Rural preferences remain split across party lines
The weekday farmers market in Athens, Ohio, offered a view of the state’s closely contested Senate race beyond speeches and advertising. Colorful vegetables were displayed for shoppers as vendors and residents moved among the stalls. The market also serves as a gathering place in the small city.
“Our Saturday markets have been fully at capacity,” said Paige Walters, the Athens farmers market promotions manager.
Athens is home to Ohio University and, like many college towns, leans liberal. The surrounding Appalachian communities generally do not. Walters said she had noticed the Athens County Republican Party set up a table at the market this year, the first time in a while. “I think that does speak to the political climate right now – that it’s pretty competitive,” she said.
Ohio itself has moved beyond its history as a swing state and is now considered reliably Republican. This election is different: both the governor and U.S. Senate races are toss-ups, giving Democrats a chance to win statewide. Their path runs through rural Ohio, a base that has historically leaned conservative and voted Republican. NPR reported that rural voters nationwide backed Trump by 40 points in 2024, while recent polling showed his approval rating in rural America dropping amid high inflation, tariffs and the war in Iran.
The Senate matchup pits Husted, the Republican nominee and a sitting senator, against Brown, the former Democratic senator. Both campaigns have invested in rural outreach. Trump recently spoke near Dayton to support Husted as part of a series of Republican rallies ahead of the midterms. At the Athens market, Matthew White said rural residents were dissatisfied: “There’s a lot of people in rural Ohio that are not happy, whether it’s gas prices, diesel prices, the tariffs, the war.”
At the Cowdery Farms booth, farmer Larry Cowdery said the most immediate threat to his family farm was the cost of health insurance. Cowdery, who farms along the Ohio River in Long Bottom, is self-employed, and he said, “The big, big issue that we run into is since we’re self-employed, we have to find health insurance somewhere,” adding, “It’s going to be much more expensive next year.”
NPR reported that Affordable Care Act marketplace premiums in Ohio were expected to rise by roughly 15%, partly because federal subsidies were expiring. Republicans, including Husted, had voted to eliminate the subsidies under the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill. NPR also reported that Ohio’s nearly 33% decline in marketplace enrollment last year was tied with Oklahoma for the largest drop in the nation.
Cowdery also said electricity, gasoline and fertilizer were making his multigenerational farm harder to operate. He warned, “I’m not convinced we’re even going to be able to get fertilizer next year.” NPR reported that most nitrogen used in fertilizer travels through the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping channel in the Middle East controlled by Iran, where travel has been volatile.
The mounting pressures have not made Cowdery eager to vote Republican: he said he was unhappy with the Republican-led Ohio legislature and did not like Husted, either. “I don’t trust Jon Husted at all. I think he’s a crook,” he said.
Dean Ferrell, a 62-year-old lifelong Athens resident, offered a different political response to similar financial pressure. Gas, utilities and groceries had become burdensome, he said, and he had cut back on certain foods. He recalled paying “ten bucks a pound for ground beef,” a price he said had previously been associated with filet mignon. Ferrell tried to look on the upside of his financial reality: since he is older, he said he does not eat as much as he used to, so he can save some money that way. He added that he wishes politicians could spend “a week or two living like I do.” “Their attitude would be a lot different. I mean, I gotta save money wherever I can, buy reduced and on sale items,” Ferrell said. “There’s very few things that I pay full price for. You got to, to survive.” Ferrell, an independent who had not decided whom to support in the Senate race, said he was leaning toward Husted. He also said, “The far left has basically hijacked the Democrat Party.”
Farm economies were at the center of Chris Gibbs’s account. Gibbs, a first-generation farmer in Shelby County, grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa hay and keeps a few dozen cows. He began in 1983 with $2,500, a pickup truck and a two-year-old daughter and built his operation to 560 acres. High fuel and fertilizer prices and Trump’s tariffs pushed production costs above profit, he said. He estimated diesel had risen 50% under the Trump administration and the war in Iran.
Gibbs said filling his combine about seven times during harvest cost roughly $7,000 in diesel. “I think about 150 gallons at $7 is $1,000, and that’ll run a day and a half,” he said. “That’d be $7,000 worth of diesel fuel.”
His political position has also shifted. Gibbs once chaired the Shelby County Republicans and voted for Trump in 2016, but he said, “I’m looking at certainly, buyer’s remorse.” He said he could not stand behind Trump’s character, his persona on the global stage or the punitive tariffs that he said hurt “United States of America’s soft underbelly,” referring to agriculture. He moved away from Trump in 2018 and now chairs the Ohio Democratic Party Rural Caucus. Gibbs wants Brown to return to the Senate, arguing that Brown has the experience necessary to represent rural Ohioans at the federal level. “We’re going to get Sherrod Brown across the line. I have complete confidence in that,” he said.
That sentiment was not shared by every rural voter. At a Republican Party event in Guysville, Melissa Jant said she opposed Brown’s return after 30 years in office and did not want another career politician in Congress. She argued that Brown had hurt both Ohio and the country and said, “We just need new blood in there.” Jimmy Williams of Monroe County said Brown was voted out and should not try to head back to his old stomping grounds. Instead, Williams views Husted as the anti-establishment candidate, despite the fact that Husted is a sitting senator.
Williams said voters should discount advertising that criticized Husted because he had not served long enough to have done everything the ads alleged: “He’s a first-term senator there, and he hasn’t even been in there long enough to do everything that they’re saying on television. And people need to be smart enough to look through that.” Bob Rouch of Washington County was more openly optimistic that Ohio would remain Republican. He said he believed Trump had done a great deal for the county and added, “it’s Ohio’s responsibility to keep up with that.” If Democrats win control, Rouch said he thought they would do nothing aside from target Trump. “We’re going to have these damn investigations, these attempted impeachments and all the baloney that we went through,” he said, referring to the last time Democrats controlled Congress while Trump was president. Williams said the goal was to preserve Republican control of Congress: “America is at risk.”
The interviews did not show rural Ohio moving uniformly toward either party. Gibbs broke with Trump, now backs Brown and has cited fuel, fertilizer and tariff costs; Ferrell said he disliked the Democratic Party’s direction as he leaned toward Husted; and Jant opposed Brown as an establishment figure. Both campaigns were still working the same rural electorate, but the voters’ concerns did not produce a shared partisan choice.