NICK EVANS, Ohio Capital Journal — Republican Donald Trump was a controversial political figure even before launching his first presidential campaign. He carries a long list of well-publicized racist, sexist and bigoted comments, not to mention a history of abusing the power of his office. His unfiltered approach has been central to Trump’s appeal. Even when his followers don’t fully accept what he says, his willingness to say it has earned him a solid base of devoted followers.

But it has also turned off many Republican voters.

The “Never Trump” wing of the party has existed since the beginning, but after his victory in 2016, many of those opponents fell into line. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election further fractured the party. Again, over time, many Republicans came around to the idea.

But now, in Trump’s third presidential campaign, a group of disaffected Republicans has crystallized into a group called Republican voters against Trump. The group is backed by the Republican Accountability PAC, an anti-Trump committee organized by prominent conservative figures such as Sarah Longwell and Bill Kristol.

Part of their focus is collecting and sharing testimonials from Republican voters who won’t support Trump. Ohio Capital Journal spoke with a handful of those voters about what drove their decisions.

Natan Price

Nathan Price is in his twenties and lives in Kettering, Ohio. He grew up in a Republican household in a Republican community and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. He split with the candidate after the January 6 riots.

“I had the Trump flag, the Trump mug, the hat, I had socks, all the merchandise,” he said. “And then January 6th happened, and that night I packed everything into a box and never looked back.”

His first great political memory is that his mother took him out of school to attend the rally where John McCain announced that he would select Sarah Palin as his running mate.

“I thought it was the best thing I’d ever done, you know, go to something like that,” he explained.

Price still considers himself a Republican, but says he split his vote fairly evenly between Democratic and Republican candidates. He and his husband want to adopt in the next few years. Pointing to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, he worries that some members of the Republican Party don’t want to see them as parents. Price spoke favorably of U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, but also said he was “ecstatic” to be able to vote for Kamala Harris.

“I feel homeless,” he described, “and the longer this goes on, the more I become a Democrat.”

One thing he’s keeping an eye on is how the Republican Party responds, win or lose, after Election Day.

He described how he was initially attracted to Trump’s lack of filter, but realized he was a political liability during his first term. Still, when the 2020 election came around, he saw Trump as the best option. Following Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, Price came to a fork in the road and compared Trump’s self-aggrandizing rhetoric to a toxic relationship.

Price knows Trump is likely to win Ohio. But based on the number of people in his orbit who have changed their minds about the former president, he believes the margins will be narrower. While he acknowledged this is purely anecdotal, he argued that narrowing the gap could send a message.

“I think those kinds of votes help show that whatever path the Republican Party has chosen with him is not the path that will help them win in the long run,” he said.

Dale Struble

Dale Struble is over 60 years old and lives in Troy. He describes himself as a retired educator. “I’ve been a band director, a shop teacher, a special education teacher,” he said. Struble said Ronald Reagan brought him to the Republican Party and that he supported both George HW Bush and George W. Bush.

“The idea of ​​small government, lower taxes, maybe fewer services,” he explained. “But I was the kind of person who took care of myself and felt like everyone else should.”

He voted for Trump in 2016 despite feeling “a little wary” of the candidate. His biggest red flag was the way Trump talked about John McCain.

“I wasn’t in the service, but I really have a lot of respect for him,” he said. “I realized the sacrifices that people made, and God, I knew his history and the sacrifices that he made, and for Trump not to respect him for that, that was the first indication that something was wrong.”

He can’t pinpoint a specific breaking point, but he became disillusioned enough with Trump to vote for a Libertarian candidate in 2020. Like Price, he saw the Jan. 6 riots as a breaking point.

“And not only that happened,” he said, “but the ‘big lie’ that precipitated it, and all the lies that happened afterward, and saying that those people are heroes and patriots. “It just, I mean, it still blows me away.”

As for his current situation, Struble recalled describing himself to a friend as a Liz Cheney Republican after January 6.

“According to the state, I am still a Republican, because I requested the (primary) ballot to vote for Nikki Haley,” he explained. “Technically, I’m a Republican. In my opinion, I am independent.”

He said his congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, R-Ohio, seems like a good guy, but Struble complained that it has not been clear about whether Trump won or lost in 2020. “And until Republicans can tell that simple truth,” he added, “then I’m voting Democratic.” After decades voting Republican, he said it’s a little disorienting to support Kamala Harris.

Struble acknowledged that they probably won’t agree on many issues, “but overall, I feel like she says what’s true.”

Chris Gibbs

Chris Gibbs’ conversion came a few years before Price’s or Struble’s, and his change of heart has come to fruition. much more advertising. Gibbs is in his 60s and has been a farmer in Shelby County for decades. He got his start politically through the local farm bureau in the early 1980s and eventually became chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party.

He now leads the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Describing how he got there, Gibbs explained that he was skeptical about Trump from the beginning. For him, the Failure of immigration reform in 2013.noted that the Tea Party would be a lasting political force. At this time, he found himself at odds with his own party, so he resigned as county chairman, but remained on the central committee.

“When (20)16 came out, there was no way I was going to vote for Donald Trump in the primary, so I voted for Jeb Bush,” he explained.

When the general election came around, he still didn’t like Trump, but saw him as the lesser of two evils. “I just wasn’t cut out to vote for another Clinton,” he said.

“I finally ended up justifying a vote for Donald Trump in 2016,” he said, after deciding that “there is nothing he can do that our Congress and our institutions can’t fix. So what’s the punchline? Wow, I was wrong.”

Gibbs has previously spoken of his frustration over Donald Trump’s decision to launch a trade war. Those tariffs virtually guaranteed that other countries would retaliate, targeting the country’s “most vulnerable part.”

“And what is that? “That’s farming,” Gibbs insisted.

To make matters worse, Gibbs argued, the administration then “raided our treasury and paid farmers the difference in money to keep quiet.” The Market Facilitation Program he refers to served as a backstop for farmers who saw the price of crops like soybeans plummet in response to the trade war. In total, The program cost 23 billion dollars.

But Gibbs said he split from Trump about two months before the Most of the tariffs were imposed.. He points to a 2018 summit in Helsinki between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader had insisted that his country played no role in the 2016 elections despite US intelligence agencies agree Russian actors engaged in a major disinformation campaign.

“Trump then stood up and said I believe him,” Gibbs described. “My intelligence services, the 17 intelligence services said, yes, they had an influential role in the 2016 elections, Russia did it with disinformation, but I think Putin is above my intelligence agencies. And at that moment I knew it was over. Don’t do that. “Don’t do that.”