Ukrainian Americans Are Fleeing The GOP In Droves
Technically, I guess I’m a Ukrainian-American. My grandfather was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Russian Empire, although I never identified as Ukrainian. But over a million Americans do. Most of them live in New York, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Ohio and Illinois. Although there is a significant rural Ukrainian-American presence in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Minnesota, the biggest concentration of Ukrainian-Americans are in New York City (especially the East Village and Brighton Beach), Chicago (Ukrainian Village), Philadelphia (Northern Liberties and Fishtown neighborhoods), Cleveland (Tremont), Detroit and in both East and West Hollywood in L.A.
Ukrainian-Americans can swing elections in Pennsylvania, especially in Cass Township, Gulich Township, Gilberton, Saint Clair, Frackville, Olyphant, Houtzdale and Harmony Township. Over the weekend, Glam Slattery reported on Ukrainian-Americans moving away from the Republican Party because of Trump’s affinity to Russia. “[George] Stawnyczyj is an official in the Republican Party in rural Carbon County, Pennsylvania. He's also Ukrainian-American and can't stomach Trump's criticism of aid payments to war-torn Ukraine nor his habit of complimenting Vladimir Putin. ‘The way Trump is talking right now, getting into bed with Putin, there's no way I can support him,’ Stawnyczyj, a retired truck driver, told Reuters at his home in the Appalachian Mountains.”
Slattery explained that “The votes of Ukrainian-Americans— traditionally a Republican-leaning bloc— could have an outsize impact on the 2024 general election, according to some lawmakers, strategists and advocates, plus a Reuters analysis of U.S. census data. While the number of Americans who identify as being of Ukrainian descent is relatively small at about 1 million, they are densely distributed in a string of unusually competitive areas where their votes could potentially be decisive. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, the size of the Ukrainian-American community outstrips Trump's margin of victory in 2016, according to the analysis. In at least 13 congressional districts across the country, it exceeds or roughly matches the margin of victory by either party in the 2022 midterm elections.”
Stawnyczyj is one of many Ukrainian-Americans who plan to sit out the 2024 election or even vote Democrat for the first time, according to interviews with 22 Ukrainian-American activists, elected officials, community leaders and voters, as well as a dozen officials and strategists that interact with the community.
Their reason: disinterest among top Republican lawmakers and some of the party's 2024 White House hopefuls in defending their ancestral homeland following Russia's invasion last year, a stance set in stark relief to President Biden's full-throated support of Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The Ukrainian-Americans interviewed all said they felt angry— in some cases betrayed— by the Republican Party. They said they were less likely to vote for a candidate that didn't support Ukraine, with most ruling out a vote in either the primaries or the general election for Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the leading contenders for the Republican nomination.
…In Pennsylvania, about 92,000 people identify as Ukrainian-American— more than double Trump's margin of victory here in 2016 of 44,000 votes, and also exceeding Biden's margin of 81,000 in 2020, according to the Reuters analysis. Michigan has roughly 33,000 Ukrainian-Americans, more than Trump's 2016 margin of about 11,000 votes.
The 13 congressional districts where the community is larger than or similar to the margins of victory in the midterms were identified in New York state, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington state, Connecticut, California and Colorado. Republicans and Democrats won about half of the districts each.
…In the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania where Stawnyczyj lives and where the Republican and Democratic parties fight tooth-and-nail for control, the Ukrainian population exceeds 10% in some towns.
Democratic U.S. Representative Susan Wild, who won Stawnyczyj's district by less than 5,000 votes in 2022, said that courting the Ukrainian-American vote would be crucial.
She is in regular contact with her district's Ukrainian community, members of which donated to her campaign and made calls on her behalf in the last election.
"When you're talking about races like the one I came out of with really small margins, even a small bloc of people makes a big difference," she said in an interview.
"Certainly in Pennsylvania, it will make a difference."
…It is still early in the election cycle. But many Ukrainian-American activists say they are organizing like never before to push lawmakers to back Ukraine. Some Democrats are also looking to exploit top Republicans' position on Ukraine to win over votes.
Rand Paul and Josh Hawley have been the most determined members of the Senate against aid to Ukraine. There are few Ukrainians living in Kentucky and Missouri. But if you are Ukrainian or a supporter of Ukraine aid to Ukraine, you can contribute here to help Lucas Kunce replace Hawley in the Senate. There are a few dozen Republican members of the House who have voted against aid to Ukraine every single time it’s come up and who have spoken out against helping Ukraine at all:
Jodey Arrington of Texas
Brian Babin of Texas
Jim Banks of Indiana
Andy Biggs of Arizona
Gus Bilirakis of Florida
Dan Bishop of North Carolina
Lauren Boebert of Colorado
Ken Buck of Colorado
Tim Burchett of Tennessee
Kat Cammack of Florida
Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina
Michael Cloud of Texas
Andrew Clyde of Georgia
James Comer of Kentucky
Warren Davidson of Ohio
Scott Des Jarlais of Tennessee
Byron Donalds of Florida
Jeff Duncan of South Carolina
Ron Estes of Kansas
Russ Fulcher of Idaho
Matt Gaetz of Florida
Bob Gibbs of Ohio
Louie Gohmert of Texas
Bob Good of Virginia
Paul Gosar of Arizona
Garret Graves of Louisiana
Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee
Vicky Hartzler of Missouri
Kevin Hern of Oklahoma
Yvette Herrell of New Mexico
Jody Hice of Georgia
Clay Higgins of Louisiana
Bill Huizenga of Michigan
Ronny Jackson of Texas
Mike Johnson of Louisiana
Jim Jordan of Ohio
Debbie Lesko of Arizona
Billy Long of Missouri
Tracey Mann of Kansas
Thomas Massie of Kentucky
Brian Mast of Florida
Mary Miller of Illinois
Barry Moore of Alabama
Troy Nehls of Texas
Ralph Norman of South Carolina
Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
John Rose of Tennessee
Matthew Rosendale of Montana
Chip Roy of Texas
Pete Sessions of Texas
Greg Steube of Florida
Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin
Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey
Beth Van Duyne of Texas
Bruce Westerman of Arkansas
Roger Williams of Texas
My guess is that Scott Perry has most put himself at risk. Last week Robert Draper looked at the politics of opposition to continued aid to Ukraine. Far right crackpot, Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) isn’t on that list but recently was on fact-finding tour and met with members of the Ukrainian parliament and came away “in a state of indignation. ‘I just got back from meeting with the Ukrainian Parliament in Poland, where they demanded F-35s and thought it was an obligation for every American to pay $10 a month to fund their war,’ Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a conservative Republican freshman from Florida, wrote in a heated email to this reporter three days later. Ukrainians are not asking for the more advanced and expensive F-35s, but regardless, Luna said the United States’ role in the conflict could ‘potentially start WWIII.’ Ukraine ranked low on her constituents’ concerns, she added, vowing to brief her colleagues about the encounter. Luna is among the boisterous proponents in Congress of Trump’s ‘America first’ worldview that regards financial commitments overseas with extreme skepticism. Like Trump, they maintain that every dollar spent on Ukraine— and there has been $113 billion for the war so far— is a dubious investment of taxpayer money that could have been better used on domestic priorities, like fighting the spread of fentanyl. Senior Republicans who support the war, and maintain the hawkish traditions of the establishment GOP, fear the movement will gain momentum as the conflict grinds on and Trump’s candidacy consumes the 2024 spotlight… A House resolution introduced in February by Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, aimed at halting further aid to Ukraine attracted only Luna and nine other signatories among the chamber’s 222 Republicans.”
An amendment by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, to establish a special inspector general to oversee Ukraine-related expenditures drew 26 supporters among 49 Republican senators. And one week before Luna met with the Ukrainians, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who previously declared that Ukraine would not receive a “blank check” from the United States, emphatically told a Russian reporter that “we will continue to support” Ukraine in the war effort.
But there is evidence to suggest that the anti-Ukraine flank of the Republican Party is playing not to the fringe but to the heart of the party’s base. A survey last month of registered voters by Kristen Soltis Anderson’s Echelon Insights found that 52 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents do not think U.S. interests are at stake in Ukraine. Similarly, a survey in March conducted by Axios/Ipsos found that 57 percent of Republicans opposed providing weapons and financial support to Ukraine.
…Gaetz said that his party’s dominant foreign policy ideology for the past three decades, neoconservatism, “has done our country harm.”
Hawley echoed Gaetz and said that the legacy of neoconservatism, an interventionist foreign policy, continued to pervade Republicans’ policymaking approach. “My party took a serious wrong turn in the 1990s,” Hawley said. “And in D.C., you still see strong remnants of that thinking when it comes to Ukraine. But that’s not where the voters are.”
But some well-known Democratic antiwar voices reject the parallel between invading Afghanistan and Iraq and lending military assistance to Ukraine. Among them is Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat whom Gaetz now describes as a “folk hero” for casting the lone vote against authorizing President George W. Bush to use military force after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Lee, who received death threats after that vote, said that in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, “we see a dictatorship invading a democracy. And we need to be on the side of democracy. Whenever you see innocent people being killed by a war criminal, you want to do what you can to support them.”
Lee declined to ascribe a motive for the dovishness in the GOP, but other Democrats did not.
“If you look at where the political energy is within the Republican Party right now, I’d say it’s with what I call the Tucker Carlson/Viktor Orban/Donald Trump wing of the party,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, referring to the bombastic former Fox News host and the autocratic prime minister of Hungary. “And among that group, there are some very influential voices, starting with Trump, who believe that the idea of ‘America first’ translates into America retreating from the rest of the world.”
Gaetz insisted that he and the other opponents of Ukraine aid were not isolationists, citing their hard-line rhetoric against China as evidence. “I don’t want my grandchildren speaking Mandarin,” he said. At the same time, he added, “I think that it’s preposterous to lash the future of the United States of America to the future of Ukraine. Quality of life doesn’t fundamentally change for my constituents based on which guy in a track suit runs Crimea.”
Other Democrats said the anti-Ukraine sentiments of Gaetz and other Republicans on the Hill were transparently attributable to the party’s dominant voice. “I just think these guys are with Trump,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, a House manager in Trump’s impeachment trial, which centered on his phone call strong-arming President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine over military aid.
“I think Trump has made clear that he supports Putin and other authoritarian leaders,” Lofgren said, referring to a recent CNN town hall with Trump. “You saw how he refused to say he wants Ukraine to win the war.”
…The political currents are already evident among some pro-Ukraine Republicans, if only by inference. Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to the New York Times that while members in his party “largely support” assisting Ukraine, “continued support goes hand in hand with increased oversight.” (In an interview, Representative Michael Turner, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, seemed to suggest that such scrutiny of the Ukrainian funding was unwarranted, saying, “I can tell you we have full accounting of all the military aid to Ukraine.”)
So far, defying the Republican base by supporting aid to Ukraine does not appear to be politically detrimental to the party’s incumbents.
“Not at this time,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, a vociferous foe of assisting Ukraine and a Trump loyalist. “But I’ll be speaking at many of the Trump rallies, and you can bet that I’ll be heavily messaging against the war in Ukraine and anyone who’s funding it. And I guarantee you that’s going to be moving the needle.”
There are other ethnic-Americans besides Ukrainian-Americans freaked out enough about the Republican position favoring the Russian invasion to make it the top issue in their voting habits:
Polish-Americans- almost 9 million Americans, mostly in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, New Jersey, California, Ohio. Voting as a bloc, Polish-Americans can swing elections in Wisconsin (8.2% of voters), Michigan (7.8% of voters), Illinois (6.4% of voters), Connecticut (6.7% of voters) and Pennsylvania (5.8% of voters).
Romanian-Americans- around 1,000,000, mostly in New York, California, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and Georgia.
Lithuanian-Americans over 600,000, mostly in Illinois and Pennsylvania
Are Russian Americans swayed by the war to support Republicans?