Republican rising star, 33, who was attacked for not having children reveals why being single without kids is advantageous in politics

When 33-year-old Abe Hamadeh ran for Congress in Arizona, he had no idea how intense and personal the attacks would become.

But before Hamadeh’s victory on Tuesday, his Republican opponent Blake Masters made nasty accusations about his Muslim and Syrian heritage and suggested that childless politicians like Abe don’t deserve to hold office.

“I firmly believe that this life is temporary and our soul is eternal,” Hamadeh told DailyMail.com in his first digital interview after defeating Masters in the contentious primaries.

“I think they have to answer to themselves for what they did,” he said of the attacks on him.

Masters leaned on Vance’s 2021 “childless cat lady” insult against Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris. He aimed the same criticism at Hamadeh, who is single, and contrasted it with himself, who has a “wonderful wife and four beautiful boys.”

“Political leaders should have children. At the very least, they should be married,” Masters wrote on X. “If you don’t and can’t run your own household, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.”

Hamadeh stressed to DailyMail.com that having children should not be an obstacle to public office.

“I can’t really speak to JD Vance’s own words and what he said. But I do believe, you know, that you can be an American and you can be a leader without children,” Hamadeh said.

“We’ve had many generals. We’ve had many people, just like George Washington had no children.”

He continued: ‘You know, I think I’m a pretty young guy in politics. I mean, I’m 33 years old. It was a bit of an unusual insult to me from Blake.’

But he claimed Vance’s comments on the matter were exaggerated.

“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 made so many, your stupid comments, and she’s done a terrible 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 targeted his parents and his 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,” reads an ad released by a PAC supporting Masters.

“You claim that Islam is a religion of hate and that we should be afraid of it, but our own United States Constitution is based on Abrahamic religions, including Islam,” Hamadeh wrote on a Rand Paul forum when he was just a teenager.

Masters’ campaign also paid for street signs that read, “America was founded on Islamic principles,” along with a photo of Hamadeh in Mecca during a hajj. Hamadeh says the photo was taken while he was deployed in 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, with the latter in an unsuccessful Senate race.

Other ads by Masters and his supporters accused Hamadeh of being soft on immigration and claimed he was born to illegal immigrant parents.

“My poor mother couldn’t watch local television,” Hamadeh said, adding that Masters had flooded the channel with commercials attacking his family.

“I was the only veteran in this race. It was just totally despicable. And last week they even claimed I was defending terrorists. It was totally inappropriate. I have a top secret clearance and was an intelligence officer.”

“It was a vicious, disgusting campaign that should not be repeated. I’m glad the voters rejected it.”

Hamadeh himself relies on his background.

“My mother is Druze, my father is Muslim, and they’re both from Syria. I have family from Venezuela, so I have sort of a firsthand understanding of some of these failed countries, and so I try to prevent America from falling into that,” he said.

“We were on food stamps at one point. I know what it feels like to miss a meal, and I know what it feels like to be underestimated, to have the elite look down on you.”

Hamadeh got one last surprise just before the primaries: the endorsement he had received from Donald Trump turned out to be essentially worthless when Trump decided to also endorse his biggest competitor, Masters.

It was the first time Trump had formally endorsed both top candidates in a race — a move that showed 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 was unique in that Trump originally ran on the opposite side of the race from his preferred vice president, Senator J.D. Vance, who supported Masters.

‘He didn’t support Blake Masters before he chose “JD Vance,” Hamadeh noted. “I think, based on what I’ve been told, there was a poll that was shared with him, and I just think that poll was completely inaccurate.”

Vance told Tucker Carlson in a 2021 interview that the US is run “through the Democrats, through our corporate oligarchs – through a bunch of childless cat ladies.”

“Dishonest Abe supported Chuck Schumer’s Amnesty Act, perhaps because Abe’s parents were illegal immigrants,” a Masters ad read. “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 campaign to the left of Masters. He is still fighting the election results in his 2022 race for attorney general — and was a front-line defender of Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Arizona in 2020.

Asked about his top legislative priorities, Hamadeh called for “military force” to combat drug cartels on the southern border, ensuring the integrity of elections, stopping “the sending of money abroad” and making Social Security tax-free, an idea Trump recently floated.