Ukrainians in Battleground State Could Pick Next President

If the latest Presidential election polls in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania – where Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump are separated by less than 1 percent – are to be believed, the next President of the United States could be decided by some 100,000 to 150,000 voters.

For campaign watchers, this sets up an intriguing numerical coincidence. Namely, there are upwards of 122,000 people who claim Ukrainian ancestry living in Pennsylvania, some three-quarters of whom would be of voting age.

As a result, and given that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by only 81,000 votes in Pennsylvania in 2020, election campaigners there are unprecedentedly active in courting “the Ukrainian vote,” as well as that of other Americans of Eastern European background such as the 800,000 Polish Americans in Pennsylvania.

For example, the America’s Future Majority Fund, a Democratic PAC (political action committee), has run an ad campaign in Pennsylvania, as well as in Michigan and Wisconsin, where there are similar demographics, about Ukraine policy. That campaign has touted Kamala Harris’ record of support for Ukraine while bashing former President Donald Trump’s ties with Russia. The campaign has included rounds of TV and social media advertising.

“If Donald Trump were President, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” Vice President Harris says in one of three ads. The ad campaign also claims that Poland “might be next” in terms of Russian aggression.

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The Trump campaign has pushed back on this narrative. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung recently told NatSec Daily that “Trump will do what is necessary to restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage, and he is the only person who can make that happen.”

“The war between Russia and Ukraine never would have happened if Donald J. Trump were President,” Cheung said. “So sad.”

Trump has declined, including in Presidential debates, to say whether he supports Ukraine to win the war.

However, in terms of the cultivation of this vote, Politico has written that “it is unclear how the bet will pay off” and questioned “whether the war in Ukraine is a driving factor in voting decisions.” The insiders’ journal points out that “foreign policy often takes a backseat in elections as issues closer to home like the economy, inflation and immigration top voters’ concerns.”

Former New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski is in charge of the Democrats’ Eastern European campaign in Pennsylvania. He has argued that small margins will matter in a race as tight as 2024.

“If this is going to be a close election settled by a few thousand votes in one or more of [the battleground] states, there’s no question in my mind the Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and other Central Eastern European Americans could decide the outcome,” Malinowski told NatSec Daily.

The activist group Ukrainian Americans for Harris Walz Steering Committee has been promoting relevant campaign events in Pennsylvania. On Oct. 23, it is promoting an event called “Victory for Ukraine Is a Win for the United States: A Non-Partisan Voter Education Forum” featuring Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former Ukrainian Minister for Economy, who has lectured at Pittsburgh University, and John Herbst, former US Ambassador to Ukraine. On Oct. 26, it is staging a “Harris for Ukraine” march and rally from the famous “Rocky Steps” to Aviator Park.

One member of the pro-Harris Steering Committee, Orest Deychakivsky, worked at the Republican National Committee when Ronald Reagan was elected. He was a long-term policy advisor of the US Helsinki Commission, and Vice Chair of the US-Ukraine Foundation. Deychakivsky wrote last month: “As did Ronald Reagan, Ms. Harris recognizes the importance of Ukraine’s freedom. Mr. Trump is the outlier here.”

In an op-ed for The Ukrainian Weekly last week, Deychakivsky contrasted the Ukraine policy approach of the Harris/Walz ticket, including listing its accomplishments in military, economic, humanitarian and diplomatic support, with that of the Trump/Vance ticket, including a recent comment by Trump that “Ukraine is gone.”

Orest Deychakivsky

“To be sure, the Biden-Harris administration’s record is not perfect,” Deychakivsky, however, noted. “Like many, I share frustrations with the occasional slowness in the delivery of weapons, which is partially due to fears of escalation. I count myself among those who have pushed for a more robust approach, including, most recently, the lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range, US-provided weapons.”

“On the other hand, I do not even want to imagine what Ukraine would look like today if it were not for the leadership and efforts of the Biden-Harris administration. The picture, no doubt, would be an extremely dire one,” Deychakivsky said.

On the GOP side of the political coin, Kyiv Post could not identify a similar Ukrainian-American activist group supporting Trump. That may, in fact, be part of a trend. Namely, it is the case that some high-profile diaspora members who have historically been Republican will not be voting for Donald Trump.

Mykola Hryckowian, affiliated with the Philadelphia area, is a veteran of Ukrainian-American efforts to influence US foreign policy. He is Director of the Center for US Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR) and has organized more than 100 forums dealing with US-Ukraine bilateral ties in the areas of national and energy security, as well as economic and civil society development.

Mykola Hryckowian

In 2016 and 2020, Hryckowian was involved with pro-Trump efforts. But that has changed, it appears, as the GOP has changed, in Hryckowian’s view. He is now not supporting Trump due to “the very clear anti-Ukrainian and in fact pro-Russian position of the MAGA Republicans,” referring to the party’s isolationist and populist wing.

“MAGA is very different from Reagan Republicans and conservatism,” Hryckowian told Kyiv Post.

Eugene Luciw has long been very active in the Ukrainian American community in the Philadelphia area, including as President of the Philadelphia chapter of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. He describes himself as a “Reagan Republican” and told Kyiv Post that he also will not be voting for Donald Trump.

Eugene Luciw

“I judge Donald Trump by the company he keeps,” Luciw said. “His MAGA Republicans in Congress… would abandon Ukraine in a heartbeat and do nothing to protect Ukraine from an overrun by Muscovy. Many of them literally disparage Ukraine and repeat Russian disinformation about her.”

“And, Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as a running mate amply demonstrates that he, Trump, is cut of the same cloth. He too has made very hurtful disparaging remarks about Ukraine. And he blames Zelensky for having started the war: the ultimate Russian disinformation and the ultimate in insults to a brave people that for centuries has fought for liberty, freedom and human dignity, for self-determination and for recognition of its rights as a nation-state,” Luciw said.

In Pennsylvania, as of Oct. 22, according to 538, a service that aggregates about 20 separate State-wide polls to achieve the greatest accuracy, Donald Trump currently leads Kamala Harris by 0.3 percent. In mid-September Harris led by 1.9 percent.

There are some 1.1 million Americans of Ukrainian descent. After New York, Pennsylvania has the second largest number of Ukrainians of any state. More than half of those of Ukrainian descent in Pennsylvania – about 58,000 people – live in the greater Philadelphia area.

The Pennsylvania Ukrainian diaspora community has several generations or “waves” including: the descendants of those who migrated for largely economic reasons in the late 19th century and prior to World War II; the descendants of post-World War II political refugees; migrants from independent post-Soviet Ukraine since 1990; and the latest wave of arrivals following Russia’s war on Ukraine since 2014, including refugees following the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A strong role in the Pennsylvania diaspora community is played by both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, which have more than 100 parishes between them across Pennsylvania.