Republican Donald Trump was a controversial political figure even before he launched his first presidential campaign. He carries a long 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 central to Trump’s appeal. Even when supporters don’t fully embrace what he says, his willingness to say it has earned him a strong base of devoted followers.

But it also turned off many Republican voters.

The “Never Trump” wing of the party has existed since the beginning, but after his 2016 victory, many of those opponents aligned themselves. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election has further fractured the party. Again, given the time, many Republicans came.

But now, in Trump’s third presidential campaign, a swathe of disgruntled Republicans has 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 the testimony of Republican voters who won’t support Trump. The Ohio Capital Journal spoke with some of those voters about what drove their decisions.

Nathan Price

Nathan Price is in his 20s 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 broke with the candidate following the January 6 riot.

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

His first big political memory is his mother pulling him out of school to attend John McCain’s rally announced that he is choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate.

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

Price still considers himself a Republican, but says he split his vote fairly evenly between the 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 in the GOP don’t want to see them as parents. Price spoke favorably of U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-OH, but also said he was “ecstatic” to vote for Kamala Harris.

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

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

He described how he was initially drawn to Trump’s lack of filter, but noticed how he was a political liability during his first term. However, when the 2020 election came around, he saw Trump as the better option. In the wake of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, Price branched out 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 tighter. While he admitted it was purely anecdotal, he argued that narrowing the gap could send a message.

“I think these types of votes help show that whatever path the Republican Party has taken 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 was a band director, a shop teacher, a special education teacher,” he said. Struble said Ronald Reagan drew him to the Republican Party and 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 suspicious” of the candidate. His biggest red flag was the way Trump talked about John McCain.

“I haven’t been in the service, but I really have a lot of respect,” he said. “I realized the sacrifices that people made and, oh my God, I knew his story and the sacrifices that he made, and for Trump to disrespect him for that, that was the first inkling that there was something in irregularity.”

He can’t point to a specific tipping point, but he has become disenchanted with Trump enough to vote for a libertarian candidate in 2020. Like Price, he saw the Jan. 6 uprising as a tipping point.

“And not only is it happening,” he said, “but the ‘big lie’ that precipitated it and all the lies that came after it and saying that these people are heroes and patriots. It just, I mean, it still boggles my mind.”

As for where he is now, Struble recalled describing himself to a friend as a Liz Cheney Republican after Jan. 6.

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

He said his congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, R-OH, seems like a good guy, but Struble complained that it was not clear on whether Trump won or lost in 2020. “And until the Republicans can tell the plain truth,” he added, “then I’ll vote Democrat.” After decades of voting Republican, he said it’s a little disorienting to support Kamala Harris.

Struble acknowledged that they probably won’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues, “but overall I feel like she’s telling the truth.”

Chris Gibbs

Chris Gibbs’ conversion came a few years earlier than Price’s or Struble’s, and his change became much more advertising. Gibbs is in his late 60s and has been a farmer in Shelby County for decades. He got his start in politics through the local farm office in the early 1980s and eventually became chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party.

He now heads the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Describing how he got there, Gibbs explained that he was skeptical of Trump from the start. for him, the failure of immigration reform in 2013signaled that the Tea Party would be an enduring political force. At that point, he found himself at odds with his own party, so he resigned as county chairman but remained on the central committee.

“It comes out (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 around, he still didn’t like Trump, but he saw him as the lesser of two evils. “I wasn’t made to vote for another Clinton,” he said.

“I finally got around to justifying a vote for Donald Trump in ’16,” he said, after deciding that “there’s nothing we can do that Congress and our institutions can’t fix. So what’s the point? Boy, was I wrong.”

Gibbs has previously spoken about his frustration with Donald Trump’s decision to launch a trade war. These tariffs, except those guaranteed, other countries will retaliate, targeting the “soft underbelly” of the country.

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

To make matters worse, Gibbs claimed, the administration then “ran through our treasury and paid the farmers the difference in hush money.” The market facilitation program he refers to has served as a hedge for farmers who have seen the price of crops such as soybeans fall in response to the trade war. in total, the program cost $23 billion.

But Gibbs said she broke up with Trump about two months before the largest chunk of tariffs were imposed. He points to a 2018 summit in Helsinki between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader insisted, despite the fact that his country played no role in the 2016 election US intelligence agencies agree Russian actors have engaged in a major disinformation campaign.

“Trump then stood up and said I believe him,” Gibbs described. “My intelligence services, all 17 intelligence services said, yes, they had an influential role in the 2016 election, Russia did it with disinformation, but I think Putin over my intelligence agencies. And I knew immediately that I was done. You don’t do that. You don’t do that.”

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.