Could Ukrainian-Americans help Kamala Harris secure a victory in battleground Pennsylvania?

Guess which state has the largest Ukrainian population after New York and California? The answer is battleground Pennsylvania, whose Ukrainian population is estimated at around 120,000.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania by about 44,000 votes, and four years later Joe Biden won the Keystone State by about 81,000 votes. 

So Ukrainian-Americans are in a position to provide the votes that could help put Vice President Kamala Harris on top in Pennsylvania — and on a path to victory on Nov. 5.

That’s why the Harris-Walz campaign has been actively engaged in spreading this message to Ukrainian-Americans: “A vote for Donald Trump and JD Vance is a vote against Ukraine.”

Ukrainian Americans for Harris Walz (UAHW)  has set up a website and a Facebook page.

The group has been running ads in Ukrainian-American publications and held live streaming GOTV for Ukraine events with former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Yale historian Timothy Snyder and actor Liev Schreiber, who was largely raised by his immigrant Jewish Ukrainian grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. Schreiber co-founded BlueCheck Ukraine, a network that funds grassroots organizations providing aid to Ukraine.

Snyder, in announcing the livestream event, said:

What happens to American democracy bears on the future of Ukraine, just as Ukrainian efforts to preserve democracy have mattered to America ….

Although we take Ukrainian resistance for granted, it has been the major sign of democratic resilience in the 2020s. Ukrainian resistance makes our normality (or whatever this is) possible. Had Ukraine failed, the world would be a far darker place. Thanks to Ukrainians, who are handling a titanic crisis essentially on their own, Americans have been able to recover from economic collapse and a global pandemic, and hold an election.

These efforts have been aided by a Democratic Super PAC, America’s Future Majority Fund, which has spent more than $1 million on videos and digital ads targeting Ukrainian and Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania.

During the September 10 presidential debate, Trump was asked twice whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war, but skirted the question both times. Harris countered by saying:

”If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. And understand what that would mean. Because Putin's agenda is not just about Ukraine. … Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland. And why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”

Here’s the ad appealing for support from Ukrainian-Americans.

On Oct. 26, UAHW organized a small rally in Philadelphia to support the Democratic ticket.

The Washington Post posted a video report on the rally on YouTube in which its correspondent interviewed several participants. Here are some of the quotes:

— Mary Kalyna: “This election is extremely important for Ukraine. There could not be any bigger difference between the two candidates. This is not the Republican Party of our fathers who stood for Ukraine and stood against Russian and Soviet aggression."

— Ilya Knizhnik: “Ukrainians have traditionally been a conservative community and many of them will be voting Democrats for the first time.

— Roman Andryczyk: “I’m a Republican all my life, but at this time we don’t have a Republican Party anymore. We have a MAGA Party.”

Ukrainian-American voters have traditionally been socially and economically conservative.  But the Harris-Walz campaign believes it can gain support in Ukrainian communities by reminding them of the Trump-Vance ticket’s adversarial position towards providing aid to Ukraine in its fight against the full-scale Russian invasion,  

Ukrainian-Americans have deep-rooted anti-communist and anti-Russia  sentiments. They have leaned Republican in previous elections, viewing Democrats with suspicion as the party of the left. President Ronald Reagan branded the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” His time in office coincided with events leading to the break up of the U.S.S.R., and Ukraine declaring its independence in 1991 during President George H.W. Bush's administration.

But now the GOP is no longer the party of Reagan when it comes to national security and foreign policy issues. John Lehman, who served as secretary of the Navy under Reagan, wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year titled “Reagan Would Never Vote For Trump” in which he praised Reagan as a steadfast supporter of America’s democratic allies.

Lehman wrote:

“Donald Trump is no heir to Reagan’s legacy. He is an insult to it. The Reagan I knew would be appalled that someone as unfit as Mr. Trump had become the GOP’s standard-bearer.”

Democrats, in fact, have become the party that stands for national security.  In an opinion piece for The Kyiv Independent, James Greenwood, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and Gregory P. Wilson, a senior U.S. Treasury Department official during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, explained why they are voting for Harris.

They wrote:

A vote for Harris and her running mate Tim Walz is a vote for America’s and Ukraine’s interests in Europe, while a vote for Trump and Vance favors Russia and enables Putin’s ongoing war of aggression.

And here’s another ad run by the pro-Harris Super Pac that states that U.S. presidents, Democratic and Republican alike,  “have defied Russia’s communist dictators and defended American ideals” It then says: “Kamala Harris will stand up to Putin, protect our allies, and keep us safe.”

In September, the Harris-Walz campaign hired Filip Jotevski to be its national director of diaspora and ethnic engagement to reach out to Americans of Eastern and Central European descent. The Kyiv Independent wrote that there is no corresponding outreach effort in the Trump campaign.

Jotevski, in a statement for The Kyiv Independent, said:

“Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda will not only raise costs for Ukrainian-American families and strip them of their fundamental freedoms, it will also put the people of Ukraine in grave danger as he sidles up to Putin, threatens to cut off support for Ukraine, and abandons our allies.”

While Donald Trump cozies up to dictators like Putin and idolizes fascists like Hitler, Vice President Kamala Harris will never waver in her defense of America’s security and ideals or the people of Ukraine,” 

And so his office has been engaged in organizing door-to-door canvassing to rally support for Harris in Pennsylvania communities with large Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian populations.

On Oct. 17, the Harris-Walz campaign organized a day of canvassing in Wilkes Barre, Pa., with supporters representing the Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian communities.

Among those knocking on doors that day was “The GIlded Age” actress  Christine Baranski, who is Polish-American.

Baranski told The New York Times:

“I just thought, ‘Well, if there’s a way of making Polish Americans feel that heroic thing that they have.  This election is so important that actually they could make a difference.”

But old habits die hard. It remains to be seen how effective the outreach campaign will be in flipping Ukrainian-American voters to the Harris column.  

There is lots of anxiety in Ukraine about the outcome of the election and what a Trump victory could mean for their country. The interest is so high that The Kyiv Independent has a correspondent Owen Recer filing reports from Pennsylvania about the Ukrainian diaspora and the election.

Their correspondent met a Ukrainian-American woman Sophika Lashchyk-Tytla who was out canvassing for Harris in Montgomery County. However, her brother still intends to vote for Trump.

The Kyiv Independent wrote:

“I feel like I’m trying to save Ukraine and our country and I can’t listen to your (Trump) stuff,” Lashchyk-Tytla told her brother as she departed for a weekend of rallying Ukrainian support for Harris.

“I don’t think he’s thinking (about) Ukraine, the Ukrainians that are voting for (Trump) have been listening to his double-speak, and more recently, he’s been really clear that he’s not supportive of Ukraine, so how can you say that ‘Trump is going to help Ukraine’ and say he is the only one who keeps (Russia) on their toes?”

Marta Fedoriw, a prominent figure in Pennsylvania’s Ukrainian diaspora who has been rallying support for Harris, told The Kyiv Independent that unfortunately there are still many Ukrainian-Americans who plan to vote for Trump.

Fedoriw said she hears some Ukrainians saying things like, “Trump is a businessman, we need a tough guy to deal with Putin,” and “What has Biden done for Ukraine, he’s been slowly doling out support.”

Some Ukrainian-Americans say they may just sit out the presidential race.

“I voted for President Trump twice, I gave very generously to Republican Party,” Stephen Haluszczak, of Carnegie, Pa., told Scripps News. “It is torture to decide. I've never in my life not known who I was going to vote for for President. But maybe I just don't vote for president at all.”

But Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey who led the super PAC’s ad campaign, argued that the race in the key Democratic firewall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin could be decided by very small margins.

Politico observed that Michigan has around 900,000 Polish Americans and 40,000 Ukrainian-Americans and Wisconsin has around 480,000 Polish Americans. In 2020, Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes and Wisconsin by 20,000 votes.

Malinowski, who was born in Poland, told The New York Times:

“If this is a close election, as close as people expect it to be, a shift in even a few thousand voters who might, under normal circumstances, vote Republican for social and cultural reasons, could decide the fate of the country.”