‘Trump? I think he’s a disaster’: Ohio voters aggrieved as president prepares to visit

Kelly Savage-Radich grew up in a Republican-supporting Ohio family and voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But today the mother of three, who lives in a Montgomery county suburb of Dayton, is facing the prospect of having to sell one of her family’s vehicles due to the high cost of gas. Her grocery bill has gone up about $100 a week.She lays the blame squarely at the Trump administration’s door.“He wants his name on everything,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t give a shit whose name is on the Kennedy Center.”That wasn’t the only matter on her list of grievances – Savage-Radich also brought up the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year. She said: “The shooting of an American citizen dead in the street, and no one was held accountable? I have two daughters, and I’m trying to teach them all the freedoms this country has, but it feels like our freedoms are being taken.“For people that always claim, ‘Don’t tread on me,’ they sure have no problem now.”On Saturday, Trump will visit Montgomery county, which he only barely lost in 2024, to rally for two Republicans struggling in key Ohio election races: incumbent US senator Jon Husted, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the candidate for Ohio governor.Ohio has been solidly Republican for more than a decade. Trump won Ohio by handy margins in the past three presidential elections, and the state has not voted for a Democratic president since Barack Obama in 2012. The Republican party holds a supermajority in the state’s legislature.But the president’s popularity in the industrial midwestern state has plummeted during his second term, and his presence may be more of a hindrance than a help.A Marist poll of nearly 1,300 registered Ohio voters conducted late last month found that 56% of participants disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president.In two important primaries held earlier this year, turnout for Republicans in Montgomery county was just two-thirds of that for Democrats. In last May’s Republican gubernatorial primary, turnout was down 33% or 362,000 votes compared to the previous primary, held in 2022.In a US Senate race that could help decide which party controls the national political landscape, Husted is polling behind his Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown. Despite Ohio electing Republican governors in six out of the past seven elections, Ramaswamy, a billionaire former Republican presidential candidate who until recently was one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, is also polling behind Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate.Other prominent Ohio Republicans have been in the headlines recently for all the wrong reasons. Representative Max Miller, who until domestic and child abuse allegations against him emerged last summer enjoyed close ties with Trump, faces stiff opposition to retain his congressional seat from a union ironworker. (Miller has denied all of the allegations, and has not faced criminal charges. The House ethics committee is investigating the allegations.)Montgomery county, a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities, has been a swing county for decades: in the presidential election two years ago, Trump lost it by just 1,201 votes, one of just seven of 88 counties in Ohio to fall Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s way.With the midterms just a month away, the county’s leading Republicans admit that they’re in a fight.“You know, it’s been slower [than in previous election cycles], but it’s picking up. Honestly, I haven’t seen much energy on either side, but we’re getting more interest, people are getting engaged,” said Phil Plummer, the chair of the Montgomery county Republican party and a member of the Ohio house of representatives.Supporters at Dayton airport await a speech by Trump in March 2024. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images“Obviously our candidates knocking on doors are hearing about the affordability issues. But we tell them: we didn’t create that, the Democrats did, and it’s hard to fix it in two years.”Plummer said that during the Biden administration too much money was printed in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal tax breaks and investment spending, which has fueled higher costs today. Democrats say Biden’s spending surge was to combat the economic recession caused by the 2020 pandemic and point to Trump’s war on Iran costing Americans more than $44bn.“Obviously, the war [on Iran] hasn’t helped as far as oil prices, but Ohio has been deemed the number one state to do business in the nation. We’re moving the ball in Ohio; we’ve lowered property tax and cut income tax,” he said. “So we’re doing the best we can.”Few residents care to talk politics in the neighborhoods of Dayton, Montgomery county’s largest city.“Trump? I think he’s a disaster,” said a woman who declined to give her name as she stood outside a tattoo parlor in the Old North district, a working-class area north of downtown Dayton.Caring for his invalid mother on the porch of his home, Bill, a former nurse and Republican voter who asked not to be fully identified in order to speak freely, disagreed, and said the wider focus on rising gas prices was misplaced.“It’s always been crazy high, and people will buy a whole lot of gas at $2.99 but act like it’s out of control when it’s $3,” he says, adding that he has not decided whether he will vote in the midterms yet.“It seems like everybody is making more money, even with the most menial jobs.”Independents are set to play a major role in deciding Ohio’s next governor and the senate race between Husted and Brown.Nearly 38% of Ohio voters, or 2.9 million people, are independents, according to the Independent Voter Project.Running as an independent candidate for US house of representatives, Sandeep Dixit has knocked on hundreds of doors and met thousands of Ohioans on the campaign trail in north-east Ohio’s 13th district. He says the biggest issue voters are talking about is the hate-filled language coming from the political class.“People understand that if we continue with extreme positions the country’s going to get torn apart,” he said. “That’s the number one issue.”Dixit wouldn’t say for which parties he voted for in the past but believes that Ohio Republicans have done well on the rule of law. However, “when it comes to being empathetic to people and understanding what people need, there is a complete extreme ideology” among Republicans, he said.For Savage-Radich, there have never been clearer choices.“I would never vote for Ramaswamy, I don’t believe anything he says – I don’t believe anything any Republican says right now because every time I fact-check something, they’re lying,” she said.“And now we’re like buddies with China? It’s all crazy. I thought Republicans were the party that was so against China?”She said she doesn’t know a lot about Acton, the Democratic candidate. Republicans have attacked her for enacting Covid-related restrictions during the pandemic, but Savage-Radich noted she was working as the director of the Ohio department of health under a Republican governor.“She didn’t do anything that Mike DeWine didn’t have her do, and that’s a Republican governor,” she said. “To be honest, I think I’m going to vote Democrat all the way down, for everything. Because I want it not to be this way.”