These Republican Pennsylvania farmers are voting for Harris for president

The rain isn’t coming to Bob and Kristina Lange’s farm.

There wasn’t a drop of it in June or from late August to mid-September. Now October has come and gone with no rain in sight. 

“The heat is there, and it’s a real issue,” said Bob Lange, who, along with his wife, owns Sugartown Strawberries farm in southeastern Pennsylvania’s Chester County. “In 36 years of farming, this is my worst year ever for farming. Things are not getting better. They’re getting worse and more extreme.”

The Langes’ Malvern farm, where they grow a wide range of fruits and vegetables, is taking a financial hit as a result of climate change. This year alone, the dry skies and rising temperatures have killed six plantings of sweet corn and two plantings of sunflowers, amounting to a loss of up to $20,000.

Bob and Kristina Lange are deeply concerned about where the country is going, not just because of climate change, but in terms of democracy, racism, and general political divisiveness. It’s why the lifelong Republicans are, for the first time, backing a Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris, for president. 

The couple supported Donald Trump for president in 2016. Bob Lange voted for Trump again in 2020, while Kristina Lange abstained from voting that year. 

Then Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and Bob Lange knew his days of supporting the former president were over.

“I voted for Trump the first time because I was, kind of, Eh, he was on ‘The Apprentice,’ that was kind of a cool show. He’s not a politician; maybe he’ll do better,” said Bob Lange, who has served as a township supervisor for Willistown Township in Chester County since 1997.

“The second time was more of a toss-up,” Lange continued. “I’d never voted for a Democrat for president before. And I was like, Biden or Trump? Biden or Trump? I reluctantly voted for him [Trump]. The third time coming up — no way.”

The Langes have a long list of reasons why they’re no longer supporting Trump. Concerns about assaults on democracy by Trump and his administration top that list, and both cited the Republican presidential nominee’s climate change denialism as another reason they no longer support him. Trump has repeatedly said he believes climate change is a hoax, and Trump’s allies and advisers have described a second Trump term as one in which environmental regulations would be dismantled and climate denialism would be embraced. 

“He doesn’t seem to be concerned one ounce about the warming effect that’s happening around the whole world,” Kristina Lange said. “We’re working the land every season, and we’re seeing firsthand the changes in the weather patterns.”

They mentioned the racism they see coming from Trump and the far-right MAGA movement, as well as Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

“I mean, I thought racism was pretty much over with Obama winning, and now it’s worse than ever,” Bob Lange said. “And he [Trump] just breeds contempt; he breeds divisiveness. He breeds hatred, bullying.”

The Langes themselves have been targets of MAGA bullying. After appearing in an ad for Harris, they have faced an onslaught of threats and harassment against them and their business. Trump supporters have vowed to shut their business down and have accused the couple of being paid Democratic actors and longtime donors to Democratic candidates, neither of which they are. 

“There were a lot of messages to our business phone. It got so bad in the beginning that we didn’t even answer our phone,” Kristina Lange said. “We would just let the answering machine get it, and then we’d have to sort through all the hate messages just to get to our actual business messages from our customers.”

‘His presidency was terrible for farmers’

The Langes aren’t the commonwealth’s only farmers, or only Republicans, who are voting for Harris. 

Vince Humes, a Republican who operates a small beef farm in northwest Pennsylvania’s Crawford County, said he’s supporting the vice president during a press call organized by the Harris campaign on Oct. 28. 

“Being a small beef farmer, one thing is for certain, that we cannot afford a second term with Donald Trump in the Oval Office,” Humes said. “His presidency was terrible for farmers, and we know a second term is going to be even worse.

“During the Trump years, his policies were detrimental to farmers of all sizes,” Humes continued. “The cost of inputs rose, and his destruction of some of the hard-earned trade programs hurt farmers’ income.” 

Trump imposed tariffs on goods imported from China and other countries during his first term, which resulted in China instituting retaliatory tariffs that ended in a reduction of agricultural exports from the United States. As the trade war between China and the U.S. escalated, farmer bankruptcies rose, farm income dropped, and farmers reported an increase in suicides among their peers. 

Now, as Trump runs for reelection, he has proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China as well as a tariff of up to 20% on all other imports.

Those tariffs would lead to significant economic stress for farmers, both in Pennsylvania and nationwide, the Langes and Humes said. A study that was released Oct. 15 and commissioned by the National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association found that Trump’s proposed tariffs could result in U.S. soybean exports to China declining by half and corn exports dropping by 84%.

Meanwhile, economists from North Dakota State University recently reported that protectionist trade policies could result in Pennsylvania farmers seeing their soybean sales drop by $111 million, corn sales decrease by $50 million, and beef sales decline by $22 million.

Trump’s proposed tariffs would also add trillions to the national debt and harm working families, analysts say.

“Right now, there are around 50,000 family farms in Pennsylvania, but once they go by the wayside, you never get them back,” Humes said. 

Humes went on to describe the economic impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs on Pennsylvania farmers. 

“They definitely took money directly out of farmers’ pockets,” Humes said. “When we look at moving forward, if we go back and we do that again, we’re probably going to get the same result. We’re going to lose markets. It’s going to drive up our costs.” 

“The tariffs, they didn’t work, and they’re not going to work this time either,” Humes said.