NEWARK — J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, told a Newark audience on Wednesday we should be more focused on the border with Mexico and recent truckers’ protest in Canada than the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” criticized Democrats, some Republicans and major U.S. corporations who bow to liberal demands, and praised former President Donald Trump at a campaign stop at Cherry Valley Hotel. He has crisscrossed the state the last six weeks in his first-ever run for political office.
The Middletown native who now lives in Cincinnati, seeks to replace two-term Republican incumbent Rob Portman, who will not seek a third term. He spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving in Iraq and Haiti. He graduated from The Ohio State University, received his law degree from Yale Law School, and became a investor in Silicon Valley.
“I look at this country and I’m really worried about it,” Vance said. “We have real problems in this country, and we don’t have people interested in solving them.”
His primary election opponents include former state treasurer Josh Mandel, former Ohio Republican Party chairwoman Jane Timken, investment banker Mike Gibbons and State Sen. Matt Dolan.
Vance, who made his comments before Russia’s invasion escalated beyond two separatist areas that Russian President Vladimir Putin declared independent, said he’s more concerned about the drug trafficking and sex trafficking coming across the border with Mexico.
“Right now, we have a wide-open U.S. southern border,” Vance said. “Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are coming across the border every single month.
“And what are we talking about? We’re talking about a border 5,000 miles away between Ukraine and Russia. That’s what our leaders are focused on. If we had leaders half as concerned about their own border as they were about the Ukraine-Russia border, we would not have a border crisis in this country.”
Vance said he believes Trump was being tongue-in-cheek when he praised Vladimir Putin’s moves into Ukraine as “genius,” but added that President Joe Biden’s weakness allowed the situation to deteriorate.
“I took them almost tongue in cheek, a little bit, but I think Trump is right that Putin realizes that with Biden as president he’s got a longer leash,” Vance said. “I think bullies respect strength. They don’t respect weakness and at the end of the day, Putin sees Biden as a weak president that he can take advantage of.”
Vance responded to a recent Gibbons television ad claiming Vance was not a true Trump supporter and once called him an “idiot,” and his policies “immoral and absurd.”
“I didn’t like Trump six years ago,” Vance said. “I like him now because I think he was a great president. It’s pretty much that simple.
Vance was asked about the truckers’ protest against COVID vaccine mandates in Canada, where government officials invoked emergency powers to shut down what they called an illegal occupation in the capital of Ottawa.
“It’s weird to me that our leaders are so obsessed with Vladimir Putin 6,000 miles away, when what Justin Trudeau did to Canadians 300 miles away is a hell of a lot more scary to me and a hell of a lot closer to home,” Vance said.
He said he does not think vaccines work and the decision to take them should be a personal choice. He shared that his father contracted COVID and got pretty sick, acknowledging “we were pretty worried about him.”
“His doctor said you came through it OK,” Vance said. “You’ve got the antibodies. If you don’t want to take the vaccine, you shouldn’t take the vaccine.
“They make sense for some people and they don’t make sense for other people. That’s why it should be your individual choice to take the vaccine. We know they don’t prevent the transmission of COVID. If they prevented the transmission of coronavirus, we wouldn’t have coronavirus anymore.”
Medical experts have stated the vaccines are effective, noting that almost all those who are hospitalized and die from COVID are non-vaccinated.
Vance shared his experience growing up in Middletown when middle-class jobs left the community and families struggled. He said our leaders let those manufacturing jobs go to China and Mexico.
“When mom or dad loses their job, then the parents start to fight a little bit and then divorce happens and then families tear apart, and drugs move in,” Vance said. “There’s a lot of things that happen to a town when prosperity starts to disappear.
“That happened in Middletown, but it’s happened all across the state of Ohio. It’s happened in Toledo. It’s happened in Youngstown. That really is the story of my family.”
kmallett@newarkadvocate.com
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Twitter: @kmallett1958
That’s what he said
On the Second Amendment: “It looks they’re collecting a new database of lawful gun purchases for every citizen in this country, which is the back door to a gun registry in this country, which means effectively the end of the Second Amendment.”
On campaign ups, downs: “By October-November, we had so much momentum. The numbers were moving and things just felt like they were going really well. I was starting to tell people we’re going to run away with this thing. Politics is easy, turns out. Well, it ain’t easy. What happened is $4 million in negative advertising was spent against me.”
On term limits: “I promise I won’t serve more than two terms. We need term limits for the bureaucrats. Anthony Fauci doesn’t need to be serving longer term than Jim Jordan.”
On election fraud: “I’m one of those people who thinks we had serious problems in 2020. Voter ID is how you make sure all those mail-in ballots are not fraudulent. You don’t check where the ballots come from. We need to go back to having an Election Day, not an election season. A six-week election period makes it easier to cheat.”
On Ukraine (as of Wednesday): “What should happen, in a perfect world, you could find some diplomatic solution, Russia doesn’t go much further, and nobody dies. I think what likely will happen is he’ll probably annex a couple pieces of the eastern part of the country into Russia and then it’ll stop there.”
