Voters in a deep-red state are turning on President Donald Trump as he arrives to rally for struggling Republican candidates.
The Guardian reported Saturday that Trump's standing in Ohio has collapsed during his second term, with a Marist poll taken late last month finding 56 percent of registered voters there disapprove of his job performance.
Trump is set to appear Saturday in Montgomery County, a longtime swing county near Dayton that he lost by just 1,201 votes in 2024, to boost Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Both men are trailing their Democratic opponents, Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton.
Kelly Savage-Radich, a Dayton-area mother of three who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020, told the Guardian that her family may have to sell a vehicle because of gas prices and that her grocery bill has climbed roughly $100 a week. She blamed the Trump administration directly.
"He wants his name on everything," she said. "I'm sorry, but I don't give a s— whose name is on the Kennedy Center."
She also pointed to the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
"The shooting of an American citizen dead in the street, and no one was held accountable?" she said. "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."
Savage-Radich added that she now plans to vote Democrat "all the way down" the ballot.
Another Dayton resident, who declined to give her name, put it more bluntly.
"Trump? I think he's a disaster," she said.
A former nurse and Republican identified only as Bill told the outlet that complaints about gas prices are overblown, though he said he hasn't decided whether he'll vote in the midterms.
The warning signs extend beyond individual voters. Republican turnout in Montgomery County during two primaries this year ran at only about two-thirds of Democratic turnout, and statewide GOP turnout in May's gubernatorial primary fell 33 percent compared with 2022.
Local Republican leaders concede the party is in a tough fight. Phil Plummer, who chairs the county GOP and serves in the state House, said engagement has been slower than in past cycles but is starting to build. He argued that rising costs trace back to Democratic spending under former President Joe Biden.
"We didn't create that, the Democrats did, and it's hard to fix it in two years," Plummer said.
