In brief: Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz, a Ukrainian-born critic of US aid to Ukraine, lost her House seat to Democrat J.D. Ford 52-48 in Tuesday’s midterms. Three other Republicans who opposed Ukraine aid also lost: Wisconsin’s Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, and Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry. Local reports say prices and the economy, not Ukraine, drove voters. Arizona’s Paul Gosar, another opponent of aid, easily won re-election.
Anti-Ukraine members of Congress led by former Ukrainian-born Victoria Spartz were punished by US voters in Tuesday’s elections with Moscow losing at least half a dozen allies in the US House of Representatives – but in most races it was a poor US economy and high prices and not foreign policy that convinced voters to kick the incumbents out of office. Spartz, an outspoken opponent of US support for Ukraine, and an incumbent looking to win re-election to Indiana’s 5th Congressional District seat a second time, had been polling as favorite in her race against Democrat J.D. Ford, a former state senator running in his first-ever congressional bid.
Wednesday vote counts showed Ford clearly defeating Spartz in a 52-48% upset. In 2024, Spartz had won re-election easily with an 18.5% margin.
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Spartz, in a short, post-election statement, conceded defeat and blamed Democrat outspending and “an influx of liberal voters” into the 5th District for the result. Democrat “dishonesty” about her and Republican policy was a contributing factor, she claimed.
An International Economics graduate Kyiv’s National Economic University (KNEU) and a fluent Russian and Ukrainian speaker, Spartz had been a high-profile critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom she repeatedly accused of state corruption, and of bilking US taxpayers out of billions of dollars in military assistance to enrich himself and his political allies. Those claims have not been proved, and Zelensky has denied wrongdoing, and has offered US inspectors trips to the fighting front to confirm with their own eyes that every weapon and munition the US has sent to Ukraine is in use as intended.
US Midterm Elections: Voters Punish Trump
Spartz left Ukraine in 2000, became a US citizen in 2006, and went into US politics after a career in corporate finance and farming. She is probably best known and least liked in Ukraine for an April 2025 statement to the Daily Telegraph that Ukraine should hand over invaded territories and the people who lived there to the Kremlin because, in her view, Ukraine is weak and has no means of effectively resisting Russia.
Voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania removed three more House members who had long opposed support for Ukraine, in decisive votes. The Republican defeats, per local news reports, came down mostly to public dissatisfaction with domestic prices and the economy, with the US stance on Ukraine a relatively minor issue.
Congressman Derrick Van Orden (Wisconsin’s 3rd District), a former Navy SEAL who was in 2022 a strong supporter of Ukrainian resistance to Russia, in 2023 reversed his position, saying US taxpayers were “growing weary” of helping Ukraine and that no one had a strategy to defeat Russia. He went on to vote repeatedly against legislation supporting Ukraine.
Democrat Rebecca Cooke, a former waitress and small business owner, defeated Van Orden handily on Tuesday by a 52-46 margin in a race centering mostly on health care costs, inflation, agriculture, energy, immigration, and opposition to the Iran war. During the campaign, Cooke called for strong US support to Ukraine and for America to stand up to the Kremlin.In Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, Republican Bryan Steil, a lawyer and university administrator before going into politics and since then an outspoken opponent of US support to Ukraine, lost to Democrat Mitchell Berman 52-48%, ending more than 30 years of Republican control of that seat and denying Steil a fifth term. As chairman of the House Administration Committee, Steil had actively cooperated with House leadership and the White House to stymie US assistance to Ukraine. Berman, a nurse and emergency responder, had never run for office before defeating Steil. He campaigned primarily on health care reform and breaking up political groups entrenched in Wisconsin. Ukraine and foreign policy were not major issues in Berman’s campaign.
In Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, Republican Scott Perry, a former House Freedom Caucus chair and a consistent opponent of US aid to Ukraine, was defeated decisively by Democrat Janelle Stelson 55-45%. The race focused on the cost of living and the war in Iran, along with personal TV ad attacks by Perry on Stelson. Ukraine was not a major issue in the race.
One Republican congressman with a consistent voting record against Ukraine – Paul Gosar of Arizona’s rural and arid western 9th Congressional District – was returned to office, winning easily with 74% of the vote. Ukraine had not been a major issue in the campaign; Gosar’s anti-Ukraine votes were consistent with his record opposing US commitments overseas in general, excepting Israel.
At least three other House members, all Republicans long on the record as opponents of US support for Ukraine in the 119th Congress, will not serve in the 120th for reasons other than losing an election on Tuesday: Majorie Taylor Green (quit Congress in January 2026), Thomas Massie (lost the Republican primary in May 2026), and Andy Biggs (quit Congress to run and lose in the Arizona gubernatorial election).
Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US.