INDIANAPOLIS (NETWORK INDIANA) – U.S. Senator Mike Braun, R-Ind., is leading the Indiana gubernatorial race with less than 50 days until Election Day, according to a new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey.
The poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted earlier this month, shows that over 45% support Braun for governor in November.
Braun announced his candidacy in December 2022 and is running with Micah Beckwith, a local pastor and podcast host, as his running mate.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When it comes to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s name, it’s complicated.
The senator from Ohio introduced himself to the world in 2016 when he published his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” under the name J.D. Vance — “like jay-dot-dee-dot,” he wrote, short for James David. In the book, he explained that this was not the first iteration of his name. Nor would it be the last.
Over the course of his 39 years, Vance’s first, middle and last names have all been altered in one way or another. As Vance is being introduced to voters across the country as Donald Trump’s new running mate, his name has been the source of both curiosity and questions — including why he no longer uses periods in JD.
He was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1984, his middle and last names the same as his biological father, Donald Bowman. His parents split up “around the time I started walking,” he writes. When he was about 6, his mother, Beverly, married for the third time. He was adopted by his new stepfather, Robert Hamel, and his mother renamed him James David Hamel.
When his mother erased Donald Bowman from his and her lives, the adoption process also erased the name James Donald Bowman from the public record. The only birth certificate for Vance on file at Ohio’s vital statistics office reads James David Hamel, according to information provided by the state.
Beverly kept the boy’s initials the same, since he went universally by J.D., Vance explains in the book. He didn’t buy his mother’s story that he was named for his uncle David, though. “Any old D name would have done, so long as it wasn’t Donald,” he wrote.
Vance spent more than two decades as James David “J.D.” Hamel. It’s the name by which he graduated from Middletown High School, served in Iraq as a U.S. Marine (officially, Cpl. James D. Hamel), earned a political science degree at The Ohio State University and blogged his ruminations as a 26-year-old student at Yale Law School. Those facts are borne out in documentation provided by those entities upon request, or otherwise publicly available, and were confirmed by campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk.
But the situation gnawed at him, particularly after his mother and adoptive father divorced.
“I shared a name with no one I really cared about (which bothered me already), and with Bob gone, explaining why my name was J.D. Hamel would require a few additional awkward moments,” he writes in “Hillbilly Elegy.” “Yeah, my legal father’s last name is Hamel. You haven’t met him because I don’t see him. No, I don’t know why I don’t see him. Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.”
So he decided to change his name again, to Vance — the last name of his beloved Mamaw, the grandmother who raised him.
It didn’t happen on his wedding day in 2014, as the book implies, but in April 2013, as he was about to graduate from Yale, Van Kirk said. It felt right to take the name of the woman who raised him before dying in 2005, as he was putting the struggles of his early life behind him and launching into this new phase.
“Throughout his tumultuous childhood, Mamaw — or Bonnie Blanton Vance — raised JD and was always his north star,” Van Kirk said in a statement. “It only felt right to him to take Vance as his last name.”
Claiming the Vance name also served to tie JD more clearly to what he writes was “hillbilly royalty” on his grandfather’s side not long before he would release a book opining on hillbilly culture. A distant cousin to his Papaw, also named James Vance, married into the McCoy-hating Hatfield family and committed a murder that “kicked off one of the most famous family feuds in American history,” Vance wrote in his book.
Vance achieved a clean slate of sorts with his new name, just as he was entering his career as a lawyer and author. Besides being the name on his book, it’s the name he used to register for the bar, to marry, to enter the world of venture capital in the Silicon Valley and as he became a father.
But there was one more name alteration to come.
When Vance jumped into politics in July 2021, he had removed the periods from J.D. He’d often used this shorthand, JD, over his lifetime.
Asked by The Associated Press at the time if this was a formal change, or merely stylistic, his campaign said it was how Vance preferred to be referred to in print. He has maintained the usage as a U.S. senator, referring to himself as JD Vance on his Senate website, in press releases and in certain campaign and business filings.
The nominee’s legal name today is James David Vance. The AP, whose industry-standard AP Stylebook advises to generally call people by the name they prefer, honors his request to go by JD with no periods.
INDIANAPOLIS (NETWORK INDIANA) — Property tax increases have been something Hoosiers have been dealing with for the last couple of years.
Some Hoosiers, especially senior citizens who are retired, have been priced out of their homes due to massive increases based on the latest appraisals of their property by the state.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is running for governor, told WIBC’s “Kendal and Casey Show” on Friday that he has a plan to give Hoosiers a lot of relief from rising property taxes.
“Government, at the local level, should never grow faster than the ability of a taxpayer to pay for it,” Braun said. “This is to acknowledge that (property taxes) got completely out of hand.”
Braun has released what he calls a blueprint for property tax reform in the state of Indiana. At the core of the plan is a push to return property tax rates, as well as bills, to 2021 levels. Furthermore, he wants to cap property taxes at no more than two-percent of a home’s assessed property value for senior citizens and no more than three-percent for younger homeowners.
“This is going more than just attacking a rate or the assessment,” Braun clarified. “It is the bill that everyone is interested in. This is going to take your tax BILLS back to that level.”
Braun’s plan would also allow homeowners to “deduct 60-percent of their home’s assessed value from their tax bill.”
Overall, he said these reforms will result in an immediate 21-percent tax cut for Hoosiers.
Finally, Braun said his plan would also help ensure more transparency when it comes to the referendum process on the local level when it comes to property tax increases. The plan would require that referendums, such as those pushed by local school boards, only take place during “high-turnout elections”. Braun said many property tax increases are passed during low-turnout elections when transparency about them is lacking.
“Nothing is more important than ensuring Hoosiers can afford to live in their homes without being overburdened by rising property taxes,” Braun said. “My plan focuses on capping property tax increases, updating deductions, increasing transparency, and reforming the referendum process.”
ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.
The endorsement, announced Friday morning in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris continues to build momentum as the party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.
It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those same barriers at the presidential rank.
“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.
Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.
“This is going to be historic,” she added.
Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.
“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.
The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Harris formally — a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.
According to an Associated Press survey, Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.
Biden endorsed Harris within an hour of announcing his decision last Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.
The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the president’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers but he operated quietly.
Barack Obama’s initial statement after Biden’s announcement did not mention Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.
Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former president’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Harris’ campaign.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris told members of the historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta on Wednesday that “we are not playing around” and asked for their help in electing her president in November.
“In this moment, I believe we face a choice between two different visions for our nation, one focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” she said in a speech three days after launching her bid for the White House. “And with your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”
Voters in Indiana haven’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 16 years. But Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian descent, was speaking to a group already excited by her historic status as the likely Democratic nominee and one that her campaign hopes can expand its coalition.
On Wednesday, she thanked the room full of women for their work electing her vice president, and Joe Biden president. “And now, in this moment, our nation needs your leadership once again,” she said.
In a memo released Wednesday, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon pointed to support among female, nonwhite and younger voters as critical to success.
“Where Vice President Harris goes, grassroots enthusiasm follows,” O’Malley Dillon wrote. “This campaign will be close, it will be hard fought, but Vice President Harris is in a position of strength — and she’s going to win.”
Still, Democrats face challenges as the country is nursing frustrations over higher prices following a spike in inflation, while Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, survived a recent assassination attempt that further energized his already loyal base. But the memo was more optimistic than the narrow path the campaign saw after the 81-year-old Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance in June. He quit the race on Sunday.
Harris mentioned he’d be addressing the nation later Wednesday on why he decided to step aside, and called him a “leader with a bold vision.”
“We are all deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation,” she said before turning to contrast the administration’s agenda with that of Trump’s.
“These extremists want to take us back, but we are not going back,” she said. “All across our nation we are witnessing a full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights.”
She cited the freedom to vote, to be safe from gun violence, to love whom you want to love openly, to “learn and acknowledge our true and full history,” and the freedom “of a woman to make decisions about her body and not have her government telling her what to do.”
Trump unleashed a barrage of attack lines on Harris during a rally in Charlotte, calling her his “new victim to defeat” and accusing her of deceiving the public about Biden’s health and ability to run for a second term. Trump referred to Harris as “Lyin’ Kamala” — repeatedly mispronouncing her first name — and said she is “the most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history.”
Harris landed in Houston later Wednesday, visiting the city’s emergency operations center to discuss the ongoing recovery efforts following Hurricane Beryl and to thank emergency management and first responders. She watched Biden’s Oval Office speech from Houston.
On Thursday, she’s speaking at the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers, which has endorsed her candidacy.
While the campaign will keep emphasizing what it calls its Blue Wall of states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — to get the needed 270 electoral votes, Harris hopes to be competitive in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada as well.
Trump has generally run stronger with white voters who do not hold a college degree. AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of voters and nonvoters that aims to tell the story behind election results, found that group made up 43% of all voters in 2020 and Trump won them by a margin of 62% to 37%, even though overall he lost the election.
For Democrats, Black women would probably make a fundamental difference in November, and Harris has already shown signs of galvanizing their support.
In the 2020 election, AP VoteCast found that Black women were just 7% of the electorate. But 93% of them voted for Biden, helping to give him narrow victories in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
After Harris announced her candidacy, roughly 90,000 Black women logged onto a video call Sunday night for her campaign. It was a sudden show of support for an alumnus of Howard University and sister of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority who has made Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” her walk-on music at events.
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This story has been corrected to show the sorority meets biennially, not annually.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Insisting that “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” President Joe Biden on Wednesday will explain in an Oval Office address his decision to drop his bid for reelection and to throw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
The address offered the public their first chance to hear directly from Biden his rationale for dropping out of the 2024 after weeks of insisting he believed himself to be the best candidate to take on former President Donald Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to the nation’s democracy. It also gave Biden a chance to try to shape how history views his one and only term in office.
“The defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said. “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. And that includes personal ambition.”
Said Biden, “I revere this office, but I love my country more.”
Biden’s candidacy faced a crisis of confidence from Democrats after his abysmal debate against Trump nearly a month ago, where he spoke haltingly, appeared ashen and failed to rebut his predecessor’s attacks. It sparked a mutiny within his party over not just whether he was capable of beating Trump in November, but also whether at 81, he was still fit for the high-pressure job.
Biden tried to outlast the skepticism and quell the concerns with interviews and tepid rallies, but the pressure to step aside only mounted from the party’s political elites and from ordinary voters.
On Sunday afternoon, while isolating at his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home with COVID-19, Biden finally bowed in a letter posted to his account on X announcing his decision to leave the race, followed up later by an endorsement of Harris.
“I have decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” Biden said, saying he wanted to make room for “fresh voices, yes, younger voices.”
He added, “That is the best way to unite our nation.”
Biden’s address was being carried by the major broadcast and cable news networks. He pledge to remain focused on being president until his term expires at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, saying he would work to end the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, fight to boost government support to cure cancer, and call for Supreme Court reform.
The president was hoping to use the address to outline the stakes in the election, which both Biden and Harris have framed as a choice between freedom and chaos, but he tried to steer clear of overt campaigning from his official office and never mentioned Trump by name.
“The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule,” Biden said. “The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America — lies in your hands.”
Biden was also looking to make the case for his legacy of sweeping domestic legislation and the renewal of alliances abroad. The way history will remember his time in office and his historic decision to step aside is intertwined with Harris’ electoral result in November, particularly as the vice president runs tightly on the achievements of the Biden administration.
His advisers say he intends to hold campaign events and fundraisers benefiting Harris, albeit at a far slower pace than if he had remained on the ballot himself.
Harris advisers will ultimately have to decide how to deploy the president, whose popularity sagged as voters in both parties questioned his fitness for office.
Biden, aides say, knows that if Harris loses, he’ll be criticized for staying in the race too long and not giving her or another Democrat time to effectively mount a campaign against Trump. If she wins, she’ll ensure his policy victories are secured and expanded, and he’ll be remembered for a Washingtonian decision to step aside for the next generation of leadership.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that any question of Biden resigning his office — which would allow Harris to run as an incumbent — was “ridiculous.”
Jean-Pierre said Biden has “no regrets” about his decision to stay in the race as long as he did, or his decision to quit it over the weekend. She said Biden’s decision had nothing to do with his health.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will address the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening on his decision to drop his 2024 Democratic reelection bid.
Biden posted on X that he would speak “on what lies ahead” and how he will “finish the job for the American people.” He will speak at 8 p.m. ET.
He declined to preview his message after he returned to Washington, telling reporters to “watch and listen.”
“Why don’t you wait and hear what I say?” he said.
The president departed Delaware shortly before 2 p.m. on Tuesday, after nearly a week of isolating at his Rehoboth Beach home after his second bout with COVID-19. Biden is now testing negative for the virus and his symptoms have resolved, according to a letter from his doctor, Kevin O’Connor, released Tuesday.
Holding a blue paper mask, he told reporters that “I am feeling well” but did not answer other questions, such as whether Vice President Kamala Harris can defeat Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Biden has not been seen publicly since July 17, but he called into a campaign meeting on Monday to address staff and express his support for Harris’ bid to replace him a day after announcing he would leave the race.
Comments Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance made in 2021 questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ leadership because she did not have biological children have resurfaced, testing the young conservative senator in his early days campaigning as part of the Republicans’ presidential ticket.
During Vance’s bid for the Senate from Ohio, he said in a Fox News interview that “we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats,” and referred to them as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He said that included Harris, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.
“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked. Harris became stepmother to two teenagers when she married entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. And Buttigieg announced he and his husband adopted infant twins in September 2021, more than a month before Vance made those comments.
The clip has started to spread online, with Hillary Clinton sharing it in a Tuesday post on X and adding sarcastically “what a normal, relatable guy who certainly doesn’t hate women having freedoms.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. The Harris campaign contested Vance’s stance, saying “every single American has a stake in this country’s future.” “Ugly, personal attacks from JD Vance and Donald Trump are in line with their dangerous Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion, decimate our democracy, and gut Social Security,” said James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesman, referring to a policy and personnel plan for a second Trump term that was crafted by a host of former administration officials. Trump has been trying to distance himself from it.
The recirculated comment may be a sign of the ticket’s troubles appealing to women voters, and on the issue of reproductive rights. It follows the explosive entrance in the race of Harris, who secured the support of enough delegates to become the official nominee in less than 32 hours after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid.
It also lays out some of the fears expressed by strategists that Trump took a political risk in picking a running mate who has been in Congress less than two years and is largely untested on a bigger stage. Trump liked Vance’s telegenic qualities and said he reminded him of “a young Abraham Lincoln.”
Vance, 39, is a former Marine and businessman who was first elected to public office in 2022. He wrote the 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” and developed a strong rapport with Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and leading MAGA figures with his personal story of growing up in Appalachia in poverty with a mother battling drug addiction could resonate with voters.
One of the major questions Vance is facing is on his abortion stance. Vance previously said he would support a national abortion ban at 15 weeks of pregnancy.
In 2021, Vance floated an idea to allow parents to cast ballots on behalf of their children, saying during a speech at the conservative nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Virginia that people who don’t have children “don’t have as much of an investment in the future of the country.”
“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an availability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids,” he said.
“Doesn’t this mean that non parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents?” he said critics would then ask. “Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how a democracy functions? Yes, absolutely.”
Vice President Kamala Harris had a busy 24 hours after being endorsed as the Democratic presidential candidate by President Joe Biden. She has secured enough delegates to earn the party’s nomination and raised more than $81 million, a record sum for the 2024 political cycle.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service director testified before a congressional committee and was called on to resign over security failures at a rally where a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
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Trump is again complaining about the plans for a debate, suggesting that he may not be as confident in facing Harris as he was Biden.
The former president had said he would debate Biden “anytime, anywhere, any place” but early Tuesday morning Trump complained for the second time since Biden dropped out that ABC News “is not worthy of holding a Debate.”
He has suggested moving the debate to Fox News Channel, which is seen as a friendlier venue for him.
Vice President Kamala Harris is making her first visit to a battleground state Tuesday after locking up enough support from Democratic delegates to win her party’s nomination to challenge Republican former President Donald Trump, two days after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid.
As the Democratic Party continues to coalesce around her, Harris is traveling to Milwaukee, where she will hold her first campaign rally since she launched her campaign on Sunday with Biden’s endorsement. Harris has raised more than $100 million since Sunday afternoon and has scored the backing of Democratic officials and political groups.
Tuesday’s visit was scheduled before Biden ended his campaign, but it took on new resonance as Harris prepared to take up the mantle of her party against Trump and looks to project calm and confidence after weeks of Democratic Party confusion over Biden’s political future.
Read more about the visit and how Wisconsin is part of Democrats’ 2024 plans.
Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey taken in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection.
Harris, who was endorsed by Biden minutes after he announced he would not accept the Democratic nomination, worked to quickly lock up the support of her party’s donors, elected officials and other leaders, and has so far received support from at least 2,214.
However, the AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee. That’s because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats hold a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.
Tatum Watkins, a 19-year-old college student from southwest Iowa and a delegate to the DNC, said she appreciates as a young woman that Harris is speaking out on issues like reproductive rights and is “far closer” in age to a whole new generation of voters.
“She is very much leaning into what’s popular right now,” Watkins said. “I’ve seen already her branding is what I can best describe as brat summer.”
Watkins said that has energized and excited her and other young Iowans, making what will be her first experience voting in a presidential election “even better.”
The mood among many House Democrats lifted quickly as lawmakers returned to Washington with Biden having handed off the election to Harris.
“I’ve never been more optimistic about America because of his leadership, his selflessness, his putting country first,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania.
“And then Kamala — woo! — I am excited,” she said. “I’m hearing from my constituents and folks they are so fired up.”
She said one way Harris could approach campaigning in a swing state like hers would be to pick Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate for the vice presidential spot.
President Biden is set to return to the White House tomorrow after spending six days at his beach home in Delaware convalescing from COVID-19. Biden became ill while campaigning in Las Vegas last week and headed to his vacation home to isolate.
Vice President Harris, meanwhile, will head to the battleground state of Wisconsin as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear.
The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy on Sunday.
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) — Republican JD Vance will make his first solo appearances on the campaign trail Monday, a day after the 2024 presidential race was thrown into upheaval as President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, making the Democratic candidate an open question.
Vance, an Ohio senator, is scheduled to hold a rally in his hometown of Middletown on Monday afternoon, followed by a second rally Monday evening in Radford, Virginia, fresh off his rally debut with Donald Trump over the weekend.
Vance was expected to eventually face Vice President Kamala Harris in a debate. But with Biden dropping out and the Democratic ticket unsettled, the senator is following Trump’s lead and focusing on attacking Biden and Harris jointly.
“President Trump and I are ready to save America, whoever’s at the top of the Democrat ticket,” Vance said Sunday in a post on X. “Bring it on.”
Trump’s campaign plans to use Vance, who became the Republican vice presidential nominee last week, in Rust Belt states that are seen as pivotal for Democrats’ path to the White House, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and places where the senator’s blue collar roots and populist views are expected to resonate.
His hometown of Middletown, which sits between Cincinnati and Dayton, is considered to be part of the Rust Belt. Using it as the location for his first solo event as the vice presidential nominee not only allows Vance to lean into his biography, which he laid out in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” but it gives the campaign a chance to establish a fresh groundswell in a former swing state that has been trending Republican.
Vance’s second event on Monday will be held in a part of western Virginia that is considered a part of the Appalachia region.
In his speech at the Republican National Convention last week introducing himself to America, Vance spoke about “forgotten communities” where “jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war.”
The 39-year-old Republican also leaned into his relative youth, contrasting Biden’s decades in government with the milestones in his own life. It’s not clear how Vance will shift his message toward Harris, whom many Democrats were lining up to support, or any other contender for the nomination.
Despite his presence on the primetime debate stage and his bestselling book, Vance is still working to introduce himself to voters.
A CNN poll conducted in late June found the majority of registered voters had never heard of Vance or had no opinion of him. Just 13% of registered voters said they had a favorable opinion of Vance and 20% had an unfavorable one, according to the poll.
After Vance was named as Trump’s running mate, a startling number of Republican delegates, who are typically party insiders and activists, said they didn’t know much about the senator.
Vance has served in the Senate for less than two years. He has morphed from being a harsh Trump critic, at one point likening him to Hitler, to becoming a staunch defender of the former president, hitting the campaign trail on his behalf and even joining him at his Manhattan criminal trial this summer.
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Price reported from New York.