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Republican rising star, 33, who was attacked for not having children reveals why being single without kids is advantageous in politics
When Abe Hamadeh, 33, jumped into a race for Congress in Arizona, he had little idea just how vicious and personal the attacks would get.
But before Hamadeh's victory on Tuesday, his GOP primary foe Blake Masters launched nasty accusations about his Muslim and Syrian heritage and alluded that politicians without children - like Abe - don't deserve to hold office.
'I'm a big believer that this life is temporary and our souls are eternal,' Hamadeh told DailyMail.com in his first digital interview after defeating Masters in the contentious primary.
'I think they're gonna have to justify to their soul for what they did,' he said of the attacks against him.
Masters leaned into Vance's 'childless cat lady' slur from 2021 against Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris. He directed the same criticism at Hamadeh, who is single, contrasting that with himself, with a 'wonderful wife and four beautiful boys.'
In what appears to be a first, Donald Trump has endorsed both front-liner Republicans in an Arizona House primary where they are running against each other
'Political leaders should have children. Certainly they should at least be married,' Masters wrote on X. 'If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.'
Hamadeh insisted to DailyMail.com that having children should not be the bar for public office.
'I can't really speak to J.D. Vance's own words and what he was saying. But I do, you know, believe that you can be an American and you can be a leader without children,' Hamadeh said.
When Abe Hamadeh, 33, jumped into a race for Congress in Arizona , he had little idea just how vicious and personal the attacks would get
'We've had many generals. We've had many people, just like George Washington didn't have children.'
He went on: 'You know, I think I'm a pretty young guy in politics. I mean, I'm 33 years old. It was kind of an unusual slight at me coming from Blake.'
But he claimed Vance's comments on the matter had been overblown.
'These are three year old comments. I mean, if you go back to Kamala Harris, I mean, this woman, she's a disaster. She's been so many, you bone-headed comments, and she's done a horrible job on policy, on the border and so many other things. I think the runway of the story has run out.'
Ads against Hamadeh also went after his parents and Muslim and Druze upbringing.
'Dishonest Abe claims that 'America was founded on Islamic principles,' not the Judeo-Christian values that made America great. We have enough terrorist sympathizers in Congress,' one ad released by a PAC supporting Masters said.
'You claim Islam is a religion of hate, and should be feared yet our own Constitution of the United States was based off of Abrahamic religions, including Islam,' Hamadeh wrote in a Rand Paul forum when he was a teenager.
Masters' campaign also paid for street signs that highlighted 'America was founded on Islamic principles' quote alongside a picture of Hamadeh in Mecca on a Hajj that Hamadeh says was taken while he was on a deployment with the U.S. Army.
Hamadeh, the 33-year-old son of Syrian immigrants and a former prosecutor and Army intelligence officer, previously lost a race for Arizona attorney general in 2022. He and Masters had run on the same ticket that year, the latter in an unsuccessful Senate race.
Other ads put out by Masters and his supporters accused Hamadeh of being soft on immigration and claimed he was born to illegal immigrant parents.
'My poor mother, she couldn't watch local TV,' Hamadeh said, adding Masters had flooded it with ads that attacked his family.
'I was the only veteran who running for this race. It was just totally despicable. And the last week they actually, they actually claimed I defended terrorists. It was totally uncalled for. I have a top secret clearance and was an intelligence officer.'
'It was a vicious, disgusting campaign that should not be replicated. I'm glad the voters rejected it.'
Hamadeh himself is leaning in to his background.
'My mom is Druze, my father is Muslim and they both came from Syria. I have family from Venezuela, so I have kind of a first-hand insight on some of these failing countries, and that's why I'm trying to prevent America from turning into that,' he said.
'We were on food stamps at one point. I know what it feels like to skip a meal, and I know what it feels like to be underestimated, to have the elites look down on you.'
Hamadeh was thrown another last-minute twist just before the primary: the endorsement he'd scored from Donald Trump was essentially rendered useless when Trump decided to also endorse his top competitor Masters.
It was the first time Trump had formally issued endorsements to both top candidates in a race - in a move that put on display how little he likes to risk being on the losing side. Trump later boasted that his endorsed candidates were '10 for 10' in Arizona.
The race had been unique in that Trump originally found himself on the opposite side of it from his VP pick Sen. J.D. Vance, who backed Masters.
'He didn't endorse Blake Masters before he chose JD Vance,' Hamadeh noted. 'I think, from what I'm being told, that there was some polling that was shared with him, and I just think that polling was wildly inaccurate.'
Vance had told Tucker Carlson in a 2021 interview the U.S. is run 'via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs—by a bunch of childless cat ladies.'
'Dishonest Abe supported Chuck Schumer's amnesty bill, maybe because Abe's parents were illegal immigrants,' a Masters advertisement said. 'Dishonest Abe said women have the right to abort their babies. Dishonest Abe supported cuts to Social Security, Medicare and the military. Dishonest Abe said America was founded on Islamic principles. He even said Israel was behind 9/11.'
Hamadeh, to be clear, did not run a campaign to the left of Masters. He's still fighting against the election results in his attorney general race in 2022 - and was a frontline defender of Trump's claims of voter fraud in Arizona in 2020.
Asked about his top legislative priorities, Hamadeh called for 'military force' to fight drug cartels at the southern border, election integrity, to stop 'sending money overseas' and making Social Security tax-free, an idea Trump recently suggested.