Vance Criticizes Harris in First Solo Campaign Stops as Trump’s Running Mate

 

Vance Criticizes Harris in First Solo Campaign Stops as Trump’s Running Mate

 

JD Vance stumped in Ohio and Virginia on Monday, in a race suddenly scrambled by President Biden’s announcement that he would not stand for re-election.

 

Michael C. Bender

By Michael C. Bender

Reporting from Middletown, Ohio, and Radford, Va.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/22/us/politics/vance-trump-rallies.html

July 22, 2024

 

In JD Vance’s first solo day of campaigning as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, the Ohio senator questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s appreciation for the United States and chastised her fellow Democrats for supporting President Biden “until he became political deadweight.”

 

“If you want to lead this country, you should feel grateful for it, you should feel a sense of gratitude,” Mr. Vance said Monday. “And I never hear that gratitude coming through when I listen to Kamala Harris.”

 

Mr. Vance’s speech in southwest Ohio — and similar remarks later in Virginia — came the day after President Biden announced on Sunday he would not seek a second term.

 

Mr. Biden stepped down just a week after Mr. Vance was named former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, which the Ohio senator joked was like a bait-and-switch. Mr. Vance said he had expected to join a vice-presidential debate against Ms. Harris, but she is now widely expected to take over as her party’s presidential nominee.

 

“I was told I was going to get to debate Kamala Harris,” Mr. Vance said in Ohio. “Now President Trump is going to get to debate her?”

 

Mr. Vance spoke in Ohio at Middletown High School, where he graduated in 2003, and later at Radford University, a public college in the corner of southwest Virginia that overlaps with Appalachia, where Mr. Trump’s brand of grievance-based politics has resonated.

 

Mr. Vance’s addition to the Republican ticket was a bet by Mr. Trump that together they can drive more white, working-class voters to the polls in battlegrounds like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and make other states more competitive, such as Virginia, where Mr. Trump lost by 10 percentage points four years ago.

 

Mr. Vance opened his speech in Radford by telling more than 1,000 supporters that he “grew up in a place a lot like this one.” He spent much of his time talking about his biography and the lessons he learned growing up in southwest Ohio and on trips to rural Kentucky with his grandmother to visit extended family. That experience was at the core of his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

 

In Ohio, Mr. Vance called for ramping up domestic energy production and manufacturing but offered few details on how he would accomplish those goals other than asking supporters to vote “the current crop of crazies out of there and replace them with President Trump.”

 

“We’re going to fight for every single worker in this country,” Mr. Vance said. “Work hard and play by the rules — you get a good life, it’s that simple.”

 

In Ohio, several thousand supporters lined up early to give their native son a warm welcome, including Stephanie Baker, 51, who grew up in the same neighborhood. She said she was thrilled to have someone from her hometown on the Republican presidential ticket.

 

“I am a Republican, but I am more excited now that JD is on the ticket,” said Ms. Baker, a nurse. “That means more to me and gives me a lot of confidence in the future.”

 

Mr. Vance, who will turn 40 next week, is among the youngest Americans ever nominated to a presidential ticket. His youth and relative inexperience in politics — he was sworn in to his first elected office last year — immediately made him an intriguing figure in a race featuring an 81-year-old incumbent and a 78-year-old challenger.

 

In the aftermath of Mr. Biden’s sudden exit from the race, Mr. Vance’s performance on the trail will draw even more interest as Republicans scramble to take aim at a new political target: Ms. Harris, whom Mr. Biden endorsed to take his place at the top of the Democratic ticket.

 

Not everyone welcomed the hometown candidate in Ohio. The Butler County Democratic Party organized a protest of Mr. Vance’s event that drew about a dozen people, including Carolyn Dell-Patrick, who said Mr. Vance’s memoir was an unfair portrayal of their shared hometown.

 

“He made our town sound like a hillbilly haven, and it’s not true,” said Ms. Dell-Patrick, 73, a lifelong Middletown resident.

 

Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Virginia Democratic Party, said Mr. Vance’s conservative positions would do little to help the blue-collar workers he has vowed to support.

 

“As someone born and raised in Appalachia, I know two things about JD Vance: He forgot where he came from and he doesn’t care about working-class people,” Ms. Swecker said. “His extremism isn’t welcome here in Virginia, and we’re going to make sure to defeat him and Trump in November — just like we did last time.”

 

Kevin Williams contributed reporting.

 

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections. More about Michael C. Bender