{"id":198305,"date":"2026-08-22T21:49:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/198305\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:49:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:49:43","slug":"vance-visits-ohio-steel-plant-where-his-grandfather-worked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/198305\/","title":{"rendered":"Vance visits Ohio steel plant where his grandfather worked"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Vice President JD Vance<\/a> returned to his hometown<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Vance has highlighted his Rust Belt roots<\/a> while trying to boost GOP candidates<\/a> ahead of the November midterm elections. He has focused on promoting the Trump administration\u2019s economic policies and efforts to try to expand U.S. manufacturing. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cPapaw was a welder in this place for 40 years, and today his grandson stands here as the vice president of these United States. It\u2019s an amazing thing,\u201d Vance said. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Vance says Trump is trying to reverse decades of \u2018American decline\u2019<\/p>\n

As they\u2019ve campaigned this year, Vance, more than President Donald Trump, has acknowledged Americans\u2019 cost-of-living concerns, seeking to assure voters that the administration is working to reverse high prices, though he didn\u2019t offer specifics. <\/p>\n

The vice president said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of work to do\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s going to be easy or it\u2019s all going to happen overnight,\u201d but he said Trump was trying to reverse \u201c40 years of American decline.\u201d He pointed to Trump\u2019s immigration and trade policies, including his tariffs, as trying to protect jobs like those at the steel plant. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tariff policies, though, have contributed to the higher costs Americans are facing, as taxes on imports have raised the price of imported products<\/a> as well as those made domestically, according to the Congressional Budget Office. <\/p>\n

With an eye toward Ohio\u2019s competitive elections, Vance focused on portraying Democrats today as unrecognizable to the party his grandfather supported for its union associations, calling it the \u201cparty of graduate students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance said his grandfather also thought \u201cway too many politicians were just plain old corrupt.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\u201cHe hated the people who forgot about this town when they should have been fighting for this town,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ca lot of cartels\u201d and \u201cthe fentanyl trade,\u201d which he said came along with \u201csome innocent people\u201d across the border.<\/p>\n

Vance has deep ties to the town and the steel plant<\/p>\n

In his bestselling memoir \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d Vance described the steel plant as an economic savior that brought his grandparents from Kentucky\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

His grandson\u2019s election as vice president of the United States spurred pride in the Midwestern city, though Vance has faced some pushback<\/a> on his portrayal of it in the book. He said kids \u201cderisively called it \u2018Middletucky\u2019\u201d 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, \u201cMountain Dew mouth\u201d and problematic fathers. <\/p>\n

In the 2024 election, Trump and Vance won about 62% of the vote in the city\u2019s precincts. His mother, Beverly Aikins, and his sister still live in Middletown.<\/p>\n

Before he arrived at the steel plant, he first stopped by a pastry shop to buy doughnuts and remind workers there of the \u201cno tax on tips\u201d provision in the tax and spending law Trump signed last year, according to a video posted online by an aide.<\/p>\n

After the event, Vance visited a Cincinnati chili restaurant where he served beers and Cincinnati chili-topped dogs with cheese to people gathered inside. <\/p>\n

\u201cNice pour, JD!\u201d someone shouted. \u201cI\u2019ll take a beer back here,\u201d called another.<\/p>\n

Ohio has lost its political bellwether status and turned red during the Trump era, but Democrats see a chance to win both the governor\u2019s office and a U.S. Senate seat from Republican hands this year as anti-Trump sentiment buoys their party.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Brown has capitalized on public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers in the campaign and aired ads calling Husted the \u201cface of data centers in Ohio.\u201d The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP\u2019s Senate campaign arm, warned in a memo<\/a> this week that backlash to the centers has left Husted vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Vance ally, is the party\u2019s nominee for governor in a race against Democrat Amy Acton. Democrats have not won the Ohio governor\u2019s office in two decades.<\/p>\n

Husted and Ramaswamy both spoke before Vance on Friday, as did U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.<\/p>\n

Vance, whose family still keeps a home in Cincinnati where they sometimes spend weekends, was making his first public visit since his fourth child<\/a> was born in July.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Price reported from Washington. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Vice President JD Vance returned to his hometown on Friday to campaign for Republican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[119],"tags":[4991,34529,24809,88622,474,3792,12,8620,1065,1665,7167,2758,169,88621,168,34528,12232,55483,4257,7177,3789,40979,51,34532,1049,6844,681,6238,3773,28530,1194],"class_list":["post-198305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jd-vance","tag-2026-elections","tag-amy-acton","tag-bernie-moreno","tag-beverly-aikins","tag-business","tag-christopher-wright","tag-donald-trump","tag-economic-policy","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-government-policy","tag-international-trade","tag-james-david-vance","tag-james-vance","tag-jd-vance","tag-jon-husted","tag-manufacturing-sector","tag-matthew-dunlap","tag-midterm-elections","tag-oh-state-wire","tag-ohio","tag-paul-lepage","tag-politics","tag-sherrod-brown","tag-taxes","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-u-s-republican-party","tag-united-states-government","tag-vivek-ramaswamy","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}