Republican J.D. Vance Channels his Appalachian Roots in Final Weeks of Ohio Senate Race

APPALACHIAN OHIO — With only two weeks remaining before election Day, J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy author turned Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio, channeled his Appalachian roots, campaigning in Southeast Ohio this past weekend.

In the final stretch of the Ohio Senate race, where Vance and Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan are vying for the open U.S. Senate seat, the Republican made a Southeast Ohio swing, visiting Gallipolis in Gallia county, Chillicothe in Brown county, and Mt. Orab in Ross county.

Throughout the day’s stops, the Buckeye State Republican touched on his roots in Appalachia, where he was raised by his grandmother, and what he hopes to do in the Senate.

Further, when talking about his time growing up in Ohio at one of his stops, he said:

I grew up in a poor family, we did not have a whole lot. But the beautiful thing we had, we had safety and security in our neighborhood because back then… in the 1990s, our leadership decided that you should be able to live in a safe and a secure community, whether you’re rich or poor or black, or white, or whatever.

Regarding policy, Vance hit every topic critical to Americans and Ohioans when speaking to crowds of people.

Vance talked about the “bipartisan” “big mistake” of shipping jobs over to China and, in some cases, Mexico, as well as crime, the U.S.-Mexico border, and inflation, which he attributes mainly to the Democrats shutting down American energy.

On jobs, Vance explained in Gallipolis that the country made a “big mistake” by shipping industrial jobs off of China because it made the country “weaker and more dependent on the communist Chinese,” which benefitted “a very small select group of people who got rich off those deals and got a little bit more power off those deals,” but ultimately was a “lose-lose” situation for “our people,” who lost their good middle-class jobs in the process.

When talking about the same issue later in the day, he argued that “we got to change” from having manufacturing jobs shipped off to China and Mexico and instead bringing them back to the U.S., noting that when you begin to send jobs away, you become “dependent” on them for critical needs, such as pharmaceuticals.

“Even the pharmaceuticals that we put in the bodies of our children are very often made by some foreign power that does not have the best interests of our country in mind,” Vance said.

During the visit to Chillicothe, Vance honed in on crime and what the Democrats’ policies have done to the country, compared to the “safety and security” he spoke about having in his neighborhoods growing up.

Vance discussed what has been happening in America over the last two years — specifically the 2020 Chinese coronavirus lockdowns — to point out the Democrats’ poor policies on crime. He explained that while Americans’ basic ability to leave their homes was restricted, the left was fine with people going out if they were rioting, looting, burning down American cities, or attacking police.

He also alluded to crime, carjackings, and murders becoming more common because of “crazy” policies pursued by the Democrat leadership, such as trying to stip away qualified immunity — which is making police officers afraid to do their jobs — and cashless bail, often freeing criminals just hours after they commit a crime.

“Let’s throw the violent criminals back in prison where they belong. And let’s empower the police to do their job and keep us safe,” Vance stated.

Additionally, Vance touched on the U.S.-Mexico border and drug issues throughout his day of campaigning. In Mt. Orab, he explained that “every single state is a border state” because the millions of illegal aliens coming to the United States threw the “wide open border,” in addition to the fentanyl from the drug cartels.

Looking at the present state of this country through the prism of his own family’s history, the Republican explained that he got a second chance to have a close relationship with his mother — who was once addicted to drugs but has now been clean for seven years — but lamented that he knows people who have not been able to get a second chance because of the “poison that is stalking the streets of America today [that] did not exist on the streets 20 years ago.”

“Joe Biden in Tim Ryan refused to do their job; it closed down that southern border and keep us safe,” Vance stated. “I’ve got a very simple proposal. Let’s build that border wall. Let’s empower Border Patrol to do their job. And let’s stop the nonstop flow of illegal immigration.”

Later, Vance added, “So to all the people who say why do you care about the southern border from Ohio, we care about [it] because we love our own people. And we want leadership that puts our citizens first now [instead of] the Mexican drug cartel.”

Discussing inflation, Vance emphasized throughout the day — but specifically at his stop in Mt. Orab — that a slew of bad policies and spending from the Democrats — such as President Joe Biden and Ryan — have become a “tax on the middle class and is a tax on the people who can least afford to pay.”

Vance emphasized that he is asking for the county to return to “common sense economic policies” and open up Ohio energy markets to bring down costs for all Americans. Focusing on the Buckeye State, he added that it is because “you have the president [of the] United States begging everybody else for energy, instead of relying on Ohio workers in Ohio, we have seated out of the ground, but number one, to get this inflation under control, we’ve got to open back up our own industry in our energy resources.”

He also hammered Ryan for promising not to raise taxes on the middle class but nonetheless voting for excessive spending, causing inflation across the county and “costing the average middle-class family in the state of Ohio about $6,000 a year in lost wages because these [Democrats] have closed down our energy markets and they borrowed money from China and spin it, paying people not to work.”

“So on every single issue, the record that Tim Ryan runs on is totally different from what he’s actually done in Washington, DC,” Vance said of his opponent. “I think the people of Ohio are really waking up to it. But they’re waking up to it. Because all of us have been doing the work.”

Vance said that Ryan’s campaign strategy over the summer was “trying to pretend to be me.”

“Think about it,” Vance asked of the people. “He was tough on crime, even though he voted two years ago to strip the cops of the legal protections that allow them to do their job. He was pro-Ohio energy, even though two years ago, he said we wants to ban gas-powered cars.”

“He also said that we wanted to ban fracking. That’s real bad for Ohio energy” Vance continued. “He says that he wants a middle-class tax cut. And yet, like four weeks ago, he voted to raise the middle class his taxes by $20 billion. And on top of it, he sticks 87,000 IRS agents after working people.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.