They came in dark-colored sedans, beat-up pick-up trucks, and shiny SUVs, with trunks popped up or windows rolled down. Hundreds of residents from all corners of Dayton — elderly vets, young families, single men and women, disabled individuals — in anticipation of getting a laminated orange card allowing them to pick up a week’s worth of groceries. The cars filled a side street in a residential corner of east Dayton, a largely derelict and warehouse-ridden neighborhood in this post-industrial city.

“I think we’re going to serve over 1,000 families today,” says Nicole Adkins, who sports reddish-brown hair and a dark red shirt emblazoned with the word “Faith.” Adkins is the founder of With God’s Grace, a 4-year-old mobile pantry that serves low-income neighborhoods in Dayton and surrounding areas.

As Adkins surveys the growing line of cars now snaking around the block, she explains there will be two more drive-throughs this week in different parts of the city. Once a grocery-style pantry where people could walk up, With God’s Grace now serves only those with access to a car and hands out pre-arranged boxes of food to prevent cross-contamination. Volunteers go through a temperature check and wear gloves.

“It is what it is, but we’re signing them in and moving them up,” Adkins says of the long queue. She notes that demand has more than doubled since local restaurants, bars and other entertainment hubs have closed down to adhere with public health guidelines.

Adkins, who started the pantry out of her own house in 2015, represents a certain kind of working-class Ohioan with a scrappy, do-it-yourself attitude and an earnest willingness to address social issues outside the distractions of politics. Day-to-day problems like the growing numbers of hungry Ohioans who come to Adkins’ door as a result of COVID-19 have so far deflected attention from politics in this swing state. As of now the Democratic primary – which will be conducted almost entirely through absentee ballots and has all but been resolved in favor of Joe Biden – is scheduled for April 28. But how the worsening hunger crisis in Ohio is being handled may impact the outcome of the 2020 election in November. For now, local voters overwhelmingly favor state leadership over the federal government in dealing with the pandemic in this key battleground state that went for Donald Trump in 2016.