There’s no one in the state who knows more about what Ohio’s rural voters look for in politicians than Christopher Gibbs, a working farmer from Shelby County.
“They want someone who is real; someone who is genuine,” said Gibbs, who raises corn and soybeans on his family farm about 110 miles due north of Cincinnati.
“Kamala Harris has given rural America a gift in her running mate; a gift that we can all point to raise up those who’ve felt like their voices weren’t being heard,” Gibbs said.
That gift, Gibbs says, is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“Tim Walz is someone the people of rural Ohio can relate to,’’ Gibbs said.
Gibbs knows something about what appeals to voters in ruby red places like Shelby County.
He is a gentleman, but not what you would call a gentleman farmer — a farm owner who sits comfortably in the big house while others do the work. He is a working farmer, out in the fields each day running a massive tractor or a combine, doing the hard work himself.
In Ohio politics, Gibbs is unique — a former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party who left the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan that his family had been part of for generations.
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He watched his party fall under the spell of Donald Trump; he could see it becoming a cult of obedience to a man whose corruption and incompetence was apparent to Gibbs.
“I couldn’t be part of it any longer,” Gibbs said.
Today, the former GOP county chair is the chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party, and has become one of the leading voices in the political life of the country for rural America.
Last week, he was one of thousands of rural voters from across the country to join a nationwide Zoom call of farm folks for the Harris/Walz campaign.
Gibbs’ conversion to Democratic party chair didn’t suddenly flip Shelby County from red to blue — far from it. But his example has strengthened the Democratic vote in the county.
“We’ve been working to get rural Democrats out of hiding,’’ Gibbs said. “They are starting to realize that we share their values. Until a voter believes that you share the core values with them, they are not going to listen to you on policy.”
That, Gibbs said, is the “genius Kamala Harris showed in picking Tim Walz.”
Walz grew up on a farm in a remote part of western Nebraska; he was raised on the hard work of farming. As a young man, he joined the National Guard, serving for 24 years. His military service meant that he could go to a small teachers’ college on the GI Bill.
“He’s a real person — a hunter, a teacher, a father, a football coach, and governor of one of the most agriculture-oriented states in the nation,” Gibbs said. “Someone that rural people can look at and see themselves in.”
And, Gibbs said, he campaigns with a joyful attitude.
“He can smile; he can laugh,’’ Gibbs said. “So can Kamala. That alone sets them apart from the other guys.”
Ohio’s rural voters, Gibbs said, are going to respond well to Walz.
“They’re going to look at Tim Walz and say, ‘He sounds like me; maybe he’s OK,’ ” Gibbs said.
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Neither Gibbs nor anyone else who knows anything about Ohio politics believes that suddenly the dozens of small rural counties who have enabled Donald Trump to win Ohio in the past two presidential elections will flip.
But elections are won in the margins.
Trump won Shelby County in 2020 with a whopping 81% of the vote. In nearly all the rural counties Trump’s vote was north of 70%.
What if that margin could be trimmed back to 60%, or even 55%? With dozens of farmland counties in Ohio, that could result in a whole lot of votes for the Harris/Walz ticket.
In politics, all things are possible.
