Buchanan Gets Needed Boost in Chicago : Campaign: Ethnic whites surprise him with a strong show of support and bring about a shift in focus.

These are Patrick J. Buchanan’s kind of Americans--people who share his rabid dislike of Communist governments and proudly wear name tags that are a jumble of consonants.

And in rally after rally in Chicago the last few days, groups of ethnic whites have surprised the flagging Buchanan campaign and caused a shift in its strategy by turning out to see the candidate in larger than expected numbers.

Their show of support has produced an unexpected, and much-needed, boost for Buchanan’s challenge of President Bush for the Republican nomination. And they have clearly buoyed Buchanan’s spirits.

“This is a great city. You all have a great, great city,” Buchanan shouted to passers-by as he left a rally Saturday morning at the Ukrainian Cultural Center.

Originally, his campaign had planned to play down next Tuesday’s Illinois primary, concentrating instead on the day’s contest in Michigan, where angry laid-off auto workers were thought to be more sympathetic to Buchanan’s anti-Washington message.

But the response of Chicago’s white ethnic residents--most notably those in its Lithuanian, Croatian, Ukrainian and Irish communities--so stunned the campaign that Buchanan and his staffers now are paying more attention to Illinois.

The decision stems partly from a less-than-enthusiastic embrace for the conservative commentator during appearances in Michigan.

Conversely, Buchanan has discovered that he enjoys a strong following among Eastern Europeans for the outspoken stands against communism over the years in his columns and television appearances.

Although the Windy City is a Democratic stronghold, many of the Eastern European immigrants hold conservative values. And some are expressing a willingness to cross party lines to vote for Buchanan in the state’s open primary.

“I’m a Democrat,” Lubomyr Suriwka, a 66-year-old civil engineer, said Saturday. “But I do agree with some of Mr. Buchanan’s ideas. I usually vote for Republican Presidents, and I intend to vote for Mr. Buchanan.”

Suriwka said Buchanan’s appeal among ethnic voters in Chicago rests with his early and vocal support for independence of the former Soviet satellite states. “That’s why you see the turnout here,” he said, waving his hand through the Ukrainian Cultural Center, filled with about 400 people.

On Thursday, Buchanan began courting Chicago’s ethnic voters with a rally at a Lithuanian community meeting. He then moved on to an enthusiastic meeting where hundreds of Croatian-Americans gave the candidate repeated standing ovations, especially when he criticized the Bush Administration’s failure to quickly recognize the newly independent Baltic states.

After spending Friday in Michigan, where he defended himself against his ownership of a German-made Mercedes-Benz, Buchanan returned to Chicago early Saturday. At the Ukrainian Cultural Center, Dr. Myron Kuropas, co-chairman of the National Ukrainians for Buchanan Committee, introduced the candidate by saying, “You reflect our values, you echo our beliefs.”

Buchanan drew cheers from the crowd with a speech that cited his support for John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-American who is appealing his conviction in Israel on Nazi war crime charges. He then toured a community credit union and school.

“I have a great, warm feeling about Chicago and I wish we could do (more campaigning) here, like we did in New Hampshire,” Buchanan said later Saturday. He spent 45 days campaigning in New Hampshire before that state’s first-in-the-nation primary Feb. 18.

Buchanan added, a bit wistfully: “I think we would do as well or better here as we did in New Hampshire because we’ve got potentially hundreds of thousands of crossover voters. But time and geography are not on our side.”