Rural Mass. retailer under fire after posing with Trump and order undermining Affordable Care Act

Dave Ratner is second from left; Sen. Rand Paul is at right. (AP photo by Mandel Ngan)

When the owner of some rural Massachusetts pet-and-beverage stores was invited to the White House for a photo opportunity with President Trump, he thought it was a reward for his years of lobbying to get more flexibility for small businesses like his in the health-insurance market. It was, but that's not all it turned out to be. Now it is a public-relations nightmare, due to social media and the strong opinions about Trump.

Dave Ratner has owned Dave's Soda and Pet City for 42 years, a small chain with locations around small-town New England (Stafford Springs, Conn., and Agawam, Ware, Northampton, Ludlow, and Hadley, Mass.) "Ratner attended President Trump’s signing Thursday of an executive order authorizing changes to the Affordable Care Act designed to create cheaper — and less comprehensive — health insurance plans. An Associated Press photograph of the event, with Ratner smiling broadly behind Trump, has come back to haunt him," Laurie Loisel reports for The Boston Globe.

The photo brought Ratner criticism on social media, a wave of angry callers to his shops, long-time customers swearing off shopping at his stores, and some circulating petitions calling for boycotts. Ratner called it the "worst two days of my life."

Ratner, who says he is not a Trump supporter, said he was invited because he's actively lobbied Washington as member of the National Retail Federation. "For years through this federation, his company and others negotiated for cheaper group-insurance rates, giving them some of the advantages large companies have," Loisel reports. "With the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, this negotiating power vanished. Since then, he has trekked to Washington, D.C., annually, talking to anyone who will listen about how unfair that is."

Two weeks ago, the federation called Ratner and invited him to a ceremony where, they said, Trump would sign an order restoring that negotiating power back to small businesses. Ratner says he was happy to hear it, but didn't realize exactly what the signing meant, and didn't dig further into it. "I absolutely abhor what he did, and I would not have been there had I known what was happening," Ratner told the Globe. He has hired a Boston public-relations firm to rebuild his company's image. "It was 42 years of building a wonderful brand, and having it destroyed in one day," he said.