Rev. Paul Ringold said he had buyer’s remorse the last time he voted across party lines.
In 2016, the 46-year-old Republican pastor and independent truck driver cast his ballot for Republican Donald Trump. But in Trump's reelection bid in 2020, Ringold chose Democrat Joe Biden instead.
He said he grew increasingly concerned by Trump's rhetoric and what he describes as a rise in intolerance. He was also deeply disturbed by Trump supporters' violent and deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He said it "crossed a line."
"People were emboldened. They're saying what they want to say. We need somebody that is going to at least bring down the tone — tone things down because it seems to be everybody's on edge," he said. "That was why I voted for Joe Biden in 2020.”
He quickly regretted the decision.
In an increasingly stressed economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ringold said Biden’s green energy policies drove up the cost of diesel fuel for his truck.
Republicans have placed similar blame on Biden for a poor economy and skyrocketing gas prices.
While politicians often use gas prices for political leverage, experts say presidents have few effective tools for controlling prices, which are driven by supply and demand.
Ringold, the pastor at Shalom Church of God in Christ in Warren, said he also regrets voting for Biden because of the administration's and Democrats' support of transgender rights, including gender transition treatment for minors.
"How far are we going to go? Enough is enough," he said. He said he understands transgender adults are free to undergo medical interventions, "but I feel like our children should be off limits."
A recent poll commissioned by Ideastream Public Media, WKYC and Signal Ohio, found 67% of respondents, including 47% of Democrats, opposed allowing medical professionals to provide gender transition care to minors.
"I just should have toughed it out with Trump because this is wrong," he said.
Ringold had planned to skip the presidential election altogether this year until Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's nominee.
“The left’s base is now juiced up!” Ringold said. “Like, OK, I might have to jump in and cast my vote, you know?”
His vote, he said, would be for Trump. He said he's not tempted to cross party lines as he did for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 in order to help Harris make history as the nation's first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian decent to gain the White House.
"I've had my Black president," he said.
Ringold said other Republicans probably would not consider him a "true Republican" because he has voted for Democrats.
"These days, people are just voting their party lines, no matter what," he said. "I've never been like that, and I'm not like that now."
Ringold said he recognizes some people may be startled that someone who's Black would vote Republican, given African Americans' long affiliation with the Democratic Party.
"I consider myself in the middle," he said. "I'm common-sense Republican."
He credits his political leanings to his father. Ringold said his dad loved conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh's radio show. As a boy, Ringold heard Limbaugh too, during car trips with his mother to drop his father off for his 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift at General Electric.
“It would just be so boring, growing up,” Ringold said. “The older I got, I found out I actually like listening to talk radio. I would listen to stuff, and I would get involved, and I'm riled up behind it and next thing I know, I'm just drawn into it.”
He said when he was growing up, the neighborhood was middle-class, with longtime residents who knew one another.
Over the years, he said, that has changed.
“A lot of people worked at Packard [Electric] and General Electric and General Motors," he said. "As they have retired and moved on, these companies, they buy these houses and then they rent them out and you don't know who's moving in.”
Large institutional investors bulk purchased hundreds of thousands of homes nationwide after the 2007-2009 financial crisis and converted them into rental housing, according to a May report by the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office.
Last year, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who is running for a fourth term this November, introduced legislation he said would prohibit investors from deducting interest or depreciation on large numbers of single-family properties. Ohio's Republican U.S. Senator J.D. Vance has said institutional housing investors were pushing home buying out of reach for potential first-time buyers and hurting the middle class.
Ringold said the changes he's seen in his Warren neighborhood are concerning.
He recalled a drive-by shooting on his block in 2022 that he said was focused on a rental home three doors down. He said gunmen sprayed the street with bullets, including one that struck his Cadillac Escalade.
“They hit everything but their target,” he said.
Locally, Ringold wants more city oversight of absentee landlords, more tear-downs of vacant properties and more programs for youth to keep them engaged and out of trouble.
Ringold is also concerned by what he sees as a lack of spiritual direction for many Americans. He repeated a common assertion that the nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values.
"We can't just ignore what the foundation is or was. Seems like we are now," he said, "and it's like we're falling apart at the seams."
During a recent Sunday service at his church, Ringold preached to his small congregation about the parable of the Good Samaritan.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a follower to “love your neighbor as yourself” and then gives an example by telling the story of a Jewish man who was robbed, badly beaten and left for dead by the side of a road. While other passers-by ignore the man, a Samaritan comes to the Jewish man's aid.
Biblical scholars say the Samaritan's actions are remarkable because Samaritans and Jews had a deep antipathy for one another.
Paul Ringold offered the parable as a model for how Americans today should act during these politically divisive times.
“This is where you can make a difference to help the less fortunate," he said from the pulpit. "I'm not talking about political affiliations. I'm talking about just simply being a decent human being.”
