At nearly the same time that Wisconsin voters backed Donald Trump for president, the members of a National Farmers Union chapter in central Wisconsin elected the first Muslim as county president in the organization’s history. The new president, Alicia Razvi, is a recent entrant to farming and operates a community-supported agriculture farm near Stevens Point, says the NFU.
The NFU circulated news of Razvi’s election following the Trump administration order to restrict temporarily the entry of refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. Wisconsin Farmers Union president Darin Von Ruden said the Nov. 14 election of Razvi to lead the Wood-Portage-Waupaca chapter “shows the true diversity of our organization as we continue the path forward.”
“It is pretty amazing to think that the Farmers Union members felt that I — a beginning farmer, Muslim woman, wife, and mother of three — represented the general membership,” Razvi said in an NFU release. Two of the three counties in the chapter, Wood and Waupaca, voted heavily for Trump while Razvi’s home county, Portage, went for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump won the Democrat-leaning state by nearly 23,000 votes.