Republican Donald Trump was a controversial political figure even before he launched his first presidential campaign. He carries a list of well-publicized racist, sexist and bigoted remarks, not to mention a history of abusing the power of his office. His unfiltered approach was crucial to Trump’s appeal. Even if followers don’t fully accept what he says, his willingness to say it has given him a robust base of devoted supporters.
But it also turned off many GOP voters.
The Never Trump wing of the party has existed since its inception, but after his victory in 2016, many of these opponents fell into line. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election deepened the split in the party. Again, given the timing, a lot of Republicans showed up.
But now, in Trump’s third presidential campaign, some dissatisfied Republicans have crystallized into a group called Republican voters against Trump. The group has the support of Republican Accountability PAC, an anti-Trump committee organized by prominent conservative figures such as Sarah Longwell and Bill Kristol.
Part of their approach is to collect and share references from Republican voters who will not support Trump. The Ohio Capital Journal spoke to a handful of these voters about what guided their decisions.
Nathan Price
Nathan Price is in his early 20s and lives in Kettering, Ohio. He grew up in a Republican home in a Republican community and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. He split from the candidate after the January 6 riots.
“I had a Trump flag, a Trump mug, a hat, socks — all the merch,” he said. “And then January 6 happened and I packed it all up in a box that night and never looked back.”
His first gigantic political memory is his mother pulling him out of school to attend a rally with John McCain announced that he was choosing Sarah Palin as his candidate.
“I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, you know, to go to something like that,” he explained.
Price still considers himself a Republican, but says he split his votes fairly evenly between the Democratic and Republican candidates. She and her husband want to adopt within the next few years. Pointing to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 program, he worries that some of the GOP does not want to see them as parents. Price spoke favorably of U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-OH, but also said he was “delighted” to vote for Kamala Harris.
“I feel homeless,” he described. “The longer this goes on, the more of a Democrat I will become.”
One thing he pays attention to is the GOP’s reaction to victory or defeat after Election Day.
He described how he was initially attracted to Trump’s lack of filter, but noted that it posed a political liability during his first term. Still, when the 2020 election came, he saw Trump as the better option. After Trump attempted to overturn the election, Price hit a fork in the road and compared Trump’s self-aggrandizing rhetoric to an abusive relationship.
Price knows Trump will likely win Ohio. But given the number of people in his orbit who have changed their minds about the former president, he thinks the margins will be tighter. While he admitted this was purely anecdotal, he argued that closing the gap could send a message.
“I think these types of votes show that whatever path the Republican Party chooses with him, it’s not a path that will help them win in the long run,” he said.
Dale Struble
Dale Struble is in his 60s and lives in Troy. He describes himself as a retired educator. “I was a band director, a shop teacher and a special needs teacher,” he said. Struble said Ronald Reagan attracted him to the Republican Party and he supported both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
“The idea of small government, lower taxes and maybe fewer services,” he explained. “But I was a person who took care of myself and thought everyone else should.”
He voted for Trump in 2016, even though he was “a little leery” of the candidate. The 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 had made, and, oh my God, I knew his history and the sacrifices that he had made, and for Trump to not respect him for that was the first sign that something was wrong.”
He can’t pinpoint a specific tipping point, but he became so disillusioned with Trump that he voted for a libertarian candidate in 2020. Like Price, he identified the January 6 riots as the tipping point.
“And not only did that happen,” he said, “but also the ‘gigantic lie’ that led to it, and all the lies that followed, and the claim that these people were heroes and patriots. It just, I mean, it still bothers me.
As for his current situation, Struble recalled that after Jan. 6, he described himself to a friend as Republican Liz Cheney.
“According to the state, I am still a Republican because I requested a (primary) ballot to vote for Nikki Haley,” he explained. “So technically I’m a Republican. In my opinion, I am an independent person.”
He said his congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, R-OH, seemed like a good guy, but Struble complained that has not been explained on whether Trump will win or lose in 2020. “And until Republicans can just tell this simple truth,” he added, “then I will vote for Democrats.” After decades of voting Republican, he found supporting Kamala Harris a bit confusing.
Struble admitted that they probably won’t agree on many issues, “but overall I feel like she’s saying what’s true.”
Chris Gibbs
Chris Gibbs’ conversion occurred several years earlier than Price’s or Struble’s, and his change of heart received much greater publicity. Gibbs is over 60 years venerable and has been a farmer in Shelby County for decades. He began his political career at a local farm office in the early 1980s and eventually became chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party.
He currently leads the Shelby County Democratic Party.
Describing how he got there, Gibbs explained that he was skeptical of Trump from the beginning. For him, the failure of immigration reform in 2013signaled that the Tea Party would be an enduring political force. At this point he came into conflict with his own party, so he resigned as district chairman, but remained on the central committee.
“Come (20)16, 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, he still didn’t like Trump, but he saw him as the lesser of two evils. “I just wasn’t cut out to vote for the next Clinton,” he said.
“I ended up finally justifying voting for Donald Trump in ’16,” he said after deciding that “there is nothing he cannot do that our Congress and our institutions cannot fix. So what’s the punchline? Boy, was I wrong.
Gibbs has previously spoken about his frustration with Donald Trump’s decision to start a trade war. These tariffs all but guaranteed that other countries would retaliate by targeting the country’s “soft underbelly.”
“And what is it? This is farming,” insisted Gibbs.
Worse, Gibbs argued, the administration “raided our treasury and paid the farmers the difference in hidden money.” The market facilitation program he mentions has served as a safety net for farmers who have seen prices of crops such as soybeans plummet in response to the trade war. In fact, the program cost $23 billion.
But Gibbs said he had broken up with Trump about two months before most of the duties were imposed. He points to the 2018 summit in Helsinki between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Still, the Russian leader insisted his country played no role in the 2016 election US intelligence agencies agree Russian actors have engaged in a major disinformation campaign.
“Then Trump stood up and said I believed him,” Gibbs described. “My intelligence services, all 17 intelligence services, have said that yes, they played an influential role in the 2016 election, as did Russia in terms of disinformation, but I believe Putin over my intelligence agencies. And I immediately knew I had had enough. Don’t do this. Don’t do it.”
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