KINSMAN, Ohio — Former Senator Sherrod Brown has always been comfortable talking with Ohio farmers. As the first Ohioan in nearly 50 years to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee, he made a habit of meeting them regularly during his three terms in the Senate, especially every couple of years when it came time to draft the Farm Bill.
So, as his campaign begins to return to the U.S. Senate next November in a challenge to Republican Senator Jon Husted, it’s no surprise one of his first stops was a Northeast Ohio farm.
“Every bushel of soybean, whether it’s food grade, feed grade or anything else now has collapsed in price and in value,” Brown was told by Trumbull County Farmer Joe Logan as they gathered at the dining room table of Logan’s farmhouse.
Logan spoke of the headwinds farmers are facing these days, tariffs among them, that are hitting them from different angles.
“Farmers are really put in this double squeeze. On the cost side for everything they purchase and on the sale side for everything that they sell,” he said.
It’s an issue that Brown is looking to capitalize on in the race against Husted. The headwind he faces with that strategy, though, is that as a bloc, Ohio farmers tend to vote Republican. So what does Brown have in mind to win them back?
“Well, I continue to do what I’ve always done and that is get out to farms, talk to them,” Brown said. “I think they’ve seen what’s happened. Farmers increasingly have seen what’s happened to their markets, what’s happened to the fact that we didn’t do a farm bill. It means less conservation practices on farms.” Brown adding, “if farmers are hurting it means the whole economy in rural regions are hurting.”
Trumbull is a county Brown carried by more than 15 points in 2018 but lost by close to six last year. He vows to do better here and in communities like this by using the time he has to get out into them.
“Let the votes go where they will, I mean, I worked hard in agriculture. I know that people are going to vote the way they are going to vote, but I’m going to do a lot better in rural Ohio this time,” Brown said.
Another factor, he said, will be in the area of health insurance and the impact of rising premiums and looming Medicaid cuts.
“So many Medicaid beneficiaries are in rural areas,” Brown said. “500,000 people are going to lose health insurance in this state because of [Husted’s] deciding vote, determining vote, on Medicaid.”
That’s why Joe Logan believes farmers next year won’t be as locked in to their voting ways as they have been in the past.
“I think it’s going to take a little while for them to come to the resolution that things are not getting better,” Logan said.
