Volant farmer to speak at DNC on why he’s switching to Biden
A Lawrence County farmer who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and says the president’s trade war has threatened the existence of his thirdgeneration family farm will speak at the Democratic National Convention which begins Monday.
Rick Telesz, a 62-year-old dairy and soybean farmer who runs Telesz Family Farm in Volant, was tapped by the Democrats to speak as part of their convention program highlighting Americans from different backgrounds and political affiliations across the U.S.
A registered Democrat who said he’s never voted a straight ticket, Mr. Telesz voted for Barack Obama twice before casting a ballot for Mr. Trump in 2016, convinced that the real estate businessman would “drain the swamp” and “look after the working man.”
“He’s a hell of a salesman,” Mr. Telesz said.
“And a tremendous con man,” he added. “He conned me.”
Insisting that his farm has been shaken by retaliatory Chinese tariffs that were a direct consequence of the president’s trade war, Mr. Telesz said he will vote for Democrat Joe Biden this November.
Mr. Telesz is expected to address the virtual convention and make the case that Mr. Trump, over four years, “has not done anything positive” for
average Americans.
Mr. Telesz, a father of three who calls farming a “lifestyle” and not just a living, said that because of the trade war, farmers are running on the equity they’ve built up over the years — but “eventually, that will run dry.” If he cannot make a profit and invest in new equipment, his farm will become obsolete and no longer be competitive, he said.
“Is farming going to disappear tomorrow? No,” Mr. Telesz said. “But if these trends continue, I could very possibly be the last generation on this family farm.
“It will disappear,” he added. “It cannot sustain.”
In an op-ed published late last year in USA Today, Mr. Telesz wrote that his 750acre farm — which typically operates on margins of 1% to 2% — had suffered 20% losses. He urged the president to “account for the damage already done,” noting that as he exports 100% of his beans, the volume of soybean exports to China dropped 74% in a single year.
“Instead of bringing down tariffs, at best we have seen temporary pauses and at worst we’ve seen tariffs go even higher,” Mr. Telesz wrote. “Instead of delivering open markets, we’ve been given Band-Aid subsidies that fail to stem the bleeding.”
The “little bit” the government has thrown their way in subsidies, he said, has been enough to pay the bills and keep the bankers away, but it isn’t enough to operate on and expand.
Mr. Trump has said that because of his new approach to trade, the U.S. has “done things to China that nobody else has done to China, or even thought of doing — with 25% tariffs and taking in billions and billions of dollars — tens of billions of dollars.”
“We took in billions and billions of dollars. They devalued their currency. And, you know, they like to say our people paid. No, no, no. Our people didn’t pay,” Mr. Trump said in a speech in June. “They devalued their currency in order to pay it, and they also put money out there — otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to sell their product.
“But what happened for many years — there is nobody ever that ripped off the United States like China. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody,” the president added.
Having Mr. Telesz and other regular Americans speak at the four-night Democratic convention, which begins Monday, fulfills the party’s goals of “[including] more Americans than ever before and [ensuring] that all Americans see themselves reflected in what they [are] viewing,” program executive Stephanie Cutter said in a statement.
That portion of the speaker lineup also will include a Milwaukee teacher who is “concerned for her students’ safety and well-being” as schools reopen in the midst of the pandemic, a Nevada cancer survivor who will vote for Mr. Biden because of the Affordable Care Act, and an Indiana woman whose son was shot in 2014 and who operates a nonprofit that helps families and survivors of gun violence, according to a DNC release.
Mr. Telesz said his message to the country is that in 2016, he and other voters hired Mr. Trump to run the country for four years — a task that he’s failed at doing successfully.
“Why would I want to give him a contract for another four years?” Mr. Telesz asked. “This guy has not done anything positive for me.”