It has already been a long year for Imraan Siddiqi, the executive director of the civil rights nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Washington, which is working to protect immigrants from being sucked into the gears of Donald Trump’s administration. Sitting at Shoreline Diva Espresso, he looked tired. Diva down? Not this diva, who wore a shirt with the words “I know my rights” inside an outline of Washington State. It’s a mantra pivotal to his work.

That morning, CAIR had achieved the culmination of three weeks’ worth of effort, getting a Palestinian immigrant out of the Northwest Detention Center on bond. The man had been detained the day after Christmas, when CAIR was on a holiday break. No matter. Siddiqi, at home with his family, picked up the phone and jumped into action. 

He called CAIR-WA’s four lawyers and directed a team member to drive out to Auburn to comfort the man’s wife, who was alone with their newborn. In the weeks leading up to the man’s bond hearing, Siddiqi sent community members and religious leaders to sit with him, to make sure he was less alone.

Three weeks later—“Imagine how long those weeks were for him,” Siddiqi says wearily—the man could finally go home. Siddiqi showed me the video on his phone of the man’s release that morning. A woman greeted him outside a chain-link fence. “Happy New Year,” she said, embracing him. 

It’s this kind of work, and the prospect of helping people on a grander scale, that makes Siddiqi want to run for office. He wants to be the representative for Legislative District 32, a seat already held by a Democrat, Lauren Davis. 

“I have nothing against the incumbent,” Siddiqi says, “but I feel that there is a shortfall in terms of leaders who have failed to meet this moment, to stand up as our communities are being ravaged by ICE.” 

Siddiqi is not shy about challenging Democrat incumbents, either. In 2024, he tried to unseat Rep. Kim Schrier (WA-08), who he felt hadn’t stood against Israel’s war on  Gaza. She crossed a line when she voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, he says. Siddiqi believed running against Schrier could “change the narrative on the genocide” and show “that there are voices out there who are going to stand up.” 

Siddiqi didn’t make it past the primary, but he’s feeling optimistic this time. He pointed to Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s razor-thin triumph over Bruce Harrell. 

“There has been an energy shift in this country within this last year,” Siddiqi says. “Young people will turn out [to vote] if you have people who are willing to stand on business. We don't want the same corporate Democrats occupying these offices for decades and not moving the needle at all.” 

Davis has been in office eight years and isn’t the picture of a corporate Democrat. She’s pushed for progressive taxation legislation and drug decriminalization in Olympia (which is why we’ve endorsed her so many times). However, recently, she’s backed off some of her progressive ideals. Just this week, she broke ranks with Democrats to oppose a bill that would allow for the release of three-strike offenders currently serving a life prison sentence if any of the strikes occurred while the offender was a juvenile. The bill coincides with a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that found life sentences for juvenile offenders to be cruel and unusual punishment and a 2018 Washington State Supreme Court ruling that upheld the same sentiment. She expressed her “alarm” on conservative radio host Jason Rantz’s show. Last year, she hand-wrung over the public health implications of allowing retail cannabis stores to operate within Lynnwood’s city limits. 

“I'm just the strongest candidate,” Siddiqi says. 

All his life, he’s had to explain himself, to educate his peers about Muslims. Growing up in Auburn, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia, he and his family were often the only Muslims around.

He felt this kind of activism was what he was meant to do, but in 1999, he came to a crossroads. His older brother, who was starting to take over the family jewelry business, was in a horrific car accident and lay comatose in a hospital bed. Siddiqi, a college student, knew someone would have to support his parents. His brother survived. But by the time he’d mostly recovered, Siddiqi had dropped out and taken over the business. 

Two years later, the Islamophobic fallout of 9/11nudged him back toward activism. He penned op-eds. He got his degree, and an MBA. In 2010, shortly after opening a coffee shop in Phoenix, Arizona—called “Where You Bean?”—he joined a mostly defunct chapter of CAIR. Six years ago, he moved north to lead our state chapter.

CAIR mostly fights anti-Muslim discrimination, but after Afghan refugees fled their collapsing country for the US in 2021, Siddiqi knew the organization would have to change. 

“There was going to need to be a deeper integration of immigration law into what CAIR Washington was doing,” Siddiqi says. “It initially started with evacuees from Afghanistan, refugees who are coming here and helping them either reunite with their families or start their new life over here.”

It’s come in handy quite a bit since. Given, you know, everything.

So, Siddiqi is running for office to help more people with his expertise.

His biggest focuses when he gets into the legislature will be affordability and protections for immigrant and nonwhite communities. His platform is still fuzzy.

Recently, CAIR-WA has been helping local Somali immigrants who have been threatened by right-wing misinformation campaigns. Many have had their businesses and personal information doxxed, or exposed online. Siddiqi would like to beef up protections against doxxing—that is, people targeting others by publishing private and identifying information online. That could help the Somali community and anyone protesting ICE. In 2023, the legislature passed a bill allowing anyone who was harmed by doxxing to sue a doxxer. Siddiqi would like to see those protections for doxxing victims go further. He didn’t explain how. 

As far as affordability goes, Siddiqi wants to reduce costs. How? Also unclear. When asked, he offered one idea: starting with the exorbitantly wealthy. 

“I'm very passionate about holding billionaires accountable,” Siddiqi says. 

His business background means he gets the whole economics thing. “Income inequality is the gulf that is growing exponentially,” he says. (The real Gulf of America.)

He supports the new millionaires tax that’s being talked about in the legislature. Gov. Bob Ferguson has championed a 9.9 percent tax on income over $1 million. There’s also talk at the state level of pursuing a broader income tax. Siddiqi wouldn’t say outright whether he supported that, fearing it could be a “hot button issue” that would turn voters off. 

“That is something that, if it reduces other areas of taxes, we should definitely explore,” he says of the income tax. “Getting a vibe from our voters is going to be extremely important.” 

Mostly, it’s about bringing change to Olympia, especially when it comes to protecting people against ICE. 

“I'm going to push all these people, whether it's the attorney general, whether it's the governor, [to] act on the behalf of these people who are impacted by this fascist administration,” Siddiqi says.