On Thursday June 5, the Chagrin Gateway Democrats learned about Trump’s War on Farmers when we hosted the Chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party, Christorpher R. Gibbs. Chris Gibbs is a Southern Ohio Farmer who grew up in the Republican Party of Regan and Bush. He rose to Shelby County Republican Party Chair but left in 2014.  

Gibbs got interested in the politics of governance when he entered the USDA Farm Service Agency in 1988 and eventually rose to County Executive Director before retiring in 2016. During that time he also served as Chairperson of the Shelby County Board of Elections. But he believes that his support of cross-party compromise and immigration reform at a time of rising Tea Party sentiment caused him to lose that position. It also helped him to realize that the Republican party was no longer being led by people who believed in the things that he did. After a time, he found a home for many of his beliefs in the Democratic Party.  

He feels farmers are being particularly hurt by the current administration’s policies:

• Tariffs hurt farmers by greatly increasing the cost of parts for their equipment and by sparking retaliatory tariffs that make exporting their crops difficult or impossible. Add to that, the sudden closure of the USAID program which bought food from American farmers and sent it to famine-stricken countries. That act not only cost the U.S. the goodwill of the nations it helped, it damaged the farmers as the surplus food will drive prices down.  
• Immigration Policy, or rather the lack of a coherent onem has maintained the difficulty of obtaining H2A work visas—causing serious labor shortages at harvest time.    
• Attacks on Agriculture Science: Cuts to USDA research are stopping or delaying disease testing and undermining decades of safety gains. 

Gibbs shared his philosophy for living as a Democrat in a rural, Republican county: “Lift people up. Demonstrate what a Democrat can be. I want to be part of a party that looks for solutions for people, not retribution and revenge.”  

His advice to us:

• Make it safe to vote for Democrats:  Point out, that you do not have to declare Democrat to vote for one
• Talk to one person at a time
• Demonstrate our shared values
• Stop blaming voters
• Quit telling people what they should be worried about, example: losing democracy.
• Tell them our solutions for what they are worried about: example…let’s reinstate the Fair School Funding Bill
• Be FOR things not against things: example: I am FOR saving Medicaid. 

We left the meeting energized by Chris Gibbs’ passion and commitment and thank him for attending. 

– Lyn Newman