Brooklyn’s Babushkas Stump for Trump on Election Day
On a street corner by Brighton Beach’s Tatiana restaurant, a group of senior citizens asked each other in Russian: “for him, or for her?” The question seemed superfluous. While New York is famously liberal, much of the Russian-American population that dominates Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood is resolutely “za Trampa” — for Trump.
Speaking in a thick Russian accent, retired software engineer and Trump supporter Alex Fisher said he believed Hillary Clinton “should go to jail for Benghazi and for manipulation of electronic email.” Fisher, who came to the United States 22 years ago from the former Soviet Union, had just voted for Trump at the YMCA in Brighton Beach. He was convinced Clinton would make the US veer “too far left,” and was far from the only one.
Some 62% of Soviet-born immigrants planned to vote for Trump according to a survey of 700 émigrés by the Research Institute for New Americans, a think tank covering the community. Unlike most immigrants, the Soviet émigrés who began settling in Brighton Beach in the 1970s have historically leaned Republican — and are proud to tout their support for Trump. “Trump cares about this country,” said Rose Bunchik, a retiree who arrived in New York 38 years ago.
Reasons for Russian émigrés’ support for Trump vary, but Putin’s alleged backing of the Republican candidate is not one of them. The Clinton campaign’s accusations that Trump acted as a Russian agent is “all baloney,” said Elena, an elderly voter on her way to the voting booth (“za Trampa”, of course.) Locals’ reasons for voting, then, usually come down to anti-Communism, along with national security, Obamacare, and a somewhat ironic desire for tougher immigration policies. The last factor particularly frustrated Oleg Sulkin, who came to Brighton Beach to report on the election as editor-in-chief of V Novom Svete, a weekly Russian newspaper in New York.
“It’s a paradox of fate that they support Trump,” Sulkin said, noting that Democrats were the ones who championed immigration for Soviets — particularly Jews— in the 1980s. After interviewing locals all morning, Sulkin hadn’t found a single Clinton supporter.
“Everyone is for Trump,” he sighed.
