Why Some Armenian Americans Feel the Democrats Have Abandoned Them

Arab Americans aren't the only group who could pose a swing state problem for the Harris campaign.

Photo by Nellie Adamyan on Unsplash

To many Armenian Americans, the election of Joe Biden represented a turning point.

For years, U.S. foreign policy — out of deference to NATO member Turkey — had walked a fine line on Armenian issues. Presidential candidate after presidential candidate would run for office promising to recognize the Armenian Genocide but then renege on that promise once they assumed their duties as president. The last president to use the g-word was Ronald Reagan.

But Biden was different. As a senator, he was outspoken about the need to recognize the atrocities committed against Armenians between 1915 and 1917. And unlike all of his predecessors, he did not change his position when he joined the White House.

In April of 2021, Biden officially recognized the genocide; the sky did not fall — decades of American fear of severe backlash from Turkey proved to be unfounded.

“We were ecstatic,” said Stephan Pechdimaldji, an Armenian American who lives in California and works in public relations. “We’re like OK this great….finally achieved this status where we have a U.S. president using the word genocide to describe what happened to my grandparents.”

But Pechdimaldji’s excitement was short-lived.

Days after Biden made the statement, he waived Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act which bans aid to Azerbaijan.

This occurred right as the Central Asian country escalated a blockade of the Lachin Corridor designed to cut off a breakaway region called Nagorno-Karabakh — where thousands of ethnic Armenians live — from Armenia and the rest of the world. Eventually, thousands fled.

As Azerbaijan continued to bear down on Nagorno-Karabakh, eventually forcing out thousands of Armenians, the Biden administration’s response was muted.

Armenian-American organizations — the main one being the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) — called on Biden to implement tough sanctions including arms restrictions on Azerbaijan. But action never came, frustrating the community that was watching the largest displacement of ethnic Armenians since the Armenian genocide.

“This all comes in the context of what was going on with Ukraine, right?” Pechdimaldji reflected. “What we heard Biden talk about is we can’t bow down to dictators, right? Democracy is under threat…but in Armenia we weren’t getting that. Are we not any different from a Ukranian?”

Photo by Sarin Aventisian on Unsplash

If those words sound familiar to you, it may be that they resemble the same outcry that has come from Arab Americans and Muslim Americans who think the administration has failed to hold Israel to the same standards of international law it has demanded of Russia.

And while there has been considerable media attention on the presence of Arab Americans in battleground states like Michigan, there has been much less paid to the thousands of Armenian Americans who live in those same states. ANCA estimates there may be as many as 72,000 Armenian Americans in Michigan, and they aren’t happy with Biden’s policy towards Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh.

At the same time many Arab Americans in the state were grabbing Democratic presidential primary ballots and marking them “uncommitted,” many Armenian Americans were joining them.

“Joe Biden has been AWOL on protecting Armenia from Turkey and Azerbaijan. Even worse, he’s armed Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian aggression,” Sebouh Hamakorzian told ANCA. “This is something that I do not respect. As someone who votes regularly, it bothers me that President Biden and his foreign policy team are advancing policies that seek to force Armenia under the control of two dictatorships – Turkey and Azerbaijan – that want to destroy Armenia.”

The issue has pushed Pechdimaldji, who voted for Biden in 2020, to say that he isn’t considering voting for the Democratic ticket this year. He’s unconvinced Kamala Harris would change course, so he’s deciding whether to vote third party in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or even vote for Republican Donald Trump, who he is far from a fan of (with the caveat that he’s open to changing his mind if Harris changes hers).

Living in California means that his vote, unlike those in Michigan or other battleground states, is more symbolic than anything. But he believes voting his civic duty.

“It boils down to principle…people have died from this right. I don’t take it likely,” Pechdimaldji said.

Harris and the Democrats ignore voters like Pechdimaldji at their own peril.