A Pennsylvania farming family redefines 'conservative'

Mary Mellinger lugged a large white cooler up a steep sidewalk from her stand at Lancaster Central Market to her electric car. She had finished a nine-hour shift on her feet.

Though tired, her day had just begun.

“We start milking the goats at four,” she said as she closed down her goat-cheese stand at three in the afternoon. The market is nearly 300 years old, and Mary has been selling her family farm products there for 15 years.

Lancaster, a large rural county in eastern Pennsylvania, is home to the largest Amish community in the United States. In this swing state, Lancaster county rarely ever switches parties. In presidential elections, it religiously votes for the Republican nominee. Mary, 61, fit that profile for most of her life, but as the political landscape has changed, her politics no longer align with her county's majority.

"We are very traditional," Mary said. "We lead a very traditional life. We have very traditional values. But what is going on politically does not align with our morals."

Since 1992, Pennsylvania has consistently voted for the Democratic nominee, with the exception of former President Donald Trump, who won the state by roughly 45,000 votes in 2016. Four years later, in 2020, the state flipped again, and President Biden won it by about 80,000 votes, according to Pennsylvania voting results data.

Despite is voting history, Biden did cut into the margins in Lancaster County in 2020, and Vice President Harris will need to do the same in Pennsylvania's rural counties to win the state.

On the 20-minute drive up to Mary’s farm, Trump signs were sprinkled throughout town like confetti.

Mary and her husband, Andrew Mellinger, 63, own Linden Dale Farm, a small goat farm in the middle of an unincorporated farming community. At first glance, Mary and Andrew are the ideal Lancaster family: they label themselves as conservatives, regularly attend church, and happily make a living on their farm.

But they are more than meets the eye. They're conservatives — but won't vote Republican. They didn't explicitly say whether they will vote for Harris, either. They attend a Mennonite church and both have Ivy League agriculture degrees from Cornell University.

“We're very conservative, but this [county] is Republican, Republican, Republican,” Mary said. “But for us, we’re just most concerned about the values."

Back at Linden Dale Farm, there are no signs or big, bold and red flags. It’s breeding season in their world.

Mary and Andrew own about 100 Lamancha goats, including three bucks for breeding. The remaining 90 females are milked twice a day to meet the demand for their goat cheese at the market, where they make all their farm sales.

The Mellingers are self-sufficient, producing much of their own meat and seasonal produce. But affordable health care is one of their main issues.

In Lancaster, residents are more likely to be uninsured compared to the national average. Mary and Andrew can only afford health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, enacted in 2010 to make healthcare more affordable and accessible for low-income families and uninsured people.

“It’s pretty scary with the cost of healthcare and insurance,” Mary said. “We certainly don't want that [Obamacare] to go away. That's been a real blessing. And actually, there were many years when we did not have insurance.”

Mary and Andrew have six children, and each time they were expecting, they sought out health insurance, put money aside to afford it, and immediately got off of it once their children were born. Their children were insured by the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.

In 2020, Pennsylvania began its own health insurance marketplace, commonly known as Pennie, which was signed into law to meet the needs of Pennsylvanians. It includes the 10 essential health benefits established in the Affordable Care Act.

During his presidency, Trump made an effort to repeal and replace Obamacare but was unsuccessful. This year, while campaigning, he has made sweeping promises to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, without detailing any specific plans.

Andrew says he’s nostalgic about what the Republican Party once represented. As a young man, he supported the party because he believed it advocated for small government, but he feels the GOP abandoned that sentiment long ago.

As the seasons change, so do Andrew and Mary. Their ability to adapt is key to their success financially and personally. But their neighbors and family members are less receptive to change, they said.

“It’s painful," Mary said. "People that we love are just believing anything,”

They have reached a point where they’ve stopped discussing politics with anyone outside of their immediate family. Politics has become exhausting for the couple, who try to create and keep peace in their world.

More than half of American adults feel angry and exhausted when thinking about U.S. politics, according to a Pew Research report. And when asked to describe the current political climate, 80% used negative terms like “divisive,” “corrupt,” and “messy.”

“I think both sides of the aisle don't really want to talk about it because they don't want to give up family relationships,” Andrew said. “You don’t want to ruffle feathers.”

Their two oldest sons, Andy Jr. and Abe Mellinger, will purchase the farm by the end of the year and carry the family business into a seventh generation.

Abe and Andy aren’t too different from their parents. They also attended Cornell University and received agriculture degrees. Less than one in 10 farmers have degrees in their field, and the group's average education level is a high school diploma or equivalent.

The divide between white voters with and without college degrees has been one of the most visible divides in recent years.

In 2016, Trump won white voters with college degrees in five of the seven key swing states — Pennsylvania, along with Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. But in 2020, Biden won white voters with degrees in six of those seven states.

Even so, the majority of voters in three key swing states — Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — are white people without college degrees, a group Trump appeals to by tapping into cultural resentment and unresolved grievances.

“We’re kind of unicorns in our community,” Abe said.

As he steps into the family business and carries the legacy of farming in Lancaster into the next generation, he hopes to inspire his peers to embrace change.

“Change is what makes this possible.”

The radio version of this story was edited by Jan Johnson and produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital story was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi.