Fair or not, many in the 1.5 million Ukrainian-American community have had a decades-long reputation for reliably voting Republican, a party they associate with freedom and being tough on the Kremlin during the Cold War.
And in the modern era, Democrat Barack Obama didn’t do much to endear himself with Ukrainian Americans. The president didn’t visit Ukraine during his two terms in office and he is blamed for a feeble U.S. response to Russia’s 2014 invasion and theft of Crimea, including the U.S. refusal to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine.
But the first term of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, with his Ukraine-centered impeachment scandal, has noticeably changed the dynamic.
And now, many Ukrainian Americans are speaking out to elect on Nov. 3 Democrat Joseph Biden, who visited Ukraine six times during his eight years as Obama’s vice president and is known to have favored a tougher response to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
The latest evidence of a political shift is the emergence of a Ukrainian Americans for Biden group, complete with a Facebook page, website and the signatures of hundreds of members of the diaspora, including such prominent community figures as Alexandra Chalupa of Washington, D.C., Marta Farion of Chicago, Illinois, and Orest Deychakiwsky of West Virginia. As of July 27, 640 people from 26 states and the District of Columbia have joined the network, organizers said.
If Trump ever gets wind of this group, it will likely fuel his belief that Ukrainians of all stripes are out to get him. Against all evidence, which showed Russia interfered to help get him elected in 2016, Trump has accused Ukraine of backing Hillary Clinton.
Headlining the Ukrainian Americans for Biden page and website is a quote from Biden: “It is time to remember who we are. We are Americans: tough and resilient. We choose hope over fear. Science over fiction. Truth over lies. And unity over division. We treat each other with dignity, we leave nobody behind, and we give hate no safe harbor. We are the United States of America.”
Their mission statement is an urgent plea:
“The past three-and-a-half years of a Donald Trump presidency have convinced us that there can be no second term. To that end, like-minded Democrats, Republicans, and Independents have joined to establish Ukrainian Americans for Biden—a network of voters who are Ukrainian by heritage or Ukrainian in spirit. We represent multiple generations and multiple immigrations, united by three convictions: our love for America, our love for Ukraine, and our deep belief that Joe Biden must be elected as the next president of the United States.
“In Joe Biden, we see a president who will unite us, not divide us. We see a president who will calm emotions and work to solve our nation’s problems, not exploit our differences. We see a leader who has the courage to appeal to our better selves, even if those appeals are not politically expedient. We need a president who understands that the United States must again be a beacon for freedom and democracy throughout the world. And, we must have a president who genuinely understands who America’s—and Ukraine’s— friends are, and who are our foes.”
The organizers published an ad in several community newspapers, including the Ukrainian Weekly and Svoboda.
According to its fact sheet, the network was set up in June under the umbrella of the Democratic National Committee’s National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council.
The group will provide information and oppose disinformation, through articles, editorials, paid advertising, and Biden campaign position papers that emphasize Biden’s consistent support for an independent and democratic Ukraine. The group welcomes disaffected Republicans. It also promotes voter registration, in particular among new immigrants from Ukraine, many voting in their first presidential election in the United States.
Ukrainian American voters are seen to have the best chance of making a difference in the Nov. 3 election in such swing states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida — all with sizable diaspora populations.
In a Dec. 18, 2019, article, The Hill wrote that “more than 100,000 reside in swing-state Pennsylvania — a state Trump won in 2016 by less than 45,000 votes. Another 64,000 people in Florida claim Ukrainian heritage.”
But The Hill also noted that no one can be certain for whom the vast majority of Ukrainian Americans vote.
“There is no comprehensive data on voting trends or political leanings in the community, though people active with Ukrainian American groups say many likely backed Trump in the 2016 election,” The Hill wrote.
Trump’s undoing in the eyes of many Ukrainian Americans is his constant fawning over Russian President Vladimir Putin, widely suspected of being a manifestation of a hidden financial relationship and compromising information the Kremlin may have on the American president, dating back to the 1980s. He also hired Paul Manafort as his campaign manager in 2016. Manafort is now serving a prison sentence after convictions for tax fraud and other charges involving millions of dollars in secret payments from Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, overthrown by the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.
Moreover, Trump’s impeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senate last year was triggered by his attempt to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating Biden by withholding more than $300 million in military and economic assistance. The funds were released in September 2019, after more than a month’s delay, when Congress and others started raising questions about what happened to the aid.
“It is mind-boggling that Ukrainians would support a president who has, in effect, worked against them. Trump has been known to disparage the Ukrainian people, saying, “They are terrible people”,” wrote David Kirichenko, a Ukrainian American living in Seattle, Washington, in an op-ed published by the Kyiv Post on July 29.,
Nonetheless, Kirichenko said the lure of the Republican Party is still strong in the community.
“Across social media, many Ukrainian Americans in the wider Seattle community engage with pro-Trump material and rallies,” Kirichenko wrote. “To support him, they ignore his tacit support of Russia and thus Russia’s history of atrocities against Ukrainians, including Russia’s war against Ukraine in Donbas—the same Russia that shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and killed 298 people. Considering all this, it is morally wrong for the Ukrainian diaspora to support a president who supports Putin.”
In a 2016 article, the New York Times traced Ukrainian American fondness for the Republican Party to revulsion with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s agreement in Yalta to divide control of Europe with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who starved to death 4 million Ukrainians in the Holodomor genocide of 1932-1933. That fealty extended to Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Perhaps most popular of all, Ronald Reagan was credited with speeding the demise of the Soviet Union, which allowed Ukraine to become an independent nation in 1991.
But many Ukrainian Americans are reluctant to line up with Democrats or Republicans so publicly out of fear of losing strong bipartisan support that Ukraine has enjoyed in Congress and in U.S. foreign policy generally.
Andrij Dobriansky, communications director for the Ukrainian Congress Committee for America, a non-profit group started in 1940 to assist Ukraine, acknowledged a reluctance among many in the community to talk politics publicly.
“Ukrainians I know both in my own parish in New York City or elsewhere around the country are pretty reticent about talking to the press about their politics, which is why they usually ask me or someone else in community leadership to speak on behalf of the community.”
Dobriansky said that Ukrainian Americans are too diverse politically to be characterized as supporting any party or ideology.
“I don’t believe that Ukrainian Americans vote primarily for one party over another. We are such a diverse community that we represent a broad cross-section of thoughts and views. If the majority of the country votes in one direction, it is fairly certain that Ukrainian Americans did as well. Also, there is a fair history of Ukrainian American Democratic and Republican organizers going back to World War II,” Dobriansky said.
As for his reaction to the Ukrainian Americans for Biden group, Dobriansky said: “It is interesting to me that we do not see an equivalent that is backing the president. In 2016, the same was true. Ukrainian Americans backing Hillary were organized and signed their names up. Ukrainian Americans for Trump, as far as I remember, was a private Facebook group with less than 50 people back in 2016.”
