Polish American voters are having a moment.
Less than two weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris surprised a group of must-win voters in Pennsylvania during a presidential debate with former President Donald Trump.
“Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans in Pennsylvania how quickly you’d give up the favor and what you think is friendship with something known as a dictator who will eat you for dinner?” Harris asked Trump.
Since then, the Harris campaign has held suffrage meetings with prominent Polish Americans, including former New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski and Chicago lawyer Maureen Pikarski; launched a Polish-Americans for Harris Facebook page; and replaced President Joe Biden’s picture with his when it was already available Polish-Americans for Biden page.
A Facebook ad by Malinowski aimed at Polish American voters originally appeared on the Polish-Americans for Biden page, but now promises that Harris will defend both Poland and Ukraine from Russian aggression and features the Krakow trumpet, a symbol of Polish resistance. enemies from the east.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign told reporters that he will make the pilgrimage this Sunday National Temple of Our Lady of CzestochowaA Catholic center revered by Polish Americans north of Philadelphia.
There, Trump was supposed to meet Polish President Andrzej Duda, who was invited to unveil a statue in honor of the Solidarity movement that helped bring down the Soviet Union.
But the Trump campaign said Thursday that the visit would not take place amid reports that Duda had postponed a trip to the United States to survey the damage caused by severe flooding in southwestern Poland.
David James Jackson, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said Trump’s planned high-profile appearance at the temple with Duda was a response to Harris’ debate games.
It also shows that both campaigns believe Polish-Americans, who make up 5% of Pennsylvania’s population, could be key to winning a battleground where polls show Harris and Trump in a very close race.
“The Polish American vote there is meaningful,” Jackson said. “A question I often get is whether there is such a thing as a Polish American vote. Clearly, the Harris and Trump campaigns think so.”
Jackson pointed out that Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by just over 80,000 votes.
Harris and Trump’s efforts show that “the candidates are clearly playing for the Polish-American vote.” Dominic StekulaAssociate Professor of Communications at The Ohio State University.
“That makes sense,” he said. “The election will likely be decided by voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which have very large Polish American populations.”
Malinowski, a Polish-born Democratic former congressman, said they may be few in number, but they could be decisive.
“We’re talking about an election in any one of these states where a few thousand voters could make all the difference,” Malinowski said.
While Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania tend to be slightly more conservative than their ethnic brethren in other states, a majority of those voters nationally supported Biden over Trump in 2020, Stekula said, citing statistics compiled by tPiast InstituteA Michigan-based organization that tracks Polish American voting.
“I don’t think Polish Americans are violent against Trump,” Stekula said.
Harris lent his voice in the debate when he accused Trump of being friends with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and not supporting the Ukrainians.
Polish Americans strongly support the defense of Ukraine and see Putin as an existential threat to their ancestral homeland, Stekula and Jackson said.
“His goal was to stoke anxiety for Polish independence, and he and his allies ran powerful ads that would reach Polish Americans whose ancestors came here four or five generations ago,” Jackson said.
He said the Kraków trumpet sounding the alarm was an image that resonated with Polish Americans, and he could never remember seeing a presidential campaign ad so focused on them.
“Even at the height of the Cold War, I can’t think of an ad aimed at Poland,” he said.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Polish immigrants began coming to the United States at the beginning of the last century to work in the coal mines. Those who came to Pennsylvania worked in places like Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania, anchored by the city of Wilkes-Barre.
1 out of every 6 residents there claims to have Polish ancestry Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Harris is making a campaign stop in the area on Friday. Many Polish Americans do not speak Polish and have never been to Poland, and they have long since moved from the densely packed Polish neighborhoods that were once dominant to the suburbs.
“They remain culturally Polish in many ways,” Jackson said. “Part of it is that most Poles here are Catholic, but it’s also evident in cultural things like being proud of Polish heritage, eating Polish food and things like that. It also makes them accept the message that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine threatens Poland’s independence.”