Abe Hamadeh | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2025 | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromArizona's8th district | |
| Assumed office January 3, 2025 | |
| Preceded by | Debbie Lesko |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Abraham Jamal Hamadeh (1991-05-15)May 15, 1991 (age 34) |
| Political party | Republican |
| Education | Arizona State University, Tempe (BA) University of Arizona (JD) |
| Website | House website Campaign website |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | |
| Years of service | 2016–present |
| Rank | Captain |
| Unit | Military Intelligence Corps |
| Awards | Meritorious Service Medal |
Abraham Jamal Hamadeh[1] (born May 15, 1991) is an American politician, attorney,U.S. Army intelligence officer, and former prosecutor[2] currently serving as theU.S representative forArizona's 8th congressional district since 2025. A member of theRepublican Party, he is the firstArab American elected to Congress fromArizona.
Born into aSyrian immigrant family inChicago and raised inPhoenix, Hamadeh graduated with a bachelor's degree fromArizona State University and earned hisJuris Doctor degree from theUniversity of Arizona. After joining theUnited States Army as anintelligence officer in 2016, Hamadeh began his legal career as aprosecutor in theTucson City Prosecutor's Office and later in theMaricopa County Attorney's Office before being deployed toSaudi Arabia in 2020. In2022, Hamadeh was the Republican nominee forArizona attorney general, losing toDemocratic nomineeKris Mayes by 280 votes.
Hamadeh was elected to Congress in2024, defeating Democratic nominee Greg Whitten after winning a crowded Republican primary.
Hamadeh was born in Chicago, Illinois, and later moved to Phoenix, Arizona. He is the youngest child in a family ofSyrian immigrants and grew up in a mixed-faith household, with aMuslim father and aDruze mother.[3][4] He is alsoKurdish on his paternal grandmother's side.[5][6]
Hamadeh attendedArizona State University for his undergraduate degree and later earned hisJuris Doctor from theJames E. Rogers College of Law at theUniversity of Arizona. While attending law school, the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys' Advisory Council awarded Hamadeh the Udall Fellowship.[7]
Hamadeh has served in theU.S. Army Reserve as an intelligence officer since 2016, attaining the rank ofcaptain.[8] He was deployed toSaudi Arabia in 2020 afteral-Qaeda claimed responsibility for theterrorist attack onNaval Air Station Pensacola in December 2019. He trained members of theSaudi armed forces for 14 months before returning to the U.S. in 2021, receiving aMeritorious Service Medal for his service.[3][9][10]
Hamadeh's first legal role was as an unpaid intern in the office of theTucson City Prosecutor. In 2016, Abe received a Juris Doctor from the University of Arizona College of Law.[11] He passed theArizona Bar Exam in 2016, and two months later began working in theMaricopa County Attorney's Office as a prosecutor. According to theArizona Republic, Hamadeh prosecuted at least six trials while a county prosecutor.[12] He resigned from this role in September 2021, citing his intent to focus on his political campaign and his absence from the office following his military deployment in July 2020.[13]
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Hamadeh's political career began in November 2021, when he launched his campaign forattorney general of Arizona. His primary campaign issue was election security, as he spoke out in support offalse claims that the2020 presidential election was stolen through means of widespreadelectoral fraud, which former presidentDonald Trump and his allies had promoted following his loss to presidentJoe Biden. Other issues he ran on included the enforcement of state border laws, support for law enforcement, and opposition to censorship by technology corporations.[14] Within the first week of his candidacy, Hamadeh's campaign announced that he had raised over $100,000.[15] He received Trump's endorsement in June 2022 and won the Republican primary election in August, defeating former city councilor Rodney Glassman and formerstate supreme court justiceAndrew Gould.[16][17]
In the general election, Hamadeh facedDemocratic Party nomineeKris Mayes, a law professor and former chair of theArizona Corporation Commission. The election was considered a tossup by forecasters, citing each candidate's tight leads in polling as well as Arizona's status as aswing state due to recent Democratic victories in statewide races.[18] On election day, November 8, there was no clear winner, as Mayes held a lead of a few thousand votes over Hamadeh while ballots continued to be counted.[19] When the final tally was completed on November 21, Mayes led Hamadeh by 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast in the closest attorney general race of the year. Because the margin of victory fell below 0.5% of the total vote, an automatic recount was triggered under state law, beginning on December 5.[20] On December 29, judge Timothy Thomason of the Maricopa County Superior Court announced Mayes as the winner of the election with a reduced margin of 280 votes,[21][22] making it one of the closest elections in the history of Arizona.[23] She would take office only four days later, on January 2.
Hamadeh made his first attempt to challenge the results of the election after the final tally was completed, although his case was dismissed by Judge Randall Warner due to a state law that requires election challenges to be filed after the certification of results.[24] He filed a second lawsuit following the certification on December 5, arguing that misconduct by election workers, including misinterpretation ofundervotes, had cost him the election. However, only 14 ballots were submitted for evidence, which Judge Lee Jantzen noted had only demonstrated errors on the part of the voters, not election officials. Jantzen ultimately denied the election challenge in apreliminary hearing on December 23, 2022 stating in his closing remarks that "there isn't enough information" that any illegal activity had taken place.[25]
In his third lawsuit filed after Mayes had been sworn in, Hamadeh argued that 1,100 provisional ballots had gone uncounted. This claim had come after election officials uncovered 507 votes inPinal County that were left uncounted, largely due to human error.[26] Judge Jantzen rejected this lawsuit in July 2023, finding that there was no new evidence that could not have been previously produced at the original trial.[27] When Hamadeh requested for theArizona Supreme Court to intervene, they declined and instead sanctioned him, including an order to pay $55,000 toward the legal fees of Mayes andAdrian Fontes, the newly electedArizona secretary of state.[28] In April 2024, theArizona Court of Appeals had dismissed Hamadeh's request for a new trial in a split decision, criticizing his failure to swiftly move the case forward.[29] In December 2024, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected Hamadeh's appeal, ending this lawsuit.[30]
In November 2023, Hamadeh initiated another lawsuit against the 2022 election result by claiming that the 2022 election violated his constitutional rights; this lawsuit was rejected in July 2024 by Judge Scott Blaney of the Maricopa County Superior Court, who ruled that Hamadeh filed the lawsuit too late, because it was filed seven months after a report was published on the 2022 election's ballot issues, instead of within a five-day limit for an election challenge.[31]
In a different lawsuit, Hamadeh raised the issue of Maricopa County's counting of early ballots in the 2022 election, then concluded that he should be appointed as attorney general as he was "personally entitled" to the role; a rejection of this lawsuit was published in April 2024 by Judge Susanna Pineda of the Maricopa County Superior Court, with Pineda ruling that Hamadeh's challenge should have been brought before the election, and further stating that Hamadeh "surmises, without proof, that he received the most ‘legal votes’" in the election.[32] In October 2024, the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected Hamadeh's appeal of Pineda's ruling, agreeing that Hamadeh had filed the lawsuit too late, but the Arizona Court of Appeals rescinded Pineda's order for Hamadeh to be sanctioned to pay his opponents' legal fees.[33]
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Hamadeh announced his campaign forArizona's 8th congressional district in October 2023, shortly after incumbent representativeDebbie Lesko announced her retirement from the seat.[34] Hamadeh's campaign garnered significant support from notable Republican politicians, including former presidentDonald Trump and former news anchor and political candidateKari Lake. The Republican primary attracted a field of prominent candidates, including venture capitalistBlake Masters, who lost the2022 U.S. Senate election against incumbent DemocratMark Kelly, along with former congressmanTrent Franks and state legislatorsAnthony Kern andBen Toma.
Polls leading up to the election showed both Hamadeh and Masters with small leads over each other, and the two were seen as the frontrunners, despite Masters massively outspending Hamadeh with his personal funds. The primary campaign was described as "nasty", with the Masters campaign deeming Hamadeh as a "terrorist sympathizer" by negatively highlighting his Muslim heritage. Masters incurred backlash for usingIslamophobic rhetoric and imagery in campaign ads.[35] Hamadeh's campaign responded by stating that he "embodies the sameJudeo-Christian values that our nation was built upon."[9]
Two days before the primary election, despite endorsing Hamadeh the year before, Trump published a statement making a dual endorsement for both him and Masters.[36] Hamadeh won the Republican primary with just under 30% of the vote to Masters's 26%. Because of the district's strong Republican leaning, he was favored to win the November general election against Democrat Greg Whitten, and would go on to defeat Whitten with 56.5% of the vote.[37][38]
Hamadeh took office to the119th United States Congress on January 3, 2025. He became one of the first twoMiddle Eastern Americans to represent Arizona in Congress, alongside DemocratYassamin Ansari.[39]
Running for Attorney General in 2022, Hamadeh had said that he would enforce Arizona’s then near-total abortion ban, a law from the territorial period, arguing that the Attorney General cannot disregard the law.[41][42][43] Running for Congress in 2024, he said that abortion should be a state issue, allowing each state to decide the legality of abortion within its jurisdiction.[44]
Hamadeh opposesGreen New Deal policies, believing they would only further aggravate high living costs and worsen energy reliability. He has pointed toCalifornia as an example of failed energy policy.[45]
In his congressional campaign, Hamadeh named the ongoingborder crisis as one of the biggest problems facing the 8th congressional district. He has declared support for finishing theMexico–United States border wall, ending the practice of "catch and release," and designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.[45]
Hamadeh is a strong supporter ofIsrael, stating that "Jewish people have no bigger ally than me." He has said that his views on Israel were affected by a visit he made to the country while in law school. Hamadeh believed that he was better accepted as a Druze in Israel than in neighboringLebanon, which further cemented his support.[10] While campaigning for Congress, he criticized the nationwidepro-Palestine university demonstrations and said that "there was a direct connection betweenMarxism and the rise ofantisemitism in the U.S. sinceOctober 7."[46]
Following two energy deals worth $110 billion between theKurdistan Region and several U.S.-basedoil and gas companies on May 21, 2025, Hamadeh expressed his support for the Kurdistan Region, calling it a "success story". He also praised thePeshmerga for their role in thefight against ISIS, stating, "When we saw the rise ofISIS, no one wanted to take them on — yet theKurdish Peshmerga did an incredibly effective job of rooting out terrorism".[47]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Abraham Hamadeh | 265,636 | 33.56 | |
| Republican | Rodney Glassman | 186,863 | 23.60 | |
| Republican | Andrew Gould | 132,253 | 16.71 | |
| Republican | Dawn Grove | 94,670 | 11.96 | |
| Republican | Lacy Cooper | 67,742 | 8.56 | |
| Republican | Tiffany Shedd | 44,453 | 5.61 | |
| Total votes | 791,617 | 100.00 | ||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Kris Mayes | 1,254,809 | 49.94% | +1.68% | |
| Republican | Abraham Hamadeh | 1,254,529 | 49.93% | −1.80% | |
| Write-in | 3,052 | 0.12% | +0.11% | ||
| Total votes | 2,512,390 | 100.0% | |||
| Democraticgain fromRepublican | |||||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Abraham Hamadeh | 30,686 | 29.9 | |
| Republican | Blake Masters | 26,422 | 25.7 | |
| Republican | Ben Toma | 21,549 | 21.0 | |
| Republican | Trent Franks | 16,714 | 16.3 | |
| Republican | Anthony Kern | 4,922 | 4.8 | |
| Republican | Pat Briody | 2,336 | 2.3 | |
| Total votes | 102,629 | 100.0 | ||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Abraham Hamadeh | 208,269 | 56.50% | −40.00% | |
| Democratic | Greg Whitten | 160,344 | 43.50% | N/A | |
| Total votes | 368,613 | 100.0% | |||
| Republicanhold | |||||
Hamadeh identifies his religious identity asnon-denominational or “nothing in particular.” His older brother, Waseem Hamadeh, works in aPhoenix-based real estate firm and has made $1 million contributions to both of his campaigns.[52]
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromArizona's 8th congressional district 2025–present | Incumbent |
| U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial) | ||
| Preceded by | United States representatives by seniority 393rd | Succeeded by |
| Territorial (1863–1912) |
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| Oneat-large seat (1912–1943) |
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| Two at-large seats (1943–1949) |
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| Districts (1949–present) (3rd district established in 1963) (4th district established in 1973) (5th district established in 1983) (6th district established in 1993) (7th and 8th districts established in 2003) (9th district established in 2013) |
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