.

MAN: I just voted for you.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Hey, thank you so much.

MAN: Good luck today, hope you win.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Thank you so much.

WOMAN: I just saw your picture. I said, "That's my man."

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Thank you so much.

WOMAN: Yes I'm going, I'm going. All the best.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Thank you so much.

MAN: Can you take a picture of us?

SIMON: Sure, yeah.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: How are your sisters?

SIMON: Ready? One, two ...

MAN: Thank you.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Thank you.

SIMON: By my watch it is nine o'clock. The campaign is over.

SIMON: I was with El-Yateem right when we hit nine o'clock. And in that moment, I don't know from where, but someone handed him ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: What's up? baby?

SIMON: ... an infant. And he was just standing on this dark street, his back against a minivan, his face illuminated by the light pouring out from his campaign headquarters, with this baby in one arm and his cellphone pressed tightly up against his ear asking Kayla ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: How do the numbers look?

SIMON: ... what the numbers were looking like.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Still counting.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: They're still counting.

SIMON: All of his volunteers, staff and supporters were gathering in the patio of this bar/pizzeria called The Firefly, waiting there for El-Yateem to arrive—as well as the results.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Kayla called me as I was walking up to the Firefly Pizzeria, because at that time, the numbers from South Brooklyn came in.

SIMON: She said, "I've added these results with what we already know."

KHADER EL-YATEEM: And she said that we lost the moment before I walked intoThe Firefly.

SIMON: After word got around that they had, in fact, lost, Linda Sarsour ...

LINDA SARSOUR: Turn around, turn around.

SIMON: ... stood up on this picnic table and addressed everyone.

LINDA SARSOUR: I know a lot of folks who are here who are not children of immigrants, or if you're not Arab American or Muslim, you do not understand what this campaign meant to us and to our community. And for us it is not over. And I want to say to Father Khader, Father Khader did not have to do this. He did not have to quit his job—a father of four—but Father Khader did it. He did it to help us build the political voice that we knew we always had in this community, to allow people to pay attention to us and our issues. He is the winner tonight.

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: Guys!

LINDA SARSOUR: We're doing this again!

KAYLA SANTOSUOSSO: We're coming back for a second round.

JAD: Wait, so he lost. Do we—do they know why?

SIMON: Yeah, so he ended up losing by just under 700 votes, which is about seven percent of the total votes cast.

JAD: Well, do we know what accounted for the difference?

SIMON: Yeah, we—we can't know for sure why because the voter records don't come out until December, but there are a couple things that we do know. One was that there were no Arabic translators at the polls.

JAD: Really?

SIMON: Yeah.

SARAH QARI: Let me see how far I can get? I'm just following ...

SIMON: We actually had reporter Sarah Qari go down into one of the polling locations to see exactly what was going on.

SARAH: Hi. Can I just ask what languages you guys are translating?

VOLUNTEER: Cantonese and Mandarin.

SARAH: How about you?

VOLUNTEER: Cantonese.

VOLUNTEER: Spanish—English to Spanish.

SARAH: Okay. Is there somebody—an Arabic translator?

VOLUNTEER: Unfortunately, Arabic is not a approved language for—to have an interpreter in Brooklyn.

SARAH: Oh, okay.

VOLUNTEER: It is a state—actually in New York, I believe it's a state law.

SIMON: Turns out what languages are provided in any borough of New York City are decided upon based on census data. And because there is no census data ...

JAD: Oh, come on!

SIMON: ... for the Arab communities ...

JAD: That makes me so angry.

SIMON: ... yeah, that's why.

ROBERT: Did they say you can't come here? Or, like—or do they just go neutral?

SIMON: Well, the problem was the interpreters that the campaign was attempting to provide for these folks, at several of the polling locations, they were actually turned away from the polls. They were told ...

ROBERT: By the New York state officials, by the election people?

SIMON: By the folks working the polls.

JAD: Really.

SIMON: Which—which it turns out is illegal.

JAD: They were illegally turned away.

SIMON: They were illegally turned away. But despite all that, they did in fact get out more Arab-American voters than have ever turned out for a race like this. Like, by a factor of four.

ROBERT: By—oh, four. That's interesting.

SIMON: Yeah. Where they ended up coming up short, it would seem, is with the white voters. And nobody has a perfect explanation for this, but I did talk to some political movers and shakers down in the area, and they—they offered up sort of three different explanations. One is that the message that he was delivering to the white folks just failed to connect. The second one is that having these two campaigns at the same time, one for the Arabs, one for the white folks, that that just damned him from the beginning.

JAD: Just like in terms of resources or in terms of messaging?

SIMON: All of the—either. And then the third one is that this had nothing to do with him, this had nothing to do with his campaign, just in this moment, there were not enough white folks who would be willing to vote for an Arab candidate no matter what.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Are you tired?

SIMON: No, it's nice to be here—to be able to sneak back here, though.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Yeah [laughs]

SIMON: Where—emotionally, where are you? Are you, like—have you, like, gotten past?

SIMON: A couple of weeks after the election, I headed back down to Bay Ridge to sit down one more time with Father El-Yateem.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Well, the truth is that I haven't taken a day off yet.

SIMON: Why?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Because I've been so busy.

SIMON: What are you doing? Why are you doing this to yourself?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Not doing this to myself. It is just the outcome of this campaign has been unbelievable. So the moment we finished with the campaign, we continued to meet to discuss the political power that we have built and what we are going to do with it. Because we have almost 3,000 people who came out and voted, we can make a difference in any election. And that's why I said we cannot slow down now. We need to continue to educate the community. We need to continue to be engaged with them. We cannot lose the momentum. We cannot afford to lose the momentum. We just can't. So this is ...

SIMON: So are you a politician now? Like, is that what ...

KHADER EL-YATEEM: This is the will of the community. We have demands. We have political power, and we have an address now and the address is Khader El-Yateem. So elected officials, you will not talk to us? You come and speak to us through Khader El-Yateem. That's the only way you can talk to us.

JAD: Wow!

SIMON: Yeah. I feel like what struck me in that conversation was, like, he spent his entire campaign trying to speak to all sorts of different groups. He was saying, "I can represent you all. I am yours. Everyone." But in that final conversation, what I heard from him is that was him becoming more and more a voice of just one group, one community—his community.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: Well, that's—yeah, but is that—you know, this is the game. I feel like this is him recognizing the nature of the game, and deciding to come from a position of strength. And I say all for—I'm all for it.

ROBERT: So you want him to basically tighten his grip on the Arab vote, and then walk into room after room across New York City and say, "When you want our votes deal with me. I've got votes to push. I've got votes to give and withhold. I'm the boss."

JAD: I'll tell you what I want. I want that community to step out and be heard, and have a voice. And this is how it happens.

ROBERT: I think it has to—if you believe in this system, it has to be possible for someone talented enough to be able to stand up and say two things at the same time, two things that seem contradictory that he does believe in. That has to be possible.

JAD: Yeah, I understand that. But I mean, in this particular moment, in this particular—I mean, I don't think identity politics is a choice in this moment, you know? I mean, do you remember the woman who's like, "Still Egyptian. Still Egyptian." He's being seen as one thing that he is not. He's not choosing ...

ROBERT: He doesn't have to become that one thing.

JAD: In that environment, what do you do? You can't just, like, pretend to have a rainbow coalition when there's no chance of that.

ROBERT: Or you can make one.

JAD: You just fight!

SIMON: Uh, you got that out of your system?

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] Yeah, sorry.

ROBERT: As you were saying ...

JAD: I'm sorry. Yes what—so how does he feel about all this?

SIMON: Oh yeah, I was gonna say oddly enough I tried to put all of this in front of him.

SIMON: Well, that—that brings me actually to the question that I think is at the heart of everything I watched, is you were really trying to transcend identity politics. You were trying to at one time speak to those people and yet at the same time say no, that my Arabness has nothing to do with this. You tried to do both, and I think that—I worry that that is why it didn't work.

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Mmm, I don't know. I have to think about what you just said, but, you know, I went out there as myself, as an Arab-American Lutheran pastor. But I had to take a stance on issues that really mattered to me and to the things that I am passionate about.

SIMON: But does that mean you're sort of a better person than you are a politician?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: I like to see myself like that. Definitely. I mean, I—I did what I thought, what my team thought was the right thing to do.

SIMON: And would you—would you run again?

KHADER EL-YATEEM: Sure. [laughs] Yes.

SIMON: It's worth noting that since we first aired this episode, Father El-Yateem and his family have moved to possibly an even more politically complicated place: the state of Florida.

ROBERT: Our story was reported and produced by Simon Adler.

JAD: With production help from Bethel Habte and Annie McEwen.

SIMON: Real quick, some special thanks to Abir Cawas and Paula Katinas, David Lewis and Brigid Bergin from the WNYC newsroom. Ralph Perfetto and Justin Brannan, Rebecca Chiasson, David Fuchs, Sarah Qari and Annie McEwen for their help gathering tape. The Muslim Democrats of New York, Salam Arabic Lutheran Church, and everyone on the Khader El-Yateem for City Council team for putting up with me for eight months.

JAD: Obviously thanks to Simon.

SIMON: You're welcome.

JAD: All right. Well, ready to get out of here?

ROBERT: I'm ready to go.

JAD: All right.

[LISTENER: Hi there. My name is Miguel Manchen, and I'm calling from Kansas City, Missouri, and I'm going to read the credits. I apologize in advance if I mispronounce any of the names. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes; Simon Adler, Rachael Cusick, David Gebel, Bethel Habte, Tracie Hunte, Matt Kielty, Robert Krulwich, Annie McEwen, Latif Nasser, Malissa O'Donnell, Arianne Wack and Molly Webster. With help from Amanda Aronczyk, Shima Oliaee, David Fuchs, Nigar Fatali, Phoebe Wang and Katie Ferguson. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.]

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