By MICHELLE L. PRICE and JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance returned to his hometown on Friday to campaign for Republican candidates at the steel plant where his grandfather worked and portray the Democratic Party his Papaw once supported as unrecognizable today.
Vance has highlighted his Rust Belt roots while trying to boost GOP candidates ahead of the November midterm elections. He has focused on promoting the Trump administration’s economic policies and efforts to try to expand U.S. manufacturing.
As he took the stage at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works facility, known as Armco Steel when his grandfather James Vance worked there for nearly 40 years, he remarked on sharing the space where the man whose name he shared once stood.
“Papaw was a welder in this place for 40 years, and today his grandson stands here as the vice president of these United States. It’s an amazing thing,” Vance said.
The Middletown event comes as Vance is expected to ramp up his travel schedule with more public events and fundraisers, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Vance says Trump is trying to reverse decades of ‘American decline’
As they’ve campaigned this year, Vance, more than President Donald Trump, has acknowledged Americans’ cost-of-living concerns, seeking to assure voters that the administration is working to reverse high prices, though he didn’t offer specifics.
The vice president said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do” and “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or it’s all going to happen overnight,” but he said Trump was trying to reverse “40 years of American decline.” He pointed to Trump’s immigration and trade policies, including his tariffs, as trying to protect jobs like those at the steel plant.
Trump’s tariff policies, though, have contributed to the higher costs Americans are facing, as taxes on imports have raised the price of imported products as well as those made domestically, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
With an eye toward Ohio’s competitive elections, Vance focused on portraying Democrats today as unrecognizable to the party his grandfather supported for its union associations, calling it the “party of graduate students.”
Vance said his grandfather also thought “way too many politicians were just plain old corrupt.”
“He hated the people who forgot about this town when they should have been fighting for this town,” Vance said.
Vance blamed politicians of both major political parties, saying that for 40 years they espoused policies of free trade and open immigration that led to factory jobs being shipped overseas and an eventual scourge of opioids left behind, which he blamed on “a lot of cartels” and “the fentanyl trade,” which he said came along with “some innocent people” across the border.
Vance has deep ties to the town and the steel plant
In his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance described the steel plant as an economic savior that brought his grandparents from Kentucky’s hills into the American middle class. He described how his grandfather would boast upon seeing an old Ford or Chevy that its steel was made by his company.
His grandson’s election as vice president of the United States spurred pride in the Midwestern city, though Vance has faced some pushback on his portrayal of it in the book. He said kids “derisively called it ‘Middletucky’” when he was a child because it had so many transplants like his family. He said they brought problems with them from Kentucky, such as drug addiction, “Mountain Dew mouth” and problematic fathers.
In the 2024 election, Trump and Vance won about 62% of the vote in the city’s precincts. His mother, Beverly Aikins, and his sister still live in Middletown.
Before he arrived at the steel plant, he first stopped by a pastry shop to buy doughnuts and remind workers there of the “no tax on tips” provision in the tax and spending law Trump signed last year, according to a video posted online by an aide.
After the event, Vance visited a Cincinnati chili restaurant where he served beers and Cincinnati chili-topped dogs with cheese to people gathered inside.
“Nice pour, JD!” someone shouted. “I’ll take a beer back here,” called another.
Ohio has lost its political bellwether status and turned red during the Trump era, but Democrats see a chance to win both the governor’s office and a U.S. Senate seat from Republican hands this year as anti-Trump sentiment buoys their party.
Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to replace Vance in the Senate, is trying to hold on to his seat against a challenge from former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a longtime Ohio politician with a pro-working class message who lost his reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno two years ago.
Brown has capitalized on public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers in the campaign and aired ads calling Husted the “face of data centers in Ohio.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, warned in a memo this week that backlash to the centers has left Husted vulnerable.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a Vance ally, is the party’s nominee for governor in a race against Democrat Amy Acton. Democrats have not won the Ohio governor’s office in two decades.
Husted and Ramaswamy both spoke before Vance on Friday, as did U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Vance, whose family still keeps a home in Cincinnati where they sometimes spend weekends, was making his first public visit since his fourth child was born in July.
As part of his plans for ramping up his travel schedule, his office announced a trip Monday to Brewer, Maine, where former Republican Gov. Paul LePage is running against Democrat Matt Dunlap, the state auditor, in a competitive House district.
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Price reported from Washington.