As J.D. Vance Courts Ohio, His Fealty to Trump Proves Double-Edged

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — Blue jeans evoked his hardscrabble upbringing, and a crisp dress shirt conveyed his success as a Yale Law School graduate, venture capitalist and best-selling memoirist — with the open collar signaling that he was still just J.D., who happens to be the Ohio Republican candidate for the Senate.

This was the J.D. Vance uniform as he spoke one October Saturday to Republican campaign volunteers gathered in a Cincinnati office, near a portrait of a brow-knitted Donald J. Trump. Mr. Vance reassured those about to go door-to-door that at least they wouldn’t encounter his grandmother, the fierce Mamaw, who once told a Marine recruiter that if he put one foot on her property, “I’ll blow it off.”

The crowd laughed in recognition, so famous is the tale of how Mamaw’s life lessons about loyalty, education and self-esteem helped Mr. Vance to overcome a poor, dysfunctional childhood. He would repeat the story at another event two hours later.

The weekend of campaigning came a month after Mr. Trump told a packed rally in Youngstown that Mr. Vance was a suck-up. “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much,” the former president had said — while Mr. Vance, Marine Corps veteran and Mamaw’s grandson, stood by.

It was just one moment in Mr. Vance’s contentious race against his Democratic opponent, Representative Tim Ryan. And the reliably impolitic Mr. Trump delights in diminishing candidates aching for his benediction, especially one who once asserted that he was unfit for office — who once, in fact, wondered whether he might be America’s Hitler — but who, since entering politics, has demonstrated fervent fealty.

“The best president of my lifetime,” Mr. Vance has maintained.

Still, the kisses-my-ass tag has followed Mr. Vance like a yippy dog ever since, with Mr. Ryan gleefully invoking it again in their second debate last week. When Mr. Vance maintained that Mr. Trump’s comment was a “joke” that riffed on what he called without explication a “false” New York Times article — about the reluctance of some Republicans to have the former president campaign for them — one of the moderators sought clarification.

“So I get this straight,” said Bertram de Souza, a local journalist. “When the former president said, ‘J.D. is kissing my ass because he wants my support,’ you took that as a joke?”

“I know the president very well, and he was joking about a New York Times story,” Mr. Vance said. “That’s all he was doing. I didn’t take offense to it.”

Beyond reflecting a Republican Party utterly beholden to Mr. Trump, the moment highlighted the stark transformation of Mamaw’s centrist grandson into a Trump loyalist whose raw, combative style — he is fond of the term “scumbags” — has him well positioned to become the next senator from Ohio.

This remarkable evolution has not gone unnoticed in Middletown, the distressed Rust Belt city where he grew up.

Nancy Nix, 53, a prominent local Republican and the treasurer for Butler County, which includes most of Middletown, said that Mr. Vance’s conservative outsider persona resonates in a state that is red “and becoming redder.” She said that his down-to-earth manner and Ivy League intellect appeals to many voters, boding well for a bright political future.

“I don’t know if his ambition knows any bounds,” Ms. Nix said.

But others say his ambition comes at a cost. Ami Vitori, 48, a fourth-generation Middletonian who knows Mr. Vance, said that while she disagrees with most of his positions, he is a “good dude” whose about-face support of Mr. Trump smacks of cold political calculation.

“He’s an opportunist,” she said. “He knows what he has to do to win, but I think, deep down, he hates it.”

Rodney Muterspaw, 52, a Middletown councilman and former police chief, said he was a fan of Mr. Vance, who once endorsed his self-published police memoir. Still, he expressed surprise at Mr. Vance’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s supposed joke.

“That’s just not the Middletown way,” said Mr. Muterspaw. “If someone calls you out like that, there’s going to be a very candid, not-so-nice response. I’m sure you’d hear some four-letter words there.”

Mr. Vance spent this mid-October weekend plowing friendly ground. He began at the Hamilton County Republican headquarters in Cincinnati, where the nearly all-white crowd prepared to go door-knocking in a city that is 40 percent Black. After that he headed to an office park on the city’s suburban fringe, then on to a parking lot in the town of Lebanon, for more of the same.

Tall, with gray flecking his brown beard, Mr. Vance has the campaign vibe of an easygoing, hyper-smart soccer dad. His go-to themes adhere to the 2022 Republican script that Democrats are to blame for every ill known to society, beginning with inflation.

The Democrats are a “total disaster” who need to be sent a message, he said at one stop: “That if you declare war on our police officers, if you declare war on our energy industry, if you drive up the cost of everything and if you open up the southern border, we’re not going to take it anymore. We’re going to send you home and make you get a real job.”

But Mr. Vance’s mild manner tends to mask the far-right influences that course through his positions, and which do not always jibe with the J.D. Vance presented in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Earlier this year, on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Vance tweeted a link to an organization seeking support for people indicted in the attack — many of them charged with assaulting the police — followed by another tweet calling some of those being held “political prisoners.”

He has said that he condemns the Jan. 6 violence, but that Democrats have overemphasized the attack on the Capitol, and the media’s “obsession” with the riot comes “while people can’t afford the cost of groceries.”

During the Ohio primary a few months later, Mr. Vance said, “I say it all the time: I think the election was stolen from Trump.”

His campaign did not respond to repeated questions asking whether he believed that President Biden was legitimately elected.

In his memoir, Mr. Vance lamented a “deep skepticism” of society’s institutions that he said was caused by a mistrust of the media and reflected by several conspiracy theories. These included that the government “played a role” in the Sept. 11 attacks and that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was part of a federal plot to build support for gun control.

Both theories were promoted by the far-right provocateur Alex Jones, whom Mr. Vance mentioned in his book. But by the time he announced his candidacy last year, Mr. Vance seemed to have become more accepting of the Alex Jones brand.

In September 2021, close to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, he called Mr. Jones “a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.”

He followed up by telling Fox News Radio that while Mr. Jones says “some crazy stuff” — such as asserting that the slaughter of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook was a hoax — he also occasionally says “things that I think are interesting.”

Mr. Vance declined to be interviewed for this article.

On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Vance donned a Cincinnati Bengals sweatshirt for the annual Darke County G.O.P. Hog Roast on the county fairgrounds in rural Greenville, where the compact is: Listen to some speeches, then line up for free hamburgers and hot dogs.

“God, Guns & Trump” and “Trump 2024: Take America Back” banners hung on the walls, a young woman sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” and a signed copy of “Hillbilly Elegy” was being raffled off at the front table.

Mr. Vance’s memoir described his family’s struggles with low-paying jobs, alcoholism, drug addiction and abuse — a self-destructive cycle he managed to escape through the tough love of his foul-mouthed, big-hearted Mamaw. He presented his “hillbilly” experiences as a reflection of a failed social system that discourages personal responsibility and feeds resentment against the government.

The book was both celebrated as a primer for why Mr. Trump won the 2016 election and derided as an overgeneralization of poor white culture. Reception was also mixed in Middletown, population 50,000, where the book is set.

Some residents, like Ms. Vitori, who bought and transformed the old J.C. Penney building into a boutique hotel and restaurant several years ago, said that the book, while vividly evoking Mr. Vance’s childhood, painted Middletown’s struggles with such a broad brush that it impeded ongoing efforts to revitalize the city.

Ms. Vitori, a former member of the City Council, said that she confronted Mr. Vance, who seemed genuinely interested in helping his hometown. But nothing came of their discussions, she said.

“Most people here either feel that he’s a good kid or that ‘He doesn’t represent me,’” Ms. Vitori said. “Very few people are rah-rah.”

Kelly Cuvar, 43, a Democrat who works as a fund-raiser for congressional candidates and splits her time between Middletown and Washington, said that she also experienced childhood poverty while attending Middletown schools. But, she said, she came away with entirely different lessons.

Mr. Vance “has this idea that he did this himself and got himself out of poverty, the whole bootstrap thing,” Ms. Cuvar said. By contrast, she said, she was well aware of the safety net, “however flimsy,” that had helped her escape poverty, and felt “pure bafflement” that Mr. Vance’s takeaway was so different.

“Sadness as well,” she added.

Mr. Muterspaw, the former police chief, said the Middletown depicted by Mr. Vance is the same that he knew as a child growing up in difficult circumstances. He said that much of the lingering resentment of Mr. Vance centers more on his harsh past criticisms of Mr. Trump.

Even when Mr. Vance apologized, he said, some people “did not forgive him.”

But these same people will still flock to vote for Mr. Vance, Mr. Muterspaw said. He’s a Republican, he has Mr. Trump’s endorsement — and his political flip-flop is immaterial now that he’s ended up in the former president’s good graces.

“It’s a politically strategic move,” Mr. Muterspaw said. “And I think it’s going to pay off for him.”

Ms. Nix, 54, the Butler County treasurer, agreed that Mr. Vance needed Mr. Trump’s blessing, although she called the former president’s kiss-my-ass comment at the Youngstown rally “very sad.”

As for how Mr. Vance handled what many saw as a public humiliation, she said: “That’s a tough pill to swallow. But he wants to win.”

The many speeches at the Darke County hog roast finally ended, and a local official shouted, “Who’s hungry?” He began calling out table numbers to ensure an orderly procession to the promised food.

Mr. Vance shook hands, smiled for photographs and paused for a few questions from local reporters. He said he expected to win the race “pretty comfortably,” no matter that polls suggest a neck-and-neck sprint.

“Ohio polls always, always have missed big, and they’ve always missed a lot of Republican support,” he said. “I think we have a lot of work to do, but I feel very, very good about where we are.”

Mr. Vance worked his way slowly toward the exit, past his raffle-worthy memoir, out into the warm autumn evening. Soon he was behind the wheel of a white S.U.V., his wife, Usha, by his side, their three children nestled in the back.

Looking exhausted, the would-be senator from Ohio waved to a few campaign aides as he drove away, his many written and spoken words rattling behind like tin cans tied to the rear bumper — including what he told NBC News last year while seeking Mr. Trump’s endorsement.

“My intuition with Trump — it’s interesting,” Mr. Vance had said. “I think that he gets a certain kick out of people kissing his ass. But I also think he thinks that people who kiss his ass all the time are weak.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.