As Vance makes vice president debut, his appeal in Upper Midwest is source of debate
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After the Republican convention concludes this week, the first stop for former President Donald Trump and new running mate JD Vance will be a rally in central Michigan.
It’s an indication of the key role that state and the Upper Midwest in particular will play in the Republican campaign calculus going forward, a bet that is also sure to include neighboring Wisconsin and Minnesota. And Vance, a U.S. senator who has roots in southern Ohio, is almost certain to make more stops across the region between now and November.
The Trump campaign views Vance as an asset in parts of the country with big concentrations of blue-collar voters whose political allegiance is in flux.
Vance was preparing to make his national debut on Wednesday night with an address to the Republican National Convention that will serve as an introduction of him to many Americans. Vance, after all, is less than two years into elective office and won’t turn 40 until August.
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“There was a lot of question earlier: What comes after Trump? What’s next?” said Kip Christianson, one of the leaders of Minnesota’s 39-member RNC delegation. “Well, JD Vance is the now.”
Added David Fitzsimmons, another delegate and a veteran political strategist in Minnesota: “I think he’s an exciting new future for the party.”
“He was really at the forefront of laying out how some of the change was happening in rural America and places that have been left behind,” Fitzsimmons continued, “and how they were switching to the Republican Party.”
Vance was raised in Middletown, Ohio, part of the Rust Belt. He enlisted in the Marines, attended Ohio State University and Yale Law School and then found a lucrative path in Silicon Valley. He burst onto the political scene with his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” which won him acclaim among conservatives and roles as a cable TV political commentator.
He ran for the Senate, landing Trump’s backing, and made his way through a crowded field of Republicans to win an open seat in 2022. He wasn’t always fond of Trump, having attacked his character, but more recently was among his most ardent backers.
That role as a Trump convert is among the points being stressed by Vance and the GOP ticket, hoping to convince other voters to give Trump another look.
In early 2022, the Minnesota Republican Party invited Vance to address its annual Lincoln-Reagan fundraising dinner.
It came as Vance was involved in that Ohio Republican primary race and was dealing with fallout from comments he made minimizing Russia’s just-begun invasion of Ukraine. There were objections from some Minnesota Republicans and he was later replaced as a keynote speaker, with the state party citing scheduling conflicts.
Leading Republicans in the state are on board now.
Minnesota U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, offered a resounding endorsement soon after the selection, calling Vance “a champion of conservative values, an ardent campaigner and an excellent choice for vice president.”
Emmer sat next to and chatted with Vance on Tuesday night in a VIP box at the convention arena in Milwaukee.
Minnesota U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber blasted out a fundraising email with Trump and Vance pictured and urged recipients to show their support.
Svetlana Jones, a convention delegate who at 18 will cast her first presidential vote this year, is enthusiastic about having a younger politician on the ticket.
“Our party has a lot more older people,” she said. “I think that it’s great for young kids to see. Hey, there are young people actually in the Republican Party, and I think they’ll be more willing to join.”
Minnesota Democrats are also anxious to weigh in on Vance.
Gov. Tim Walz was in Milwaukee on Wednesday to offer the Democratic appraisal of the convention and the new Republican ticket. He put the focus on prior Vance calls to dramatically restrict abortion and to pull back on America’s international security alliances.
Walz called Vance the “perfect Frankenstein monster created by the Heritage Foundation.” That’s a conservative group pushing policy blueprints should Trump and Republicans sweep to power.
Walz said having come from rural America himself — he grew up in a tiny Nebraska town, he read Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” about his rise from Appalachia and found it dismissive and derogatory.
“The things that make small towns work was not in ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’ It should be ‘Mind your own damn business.’ That’s how small towns work,” Walz said. “They work because you respect your neighbor, and you understand their choices, who they marry, their own healthcare decisions, what books they read.”
DFL Party Chair Ken Martin went further in trying to define Vance.
“JD Vance is really even further to the right than Donald Trump in most cases,” Martin said, listing LGBTQ+ and abortion rights as areas where he thinks Vance could face backlash.
Among Republicans who don’t want America to pull back from international alliances, there is also nervousness. Vance was a loud critic of U.S. financial support to Ukraine in its war with Russia and has taken other isolationist positions against the U.S. intervening abroad.
For all the attention the selection has received, there is debate over whether Vance or vice presidential picks in general move the needle for undecided voters.
That’s especially the case in a year when Trump, a former president, is running against a sitting president, Joe Biden — a contest that is unprecedented in modern times. Both are universally known and both are political lightning rods.
So many voters have their minds made up already.