Subterms
OhioOld Democratic hostilities suppressed in Trump era resurface in primary fight Nina Turner and Shontel Brown will square off Tuesday in Ohio race that has turned nasty and could foreshadow midterm risksDavid Smith in Cleveland, Ohio@ More
OhioOhio Senate candidate JD Vance blames America’s woes on ‘the childless left’Hillbilly Elegy author singles out Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and AOC as he praises far-right president of Hungary Martin Pengelly in New York@ More
The author and venture capitalist will vie for the Republican nomination in one of the most wide-open 2022 Senate races.J.D. Vance, an author and venture capitalist whose best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” focused on the social and economic underpinnings of former President Donald J. Trump’s appeal to the white working class, said on Thursday that he would seek the Republican nomination for the Senate in Ohio.Mr. Vance, 36, enters the campaign as a well-known and well-financed first-time candidate facing an open field. The Republican incumbent, Senator Rob Portman, is retiring after two terms. The race is one of a few in next year’s midterm elections that could determine which party controls the upper chamber of Congress, which is now split 50-50.At his campaign kickoff event at a steel parts factory in Middletown, the city north of Cincinnati where he grew up, Mr. Vance made his backstory as a son of the Rust Belt central to his identity as a candidate.He spoke at length about his upbringing, including how his “mamaw” had “kept him on the straight and narrow” as a youth, before diving into his political pitch. He staked out populist positions on issues like inequality and Big Tech and more conservative ones on matters like immigration and abortion.“If you look at every issue in this country,” Mr. Vance said, “every issue I believe traces back to this fact: On the one hand, the elites in the ruling class in this country are robbing us blind, and on the other, if you dare complain about it, you are a bad person.”Mr. Vance will benefit from $10 million pledged toward his campaign by the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Mr. Thiel was an early backer of Mr. Vance who hired him and later invested in the fund Mr. Vance now runs. But in the Republican primary, Mr. Vance will face a number of candidates who are well known in Ohio G.O.P. politics, including Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer, and Jane Timken, a former chair of the state Republican Party.Mr. Trump won Ohio twice by comfortable margins. Courting his voters — thousands of whom showed up for a rally he held last weekend outside Cleveland — will be crucial to winning a statewide Republican primary contest. Mr. Vance attended the event, Mr. Trump’s first since his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, but he did not speak there.After the 2016 publication of “Hillbilly Elegy,” Mr. Vance leveraged his fame into a part-time career as a fixture on the speaking circuit and as a media commentator. Lately, he has staked out a position among the more populist voices in his party who are targeting social media companies, China and the left wing of the Democratic Party.The arc of Mr. Vance’s short time as a quasi-political figure has followed the prevailing mood among Republican office holders since Mr. Trump won in 2016. At first, he was deeply critical of the former president, calling him “noxious” and saying he worried Mr. Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.”But today Mr. Vance is a prolific tweeter and occasional Fox News guest who has adopted Trumpian culture war language, denouncing “wokeness” and calling for more restrictive immigration policies.His Republican opponents have already started dusting off his old anti-Trump statements as a way of suggesting that he is insincere and has lost touch with working-class Ohio.Mr. Vance today is in a much different place than the young man he describes in “Hillbilly Elegy,” who struggled to overcome adversity; a mother who had a long history with substance abuse; family members who could not control their anger; and opioid-addicted friends and neighbors.He served in the Marines, graduated from Yale Law School and joined Mr. Thiel’s venture capital firm. “Hillbilly Elegy” was made into a movie directed by Ron Howard that was released last year. More
It’s less than a year since Lordstown Motors was touted as the future for the Youngstown, Ohio, the once thriving steel and manufacturing city that has struggled to reinvent itself in the post-industrial age.The company and its Endurance all-electric pickup truck were seen as saviors for Youngstown after General Motors pulled the plug on its nearby Lordstown plant. “It’s booming now. It’s absolutely booming,” said Donald Trump in September, during an unveiling of the Endurance truck at the White House.Now those hopes are fading as Lordstown Motors faces financial difficulties that have locals worried, once again, about the region’s financial future.“It’s a very sad moment in the history of Youngstown. It seems every five years that hope is just over the horizon and somebody just closes it up and it disappears,” said Bob Hagan, who represented the Youngstown area for nearly three decades in the Ohio state legislature as an assembly representative and state senator.General Motors announced plans to shut down five factories in North America in November 2018, including its plant in Lordstown, which employed 1,600 workers and had operated for 52 years. The number of employees had steeply declined since the early 1990s, when more than 10,000 workers were employed at the plant.In March 2019, the last Chevy Cruze rolled off the assembly line as the plant ceased operations, leaving hundreds of workers forced to retire, transfer to a different GM plant elsewhere in the US, or find other work.The closure was devastating for residents in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, as the area has steadily declined from outsourcing and plant closures over the past few decades in the automotive, manufacturing, and steel industries.General Motors sold the plant to Lordstown Motors for $20m in 2019, and loaned the company $40m.But hope for a bright electric future soon faded. Since its purchase of the plant, Lordstown Motors has experienced financial and developmental difficulties. The company recently gave a tour of the facility to reporters, analysts and other visitors amid a turmoil of conflicting statements on its outlook, the resignations of its CEO and CFO, and a statement to securities regulators that the company did not have enough funds to start production.Hagan said these travails are just the latest setback for an area that has taken many hard knocks. Over the past several decades, steel mills and manufacturing plants have shuttered amid broken promises. He fears Lordstown Motors may prove another corporation that came into the area with high hopes and lofty promises – only to let the community down.“They’re rearranging the chairs on the Titanic,” he said.The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened an inquiry into Lordstown Motors over statements it has made about orders in the wake of a report from short-seller Hindenburg Research that accused Lordstown Motors of misrepresenting orders to raise capital. Five Lordstown Motors executives sold more than $8m in stocks in February 2021, ahead of the company’s financial reporting results and before the company’s financial problems were publicly disclosed.“If you talk to the vast majority of us, we are not surprised by all the issues with Lordstown Motors,” said Timothy O’Hara, former president of United Auto Workers local 1112, the union which represented GM Lordstown employees. He worked at the plant for 41 years before retiring.“Lordstown Motors has been a shaky situation from the beginning. For the economy of the Mahoning Valley I hope it succeeds – but I’m not holding my breath.”The Lordstown Motors plant currently has about 600 employees, and production is projected to begin at the end of September. But it faces some huge hurdles. In a statement filed with the SEC, the company said its success hinges on “its ability to complete the development of its electric vehicles, obtain regulatory approval, begin commercial scale production and launch the sale of such vehicles” – all as it seeks additional financing before it’s projected to run out of funds by May next year.Elected officials have bet heavily on the success of Lordstown Motors in the area. In December, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a state tax credit for the company estimated to save $20m in payroll taxes, based on its promise to create 1,570 full-time jobs. Ohio’s private economic development agency, JobsOhio, has pledged $4.5m in grants to Lordstown Motors. In April last year, the company received more than $1m through a federal pandemic loan to retain 42 jobs.But Hagan believes the money may not be enough and, once again, it will be the people of Youngstown who pay the price.“Tax dollars are being used to lure people into our community. We have to have elected officials be more vigilant on how organizations are taking money and make sure they deliver,” he said. More
There were raucous cheers and boos. There were Secret Service agents and metal detectors, food trailers in long grass and loudspeakers booming songs by Elton John and Dolly Parton. There were flags, hats, and T-shirts proclaiming Donald Trump the true winner of the 2020 election – or the man to beat in 2024.And flying overhead was a small plane trailing a banner that proclaimed: “Ohio is Trump country.”This strange carnival, unfolding on Saturday under the slogan Save America!, was the setting for Trump’s first post-presidential campaign rally and a noisy warning to Democrats – and democracy – that his cult of personality never went away. It was merely sleeping and, in hibernation, becoming ever more extreme.Although Trump has lost his hi-tech mouthpiece on social media, he still has the low-tech medium of standing in a field and ranting dangerous falsehoods to thousands of fans whose adulation and sense of grievance knows no bounds.“Each Trump rally is different and each one is beautiful,” said Deborah Wagner, 55, a retired court clerk wearing a “Count all the legal votes” T-shirt, who had driven four hours from New York to reach the fairgrounds in Wellington, Ohio. “We just want happiness and love for all people. Trump is not a quitter.”For all the high spirits, attendees’ T-shirts held an inverted mirror up to reality: “Trump won, deal with it”; “Re-elect Trump. Make liberals cry again”; “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump”; “Trump 2024. Make votes count again”; “Fuck Biden. Trump 2024”; “Biden is not my president”; “Unmasked, unmuzzled, unvaccinated, unafraid”.Everyone interviewed by the Guardian took it for granted that last year’s election was stolen from Trump, and some even clung to the belief that he will somehow be reinstated. As for the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, the only disagreement was whether it was true patriots fighting for a just cause or an infiltration by Antifa and Black Lives Matter (there is zero evidence of this).In soft evening sunshine, with freight trains rumbling by, Trump walked out to rapturous chants of “USA! USA!” and tossed caps into the crowd. “After five months,” he declared, wearing his customary dark suit, white shirt and red tie, “the Biden administration is already complete and total catastrophe.”In a 94-minute speech, the former president complained of surging crime, weakened police, “illegal aliens” overwhelming the southern border, drug cartels back in business, schools turned into “leftwing indoctrination camps” and critical race theory – the mention prompted hearty boos – being “forced on the military”. He added: “Joe Biden is destroying our nation right before our very own eyes.”Trump, whose business could face criminal charges from the Manhattan district attorney, spoke of the urgency for Republicans of winning back the House of Representatives and Senate in next year’s midterm elections. He endorsed Max Miller, a former White House aide challenging Anthony Gonzalez – a congressman who voted to impeach Trump – in a local Republican primary.There were moments of time warp and throwback to his first wildly improvised campaign five years ago. When Trump pointed to “the fake news media”, supporters turned to boo and show the middle finger. “Do you miss me? They miss me. They look at their terrible ratings and they say, ‘We miss this guy’.” Later, the crowd chanted: “CNN sucks!” and a mention of Hillary Clinton prompted cries of, “Lock her up!”Trump has pushed “the Big Lie” in TV interviews and emailed statements but now it was made flesh. “What happened in the election, it’s a disgrace,” he said, embarking on long meandering riffs about it being “rigged”, insisting “We didn’t lose,” and delving into supposed irregularities state by state.“This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the century,” he said. “We’re never going to stop fight for the true results of this election … Remember I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m trying to save American democracy.” His false claim of voter fraud has been debunked by his own attorney general, state election officials and judges.But in this corner of Ohio, a bellwether state he won, it was an article of faith. The crowd shouted: “Trump won! Trump won!”When Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, asked them, “Who’s your president?”, they roared back, “Trump!”, punching the air. Greene said bitterly that he should still be the president but “the dirty rotten Democrats stole the election”.An heir to the 45th president’s politics of outrage, Greene also said she wanted to fire Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert and coronavirus pandemic adviser, prompting shouts of “Lock him up!” The congresswoman asked gleefully: “Did you hear that Tony? They want you locked up.”She echoed a similar comment about Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York before making the nakedly racist statement: “She’s not an American. She doesn’t embrace our American ways.”Indeed, the rally was a vivid demonstration how distortions of the rightwing political and media ecosystem seep down into the grassroots with real world consequences.Wagner, the retired court clerk, argued that last year’s poll was “criminally stolen” and cited a fringe website as evidence. If Trump does not run in 2024, she would like to see his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, an arch conspiracy theorist, become the Republican nominee; she was not alone in floating his name.Wagner looks after her 12-year-old grandson and said she considering withdrawing him from school if coronavirus vaccinations become mandatory and critical race theory is taught. “The people that are calling people racist are actually being racist,” she said. “I treat everybody the same across the board.”Critical race theory examines systemic racism in law and institutions but has been caricatured and demonised by Republicans. Trump used the rally to call for it to be banned from schools, the military and other walks of life.Gary Bartlett, 65, who declines to be vaccinated, condemned critical race theory. “It’s teaching little five-, six-, seven-year-olds you’re supposed to be the oppressed and the white kids are supposed to be oppressors,” he said. “I don’t think critical race theory has any place in schools. There isn’t as much racism as Democrats want us to think there is.”Bartlett, from Lexington, Ohio, a retired manual worker at General Motors, was attending his first Trump rally, having always voted for Democrats until he switched to Trump in 2016. He, too, believes the 2020 election was stolen. “There were too many things on TV showing polling places and too many rumours. When I drive around Ohio and other states I see Trump signs everywhere; there’s no way Biden could have got that many votes.”Randy Weld, 53, a self-employed carpenter, was wearing a black T-shirt that proclaimed “If you don’t like Trump then you probably don’t like me … and I’m OK with that”. He said he “most definitely” wants to see Trump run for president again in 2024. “The best president we ever had. He’s a man of America.”And if Trump opts out? “I’d like to see his son run. I’d like to see some younger blood.”Asked if Trump should run in 2024, David Snell, 55, a logistics specialist who was at the US Capitol on 6 January but did not enter the building, said: “Earlier than that. I feel like he’s coming back real soon. He might be reinstated as president. God is exposing what’s going on. There was fraud, 100%.”Gary Sherrill, 65, a concrete mixer driver wearing a “Make America great again” cap, added: “There’s no doubt in my mind Biden stole it.” But asked for evidence, he replied: “I just know it in my heart. And I trust Trump when he says it’s true.”Trump’s rallies thrived in 2016 as presenting an insurgent campaign against the status quo. He has not yet committed to run in 2024, but once again he is the Washington outsider, striking a chord in restive crowds with invective against a Democratic president.Rose Kidd, 63, a retired nurse who watches the conservative Newsmax and One America News Network channels, said of Biden: “We have wide open borders because of that idiot. He can’t put a sentence together; he’s not there cognitively. He’s not much older than Trump but Trump is still very sharp. Their agenda is to destroy America; president Trump’s agenda is to save America.” More
The former president’s speech in Ohio, made on behalf of a challenger to a Republican congressman who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, reflected both his power over the party and his diminished status.WELLINGTON, Ohio — Former President Donald J. Trump returned to the rally stage on Saturday evening after a nearly six-month absence, his first large public gathering since his “Save America” event on Jan. 6 that resulted in a deadly riot at the Capitol.On Saturday, the same words — “Save America” — appeared behind Mr. Trump as he addressed a crowd of several thousand at a county fairgrounds in Wellington, Ohio, about 35 miles southwest of Cleveland.He repeated familiar falsehoods about fraudulent 2020 votes. He attacked Republican officials for refusing to back his effort to overturn the election results — including Representative Anthony E. Gonzalez of Ohio, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, and whose primary challenger, Max Miller, was the reason for Mr. Trump’s visit. The former president praised Mr. Miller as they appeared onstage together.Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, with large numbers of G.O.P. lawmakers parroting his lies about a stolen 2020 election and fearful of crossing him, and many in the party waiting to see whether he will run again for the White House in 2024.Yet in the audience and on the stage, the scene in Ohio on Saturday was reflective of how diminished Mr. Trump has become in his post-presidency, and how reliant he is on a smaller group of allies and supporters who have adopted his alternate reality as their own. One of the event’s headliners was Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the far-right Republican who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.“Save America” signs were ubiquitous at the rally, where many supporters expressed a belief in Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s speech — low-key, digressive and nearly 90 minutes long — fell flat at times with an otherwise adoring audience. Scores of people left early as he bounced from topic to topic — immigration, Israel, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s protective mask.“Do you miss me?” Mr. Trump asked in one of his biggest applause lines. “They miss me,” he declared.In interviews, many in the crowd expressed steadfast belief in Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods, and indulged his rewriting of history on the Capitol mob attack.Tony Buscemi, 61, a small-business owner from West Bloomfield, Mich., who stood with his daughter, Natalie, in the sun-baked field where Mr. Trump spoke, said he had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and he claimed falsely that it had been a “mostly peaceful” gathering.“People were praying. People were singing,” Mr. Buscemi said, adding that he might have gone inside the building himself had his daughter not persuaded him that it was a bad idea. “There was no insurrection,” he insisted. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it.”Polling suggests that most Republicans remain skeptical of President Biden’s election victory. Thirty-six percent of Republicans said in a Monmouth University poll released on Monday that Mr. Biden had won the election fairly, while 57 percent said his victory was the result of fraud.Still, there is evidence that Mr. Trump’s influence over Republican voters is waning — though only slightly.In late April, 44 percent of Republicans and G.O.P.-leaning independents said in an NBC News poll that they were more supportive of Mr. Trump than of the party itself. A slightly higher share, 50 percent, said they were more apt to support the party.It was the first time since NBC pollsters began asking the question in early 2019 that as many as half of Republicans said they were more supportive of the party than of the man.Giovanni Russonello More
Donald Trump was set to return to the campaign trail with a rally in Ohio on Saturday night, campaigning against a Republican who voted for his impeachment and trailing his own candidacy for president in 2024.“We’re giving tremendous endorsements,” Trump told the conservative Newsmax channel on Friday.“Fake Republicans, anybody that voted for the impeachment doesn’t get it. But there weren’t too many of them. And I think most of them are being … primaried right now, so that’s good. I’ll be helping their opponent.”Trump’s first impeachment, for abusing his power in approaches to Ukraine, attracted one Republican vote, that of the Utah senator Mitt Romney. In his second, for inciting the deadly US Capitol attack, 10 House Republicans and seven in the Senate voted for Trump’s guilt.Trump was acquitted twice but banned from major social media platforms over his role in the Capitol attack. Regardless, he dominates the Republican party.All bar one of the House Republicans who voted against him have attracted challengers. The 10th, John Katko of New York, co-authored a proposal for an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate the 6 January attack on Congress, in which a mob roamed the Capitol, looking for lawmakers to capture or kill in an attempt to overturn the election. Senate Republicans blocked it.The rally outside Cleveland on Saturday was to support Max Miller, a former White House aide challenging Anthony Gonzalez, a former college football and NFL star censured by his state party for voting for impeachment.By Saturday afternoon, traffic was backed up from the fairgrounds into town, where pro-Trump signs dotted residents’ lawns. On street corners, vendors sold “Trump 2024” flags and other merchandise as supporters arrived.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman from Georgia who was stripped of her committee assignments over a number of extreme comments, mingled with attendees and took pictures.Trump has said he “didn’t win” the election but has not formally conceded defeat by Joe Biden and continues to voice his lie that the loss was the result of electoral fraud.On Friday he told Newsmax he would be “making an announcement in the not too distant future” about whether he will run again, and said supporters were “going to be thrilled” by election results in 2024.“We want a little time to go by, maybe watch what happens in [2022],” he said.In those midterm elections, Republicans hope to retake the House and Senate.Trump’s legal problems mounted on Friday, as his own lawyer confirmed that charges are likely in the investigation of the Trump Organization by the Manhattan district attorney. The company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and the company itself are in prosecutors’ sights.Many observers point out that Trump’s many legal problems did not stop him winning the presidency in 2016 and are unlikely to put off many Republican voters should he run for the White House again.In his Newsmax interview, the former president referred to his problems and to those affecting Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and loyal ally. The former New York mayor this week saw his law license suspended, over his advancement of Trump’s election fraud lie.“Right now,” Trump said, “I’m helping a lot of people get into office, and we’re fighting the deep state, and we’re fighting [the] radical left. “They’re after me, They’re after Rudy, they’re after you, probably. They’re after anybody.”The “deep state” conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives exists to thwart Trump. Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 then a White House strategist and chief propagator of the theory, has said it is “for nut cases”.“They’re vicious,” Trump went on, “and they don’t do a good job and they’re very bad for the country … But I’ve been fighting them for five and a half years.“Since I came down the escalator [at Trump Tower in New York in June 2015, to announce his run for president], I’ve been fighting them. These are vicious people … I honestly believe they don’t love this country.”Trump has spent much of his post-presidency at his Florida resort and his golf course in New Jersey. He also told Newsmax he was “working very hard not only for 2024, but we’re working very hard to show the corruption of what took place in 2020, and then we see what happens”.Trump’s rallies have been an instrumental part of his brand since he launched his 2016 campaign. The former reality star often test-drives new material and talking points to see how they resonate with crowds. His political operation uses the events to collect critical voter contact information and as fundraising tools.The rallies have spawned hardcore fans who traveled the country, often camping out overnight to snag prime spots. Some such supporters began lining up outside the Ohio venue days early this week. More
The Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, on Monday hailed the success of the state’s Vax-a-Million lottery in boosting demand for coronavirus vaccines, announcing that more than 2.7 million adult residents had registered for the chance of winning $1m in one of five weekly drawings.DeWine’s giveaway approach, however, has drawn the ire of fellow Republican state lawmakers, who are introducing legislation to shut the project down as “a frivolous use of taxpayer dollars”.The prize money comes from Ohio’s share of the $2.2tn federal Cares Act, which was signed into law in March last year.At a press conference on Monday afternoon, DeWine said he was encouraged by the take-up rate for the lottery, which is open only to those over 18 who can prove they are at least partially vaccinated before each prize draw. The first draw is on Wednesday.In addition to the adult cash draw, DeWine said 104,386 younger Ohioans aged 12 to 17 had registered for a chance to win a four-year full college scholarship.“Where we’ve seen the biggest increase is those 16 and 17 years of age,” DeWine told reporters.“One assumes that they’re very interested in getting that scholarship, they’re looking at college coming up and they’re looking to see if they can get in.”After the lottery was announced on 12 May, the number of vaccines administered in Ohio jumped by 33%. In that time, DeWine said, vaccine take-up by 16 and 17-year-olds had increased by 94%, by 46% for 18- and 19-year-olds and by 55% for those aged 20 to 55.In all, 2,758,470 of the 5.17 million eligible adults had begun the process of receiving the vaccine and registering for the draw, he added.“We’re more than happy with the results. This was just so important to our future as a state, our immediate future and our long-term future. Having more people vaccinated really allows us to get back to normal.”State representative Jena Powell, meanwhile, said she would introduce legislation to end the lottery to the Ohio house this week. She wants the money used for other initiatives such as small business recovery grants and mental health services for children.“The vaccine lottery is a frivolous use of taxpayer dollars. They have the ability to take the vaccine if they want but we shouldn’t be putting $5m of taxpayer money to [it],” she told 2News of Dayton.“I have to look at the whole picture and I know you’ve had a difficult year but we can’t make the future more difficult.” More
