MAGA's Midterm Defectors

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Yesterday on the show, our colleagues from the politics desk explained just how much next month's midterm elections will come down to the decision making of Republican voters in red states who are now deeply disillusioned with President Trump and whether that disillusionment will push them into the arms of Democrats. Today, Daily Producer Anna Foley travels to Iowa, a state Trump and Republicans have dominated for the past decade to speak with one of those Republican voters about what he's choosing to do with his frustrations. It's Friday, October 16th. Okay, I think we have corn on the left side of the street and I think we have soybeans on the right. There's an old saying in Iowa that in order to have a good harvest, your corn should be knee high by the 4th of July. Hi! Sorry, I might smell like gasoline. Oh no, that's totally fine. By the time I flew out to Iowa in late summer, the corn towered over me. This is my corn field right here. I was there to meet Caleb Brenner, a corn and soybean farmer. You can see it's bright yellow on the tip, but as it gets closer to the base, it's more of like a cream colored, that's what we call the milk layer. Caleb is only 25, but he's been farming for years. He's the fifth generation of his family to work these fields and his folks had him start young. I loved to ride in the combine with my dad and my earliest memory is sitting in the combine and thinking I was inside of a spaceship, especially at nighttime. It's big open windows, you can see all around you and it's nothing but like a really dark corn field. And then a bunch of glowing flashing buttons and monitors, it was awesome. Even today, I love sitting in a combine. Caleb told me another thing he remembered was that growing up, it felt like a given that he was a Republican. I grew up in a very traditional bright red area. Caleb's County, Hancock County, it's always been a reliably conservative area. But when Trump came on the scene, it went from bright red to deep maga red. In 2016, Hancock went almost 30 points more to the Republican side. Caleb was still in high school at the time, but he remembers how Trump resonated with the people around him. You got to understand what he captured at the time too. It was almost like this outsider, I'm going to drain the swamp as he says. It was also around this time Caleb says that he started to hear a lot more that Democrats were the enemy, that the stakes of every election were ex-essentially high. It was like overnight, it became, the right is against the left and this tribalism sort of just emerged from, I don't even know where. It's like we're fighting a culture war, we're fighting against the liberals, we're fighting against. And so by the time 2020 came around, there was really no question who Caleb's first vote for president would be. I was definitely on team Trump in 2020. I think 2020, I really did not do any, like I was not very informed at all. I just was marking the red box, the Republican box. I think I was attached to a team and there was not a lot of convincing to make me think and a more nuanced approach. I had a team and I'm not going to deviate from that team. And Caleb's team, it was only growing. His county shifted even further in Trump's direction that year, which by then was the story of most counties in Iowa. Every single time that Trump has been on the ballot there, the state has gotten redder and redder. Essentially, Trump transformed a state that had voted for Obama twice into a place where Democrats were locked out. Trump won the state again in 2024 and Caleb was one of the voters to help him do it. But at that point, Caleb was actually thinking more independently about his vote and who he was as a voter. I think if I had to put a label on it, I'd say I'm a libertarian populist is probably the best way that you could describe my politics. I'd like to see our working class do good. I'd like to see manufacturing back in the states and all these things that sort of formed my political identity as a populist. With this in mind, he knew there was no way he was going to vote for a Democrat. You have to understand, at the time, this is coming on the heels of four years of President Biden who increased a lot of inflation in our economy. And that's a big issue with me as a populist is I want things to be cheap and affordable for Americans. So that was a big issue for me at the time. And the Trump campaign was meeting Caleb where he was. It wasn't just that Trump was talking about the problems facing the working class, but the way he was doing it. There was a vibe around Trump. Like there was this momentum, this energy that he carried with him. Like there was this energy, this vibe. It felt like Trump could actually get things done. Which was really important to Caleb at this specific moment. After years of working his family's farm, he was getting ready to take on his own plot of land. It feels like now, instead of me just washing machinery and cleaning out air filters, it's like I'm farming now. I'm part of the farm. It's one of the parts actually I like the least is I have to be washing the markets every single day and making sure that now he had his own bottom line to worry about. And so as Trump took office, Caleb watched and waited and hoped to see the affordability agenda he voted for come into focus and make his life better. The first big test, April 2nd, 2025. Liberation day. Liberation day. It's quite the day. Initially, I thought that that would be fantastic because what we do is we tighten up the trade deficit that we have and then we bring a lot of the manufacturing that was sent overseas back to America. I want jobs for Americans. Trump announced a whole sleigh of tariffs on foreign imports that would, in his telling, make life better for all kinds of domestic workers, including farmers. And that didn't seem to happen. What happened instead was that the soybean market tanked. In retaliation for Trump's tariffs, China stopped importing soybeans from American farmers and prices for Caleb's beans dropped. I mean, last year, I sold my soybeans for, like, it was pathetic. And. Wait, pathetic, how? It was $9.20 a bushel for soybeans or something like that out of the field, and that's not a good price for us to be making money off of soybeans. We wanted around 12, like a lot more if it was above 12. You can make money off of $9.20 soybeans, but you need to be very meticulous with how you manage that field and reduce all of the inputs in it. Yeah. How did you do that? How did you meticulously manage the field? I did it. I took a loss. That's just simple as it can get a loss money that year. It's not easy taking a hit like that, and we lean a lot on our faith during these times. And when it's something like bean prices, it's out of my hands. I can't do anything about that. And when it's out of my hands, there really ain't nothing else that I can do besides pray about it. Did you draw the line between, like, what you were experiencing and Donald Trump? I. I'm sure I was very aware that Donald Trump was enacting tariffs against China and that had a negative effect on the bean price. It was enough to make Kayla begin to doubt if the president actually had his back. And then this past February, Trump did something else that seemed almost healer-made to hurt Caleb's bottom line. I got a notification on my phone and we bombed one of their nuclear facilities. The war with Iran. How did you connect the push notification to the farm? So I don't think it's set in for me initially that that would have an effect on the farm from an input perspective. I don't think anybody knew how that was going to play out or the downstream effects of it until I want to say, like, maybe a month later or so, when we truly understood the scale of it. Once the straight of Hormuz was blocked, those downstream effects came for Caleb. So initially, economically, from a farm perspective, we saw it at the pump with diesel. First off, diesel fuel. An essential part of operating heavy machinery on the farm got more and more extensive. At the time, Caleb and I were talking in late summer, the average price of diesel was more than $5.50. That's almost 50% more than when the war began. When it comes to synthetic fertilizer, there's a lot of resources from the Middle East. Fertilizer prices climbed, too. That is making farming more expensive from a fertilizer perspective. Suddenly, his entire farming operation began to feel at risk. And he wasn't just stressed about the present situation. He was looking way down the road, worrying just how long it would take for prices to come down. I just am very worried about the downstream effects. So what is it going to look like in a year when we've had the straight of Hormuz blocked for however so long or other critical points or places in that region that give us the natural resources to make fertilizer? I think margins are going to continue to get tighter and tighter until something has to break. And as Trump continued to create economic chaos, Caleb Rila. He couldn't count on the president to save farmers like him. And so he had to get creative. We've talked with some of the suppliers about chicken litter and I think we want to spread more chicken litter. He started to find substitutes for some of the more traditional synthetic fertilizer that relies on the straight of hormones. He's now using chicken litter, a polite term for chicken poop mixture, for some of his fertilizer. It might not be as good as the synthetic stuff, but you don't need to ship it halfway across the world. And he's even added a new stream of revenue that is unexpected, especially in the middle of a bunch of Iowa corn fields. Oh my god, there's a shrimp on the ground. They jump. They're feisty creatures. They can get some pretty good airtime if they try hard. Caleb is farming shrimp. Yes, shrimp. In a bunch of converted above ground pools. If I just said all of my money annually is going to be made from the farm in my two fields, I would not make any money at all. So I need to find other avenues to make money and diversify my portfolio. It's a pretty small operation right now. They sell the shrimp for about a dollar a pop to anybody who wants to swing by and picks them up. So it's far from a silver bullet for Caleb's financial woes, but it speaks to the complete abandonment Caleb feels from Donald Trump. He gave all of these ideas of like, we're going to get out of foreign wars. No more forever wars is. And by this point, it wasn't just about the economic toll of it all. He felt like Trump broke a lot of promises. He just turned around and did exactly opposite of what I voted for him to do. And it makes me feel frustrated. It makes me feel betrayed. It feels like I almost had somewhat of like a political awakening is I think maybe the best way to put it. And that brings us to this election, the midterms. Trump is of course not on the ballot, but there's a real question for Caleb when it comes to the Republicans who are. Has he lost faith in just Trump or has he lost faith in all Republicans? The election Caleb's been focused on most this year is the Iowa governor's race. Because the governor has such a direct impact on the state's agricultural policy, Caleb feels like that election has the most potential to really impact his farm. And if ever a Republican was going to win over Caleb this year, the Republican nominee in that race seems most likely to do it. A man named Zach Lane. My whole goal was to restore that old farm that was built by my great great grandpa who happens to be a farmer himself. We're not going to have the promise of the state of Iowa without our rural communities and our family farms. I firmly believe that. When I went to one of his events with Caleb, you could see the candidate focus less on Trump. Our kids are leaving faster than 46 states. They've lost 10,000 family farms for the past 20 years. And more on a kind of economic populism. So gas prices are high right now. I don't have control of our foreign policy or global markets. What I've said is that right now we should be giving relief to Iowa taxpayers anyway we can. So what I've called for. Sitting there with Caleb, it seems like a lot of what Lane was saying was really landing. Caleb was nodding along as Lane talked through some of his ideas to help out farmers. I'm very proud of our public. But make no mistake. Lane was not hiding the fact that he was a loyal Republican. So I'd ask you for your support to say welcome now. Caleb and I debriefed after the event. Okay, what do you think first impressions? Well, um, Mr. Lane clearly knows what he's talking about. I think he is very aridite in how he presents these ideas. And he is to the point and specific about how he's going to address these problems, which I appreciated. It's just a matter of if it's going to happen or not. And that he wasn't convinced that Lane would deliver on his promises. You know, he said that he was proud to be a Republican. What does that communicate to you? That's something I wish he would have steered from, especially, you know, I don't know if it's even in his best interest to say something like that. From a campaign standpoint, to me, it honestly communicates that he has Republicans' best interests in mind, not Iowans' best interests in mind. Why are we being proud of associating with the political party? Can we be proud of being Iowans? Talking to Caleb, it became clear that his frustration with the Republican party ran much deeper than Trump. To him, the whole party had become tainted. But in these midterm elections, walking away from Trump and Republicans is just half the story. If you had a rank on a scale of one to ten, like how much you trust both the Republican and the Democratic Party, what would you say the number is for both of them? Both are squarely at like twos and threes. I mean, is one to two and one to three? That's a really tricky question because like I said, I don't want to hitch my wagon to one party or another because the whole point is I don't like either of them. I mean, twos and threes is not great. Yeah, that's a failing grade for both parties. Yes, it is. Yeah, it's like choose the lesser of two evils and I hate that. That's like the worst position to be put in as a voter in the United States. I think at that point, I just as well rescind my vote. I think that's probably what I would do is not engage in the democratic process. I don't know where I'm at. It seems like I've like am floating off in space. This is a complicated reality in Iowa, a state that's moved so far to the right. You have voters like Caleb who are ready to abandon the Republican party, but they do not like or trust Democrats. And they could just as easily stay homeless midterms, not vote for either party. If Democrats want to win big this midterm season, they have to do something that for years felt unimaginable in red states like Iowa. They have to persuade the president's base to vote for the other side. That's after the break. Democrats in Iowa have spent a decade in the political wilderness, a decade in which they've been seen as increasingly elite and woke and out of touch. But now they think they have an answer to all that. DeCora, my hometown, where I learned how to hunt and fish and right from wrong. He's the current state auditor in Iowa, the highest elected Democrat right now, and he's running for governor against Jacqueline. Sand knows better than anyone that his party affiliation is not doing him any favors in Iowa. And so, sand is basically tossing out the entire label of Democrat. It's time to sound the alarm about the brokenness of our two-choice political system. But you can't always make repairs when you've got a broken foundation. Sometimes you've got to tear the. And that caught Caleb's attention. So, I went with him to one of Rob Sand's town halls. Yeah, no, I can feel the energy for sure. His willingness to even go to this campaign event for a Democrat was a real leap. And Caleb stood out. He rolled up to this town hall inside a coffee shop wearing muddy boots and still smelling like gasoline. As he took his place among a sea of enthusiastic sand supporters wearing t-shirts from his campaign. Now, your state auditor candidate for governor, Rob Sand. But. Thanks for coming out. I know. So much of Rob Sand's campaign pitch seemed to be about making it okay for a Republican to be in that room. There were signs on the wall that said not redder or bluer but better and truer. I want us to do something a little bit different. He asked every Republican in the room to raise their hands. Please raise your hand if you're a registered Republican. And for everyone else to applaud them for coming to hear him out. My eyes turned to Caleb, who briefly paused before slowly raising his hand. People like to talk about right wing and left wing. I just want to remind you it's one bird, okay? And that kind of respect for bipartisanship was woven into Rob Sand's entire speech. Most people know it but there's very few people who are in politics that want to say it. I think that our political system is broken and that's largely because it's run by two private clubs. Sand's argument is that as a Democratic governor and a still very Republican state, his post party approach is the only way to get anything done. Whether it's improving public education or lowering costs. I'm not suggesting that the answer is to give the other private club 10 years of one party control. If you think that's the answer then you should visit California or New York. There you will find problems. The answer is to get back to what Iowa has always been about. Common sense, people who sit down with each other, not because they always agree on everything but because they're there together in part of the same community. So much of what Sand was saying felt like he was trying to make it okay for people like Caleb to cross party lines. I know I talk a lot about Democrats and independence working together and Republicans. And after he wrapped his stump speech, he took it a step further. So even more effective than talking about that is taking a microphone and handing it to someone who said they're a Republican voter to see if they have any questions. And to my surprise, he handed the mic over to Caleb. Nice to meet you, Mr. Sand. to ask a question. So, can you tell me what infrastructure could be introduced to rural communities, what economic opportunities could you maybe help stimulate to make that happen? Kayla basically wanted to hear from Sand about his proposals to make life better for farmers. Almost like he was asking him, "Do you actually care about me?" Number of different answers to your question. And Sand tried out a lot of different answers. We have in every single county in the state of Iowa a lot of public entities that buy food. He talked about school lunches. The most obvious one is schools. Tax incentives. Some of this stuff is federal policy, right? But we have to get away from partisanship. I mean, here's another piece of the difficulty here. And of course, he connected it back to bipartisanship. From where I was sitting, his answers seemed pretty far away from what Caleb was asking. Thank you all for being here. So after the event. Where'd you park? I asked Caleb about it. Was that a satisfying answer for you? Honestly, no. I, and not to take away from Rob's messaging for the afternoon, but I wanted some real actionable things that he was going to do. Like, I'm going to help get some ordinances or proposals set forward that. He wished Sand had gotten more specific on farming, but that didn't disqualify Sand in his mind. In fact, he walked away from the event energized. I have to say I was very impressed. It seems like what he talked about at the beginning with breaking free of the two party system. And I was blown away as someone who had my feelers out for anything that a Republican might not like about Rob Sand. I didn't hear a lot that would make a lot of people angry, especially anybody on the right. And it does a very good job of being moderate about being careful with his words and appealing to not just the left, but to the right. He does a fantastic job of appealing to the right, I think. This seems to be what made the biggest difference for Caleb, putting the average Iowin above party politics. It's always good when you don't have full party control in a body of government, state or federal, because then you have more checks and balances and more pragmatic decision-making that proves advantageous for the state as a whole. And I think that's a fantastic proposition. It was enough for Caleb to make up his mind. He was going to vote for Rob Sand. I love Zach Lane's approach to farming, and I love his background in it and his knowledge in it. And I love Rob Sand's approach to bipartisanship. And right now, I think that on the issues that are listed in my head, bipartisanship is pretty far in a way and forefront when it comes to voting, which is crazy, because I talk a lot about the issues that I care about the most are involved in farming, but I want more checks and balances, and I want change, and we haven't seen change in a long time. So if all holds true, you will go and you will vote for a Democrat. Is this your first time voting for a Democrat? It is. And it feels, okay, it feels good, and I don't want, I want to say, it feels good for one reason in particular, because I'm no longer voting for a Republican. It's not because I'm so excited to vote for a Democrat. It's because I no longer am just in tow with one party. Now candidates have to work for my vote. That is how it works psychologically in my brain. I view my vote now as less of like an extension of me as a citizen and more as like a weapon. Like, I can withhold that vote if I need to. And even worse, I can give that vote to the other party if I have to. Thank you so much for letting me just like take over that. Yeah, no, thank you. A couple weeks after my trip to Iowa, I talked to Kayla again. Harvest had started, so his corn and soy and shrimp were keeping him pretty busy. So he said he hadn't had much time for politics. But he had done some research. And after deciding to vote for Rob Sand, he'd also made a decision on the state's neck and neck race for US Senate. In that race, he's planning to vote for another Democrat, Josh Tarrick. Caleb's not totally done with Republicans, so he says he's going to vote for at least one of them, a candidate for the Secretary of Agriculture. Stepping back from it all, Caleb is emerging as a new type of voter in American politics, a member of the once immovable MAGA base who has transformed into a free political agent. And if you look at the polls, at least right now, it seems there are more and more of these voters all across the country. Question on November 3rd is exactly how many of them will take their frustration with Trump and Republicans and do what Caleb is doing. Vote for a Democrat. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to underday. In America's latest school shooting, a 16-year-old shot his way through locked doors into an Oregon Elementary School on Thursday, killing three children and a teacher before an armed bystander shot him dead. We are heartbroken, we are horrified, this is the kind of thing you hear about in other places and pray that it never happens here, and it has happened here. Today it happened to our children, to our teachers, and to our families. The children who were killed were 5, 8, and 11 years old. The shooter's motive remains unknown. On Thursday, President Trump canceled plans to livestream the federal execution of an Army officer convicted of carrying out a massacre at a U.S. military base in 2009. The decision to broadcast the execution by firing squad was proposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but it was widely criticized, including by retired military leaders, as both gruesome and voyeuristic. Today's episode was produced by Anna Foley, Caitlin O'Keefe and Eric Krufke. It was edited by Rob Zipko and Devon Taylor, fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains music by Mary and Luzano, Pat McCusker, and Diane Wall, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Wonderly, special thanks to Shane Goldbacher. That's it for the Daily, I'm Michael Bavaro, see you on Sunday.