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      East Palestine Crisis Tests a Trump-Backed Senator

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      J.D. Vance, the freshman senator from Ohio, is in the spotlight for the first time in his tenure as he responds to the train derailment and its aftermath.EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — As Donald J. Trump criticized the federal response to the train derailment that has shaken this Ohio town, there was one leader in Washington he praised repeatedly — the man he helped propel to Congress, Senator J.D. Vance.“J.D. Vance has been incredible,” Mr. Trump told reporters and local officials on Wednesday at an East Palestine firehouse, as Mr. Vance stood behind him.While a fight brews between Democrats and Republicans over the role of the federal government in the derailment’s aftermath, Mr. Vance, 38, has been at the center of it all. Some of his actions have been the conventional response of any seasoned politician. He has drafted letters calling on federal officials for more oversight and met with some of the residents most affected by the derailment and chemical spill. But he also has joined far-right Republican figures in depicting the deep-red village in northeastern Ohio as a forgotten place, taking a page from Mr. Trump’s grievance-politics playbook.“I grew up in a town that was neglected by the national media and was affected by a lot of dumb policies,” Mr. Vance said in a brief interview, as he briskly left the firehouse on Wednesday. “I worry that unless we keep the pressure on the federal policymakers and the corporations that caused this problem, a lot of people are going to be forgotten and left behind.”The White House has pushed back on such criticism from Republicans, accusing both the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers of dismantling the Obama-era rail safety measures meant to prevent episodes like the East Palestine derailment. And at least one media critic has accused Mr. Vance of fanning the flames of white grievance by attacking the Biden administration as deserting white Americans.For Mr. Vance, the response to the derailment could serve as a pivot point. It is the first major crisis in his tenure as a newly elected senator and it has provided him with the chance to show the voters who viewed him with skepticism during his campaign that he has not strayed far from his humble Ohio roots.Officials are cleaning up in East Palestine, including Sulphur Run, a creek that flows through the town.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesThe derailment has also given him an opening to tap into a theme that first brought national attention to his Senate ambitions: speaking up for working-class Ohioans, many of them white, who he has suggested have been victimized by the politics of the left.In one of his first campaign ads, he bluntly played to white grievance, looking at the camera and asking voters a question: “Are you a racist?” He argued in the ad that Democratic voters were “pouring into this country” through unchecked borders, echoing the “great replacement theory,” the far-right notion that undocumented immigrants are coming to America to usurp the political power of native-born white voters.In a red state that Mr. Trump won in both 2016 and 2020, many residents in East Palestine and its surrounding towns were not following the national back-and-forth over the government response as they worried about the potential effects of the spill. But they had followed Mr. Vance’s attempts to bring attention to their plight on local media outlets and approved of his handling of the crisis, even as some said there was more work to be done.The Train Derailment in East Palestine, OhioWhen a freight train derailed in Ohio on Feb. 3, it set off evacuation orders, a toxic chemical scare and a federal investigation.A Heated Town Hall: Hundreds of Ohio residents gathered to demand answers about the fallout from the derailed train. Officials for the railroad company pulled out hours earlier, infuriating locals.Cleanup Costs: The Environmental Protection Agency ordered Norfolk Southern, the operator of the derailed train, to clean up any resulting contamination and pay all the costs.Farmers Fear a ‘Forever Scar’: The train derailment has upended a region of Ohio where generations of families could afford to buy acres of land, raise livestock and plant gardens.Trump’s Visit: In East Palestine, the former president attacked the Biden administration’s handling of the train derailment, even as his own environmental policies while in office have been criticized.“I think a lot of people are watching him right now to see how he is handling it,” said Kayla Miller, 31, who owns a farm in nearby Negley. “I think he genuinely cares about our situation and cares about our town.”Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist turned first-time politician, became a sought-after voice on the white working-class after the release of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which explored his family ties to Appalachia and traced his path from humble origins in southwestern Ohio to the military and later to Yale Law School.When he returned to Ohio, he was initially viewed as an outsider. He was funded by Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, and had spent much of his time in San Francisco after leaving his home state. Ahead of the state’s Republican primary in May 2022, more than three dozen Republican county and state committee leaders urged Mr. Trump in a letter to not endorse Mr. Vance. They questioned his Republican credentials and noted he had often denounced Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.Mr. Vance has been a sharp critic of the Biden administration on inflation and border policies, largely falling in line with Republicans pushing for isolationism as the answer to loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. As residents coped with the derailment, Mr. Vance sent letters to the company that operated the freight train, Norfolk Southern, asking it to broaden its criteria for reimbursements to residents beyond a one-mile radius of the derailment zone..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.He has worked with Republicans and Democrats — including two of the region’s top Democrats, Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — to call on federal public health officials to provide resources to help the state monitor people’s health. They have also pressed federal environmental agencies to monitor the hazardous chemical compounds, or dioxins, that the derailment released into the region’s air and soil.He has met with business owners and affected residents. He also visited a creek near the derailment site, releasing a video in which he used a stick to stir a filmy substance in the water that he described as evidence of possible contamination.“I’ve just been doing a lot of talking to people on the ground here,” he said, speaking to reporters in downtown East Palestine last week. “Obviously, I am more concerned about the public safety component of this here. Is the air breathable? Is the water drinkable?”“I think a lot of people are watching him right now to see how he is handling it,” Kayla Miller said of Mr. Vance. “I think he genuinely cares about our situation and cares about our town.” Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Mr. Vance reinforced his loyalty to the former president even as some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters now privately worry about his grip on the party and his chances of winning the presidency again. Mr. Vance and Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s son, followed the former president as he made stops at local businesses to shake hands with customers and pass out Make America Great Again hats. In short remarks at the fire station, Mr. Vance thanked Mr. Trump for visiting and bringing national attention with him.“The most important thing that we can take from this visit is that we can’t forget about the people of East Palestine,” Mr. Vance told reporters.He said later that he believed Mr. Trump’s presence would help keep the pressure on federal officials to take action. Asked about criticism from the White House on the Republican opposition to rail safety measures, Mr. Vance said attempts to politicize the issue would not help East Palestine residents. According to the website PolitiFact, a rail safety rule repealed as part of a broad regulatory rollback under the Trump administration would have had no impact on the East Palestine derailment.Mr. Vance and other Republicans have subtly evoked white disaffection by portraying a largely white, rural and conservative area as neglected by federal officials. On a Fox News interview this month, he accused Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, of focusing on “how we have too many white male construction workers” instead of talking about the frequency of train derailments and railroad safety.On Wednesday, he rejected the notion that he was playing to racial grievance. “I don’t know how I am doing that or anybody else is doing that,” Mr. Vance said outside the firehouse. “This is a community that has been affected by the problem, and they deserve help.”At the same time, far from East Palestine, Mr. Vance has used his brief time in the Senate to go on the offensive on race, accusing Democrats of injecting it into politics.This month, he criticized Gigi B. Sohn, Mr. Biden’s nominee to the Federal Communications Commission, for playing into “this weird racialization of American political rhetoric in the last few years.” And in his campaign ad on the border, he criticized Democrats for calling people racists because they wanted to talk about Mr. Biden’s border policies and the impact those policies were having on the opioid crisis, which has ravaged largely white, rural parts of the industrial Midwest and across the nation.East Palestine residents said that before the freight train derailed on Feb. 3, many Ohioans seemed to know little about their hometown, which sits just below the manufacturing hub of Youngstown, near the Pennsylvania border. Now, the village of 4,761 in a red county Mr. Vance handily won has been under the national glare.Residents have been concerned about the air quality, and especially worried if the local water is safe to drink.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe crisis has spurred complicated feelings among residents about the necessity of government oversight, but many said federal agencies should take on a greater role holding Norfolk Southern accountable.In interviews this week, several residents said they had developed coughs or odd rashes, and some had farm animals die. Ms. Miller and her husband, Chase Miller, said that they had lost two chickens and three rabbits and that more farm animals had fallen ill. One of the main side effects of a gas released, vinyl chloride, they read, is cancer.“So, in five years, am I going to have liver cancer? Am I going to be able to see my kids graduate?” she said.Her husband added, “My biggest worry is that they are going to forget about Negley, they are going to forget about the local towns where the water runs to.”State and federal officials have said that they have yet to detect dangerous levels of chemicals in the air or municipal water, and tests are continuing.Leaving a grocery store with stacks of water bottles on Monday, Butch Foster, 76, a farmer and former school custodian, said he refused to leave his home after the spill until federal officials declared the air safe to breathe. But after spending some time outside, he noticed black mucus coming out of his nose, so he did not want to drink the municipal water.Mr. Foster had watched the video of Mr. Vance stirring the waters in the creek. He said the senator he had done a good job of calling attention to his and other residents’ concerns.“I just know they need to do more,” he said. More

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      J.D. Vance Says He Will Accept Election Results, While Questioning 2020’s

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      J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, said Tuesday evening that he would accept the results of his election — while also saying he stood by his false claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen.”“I expect to win,” Mr. Vance said in a town-hall-style event hosted by Fox News, before adding: “But, of course, if things don’t go the way that I expect, I’ll support the guy who wins and I’ll try to be as supportive as I possibly can, even accepting that we’re going to disagree on some big issues.”But when one of the hosts, Martha MacCallum, noted that he had previously said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, whose endorsement propelled him to the nomination, Mr. Vance replied, “Yeah, look, I have said that, and I won’t run away from it.” He referred to state court rulings concerning elements of the way Pennsylvania had conducted its election, but none of those rulings called the results into question.The town hall event was split between Mr. Vance and his Democratic rival in the Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan, with each candidate appearing separately and fielding questions from the moderators and the audience.Mr. Ryan distanced himself from the left wing of the Democratic Party on inflation and abortion, something he has done often as he tries to win a Senate seat in a state that has shifted significantly to the right in recent years.While denouncing Republican abortion bans as extreme and inhumane, he said he believed third-trimester abortions should be allowed only in medical emergencies. That distinguishes him from many other Democrats, who have said that abortion should always be a decision between women and their doctors and that the government should play no role in regulating it. (Third-trimester procedures are very rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of abortions in the United States.)In promoting the ability of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act to live up to its name, Mr. Ryan highlighted its natural gas provisions, saying they would bring construction jobs to Ohio, while calling for tax cuts like an expanded child tax credit in the short term. He explicitly aligned himself with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, whose objections limited the size of the legislation and ensured that natural gas provisions accompanied its clean energy measures.Mr. Vance, in his own discussion of inflation, called for Congress to “stop the borrowing and spending” — without specifying the spending cuts he wanted — and alluded to more oil and gas production.On abortion, he said he believed that “90 percent of abortion policy” should be set by state governments, while also indicating that he supported the 15-week federal ban proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. More

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      How the Races for Governor Could Determine Who Controls the Senate

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      Major midterm battlegrounds have both contests on the ticket, and how voters divvy up their picks could have significant consequences.WASHINGTON — John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, wants voters to think of his G.O.P. rival and the Republican running for governor in the Keystone State as one and the same.“They are MOZtriano,” Mr. Fetterman says in a You Tube campaign video, melding the names of Mehmet Oz, his opponent, and Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican candidate for governor whose campaign is sputtering, anointing them the state’s newest “power couple.”Supporters of Mr. Oz, on the other hand, are working to emphasize differences between Mr. Fetterman, the current progressive lieutenant governor with whom he is in a tight race, and Josh Shapiro, the more centrist Democratic attorney general and the heavy favorite to win the governorship.“Fetterman is way more radical than Shapiro,” says a woman in a new ad from American Crossroads, a Republican political action committee, which compares Mr. Fetterman’s record on the treatment of criminals unfavorably with that of Mr. Shapiro. The names of their Republican opponents don’t even come up.The dueling approaches in one of the nation’s marquee Senate races illustrate how, as midterm congressional races have tightened, contests at the top of the ticket are looming as a potentially decisive factor in the outcomes. Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to game out the crosscurrents, working to position their candidates either to ride the wave of a favored gubernatorial candidate or to distance themselves to avoid being pulled under by the drag of a fellow party member.In some of the chief battlegrounds this year — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire, among others — voters will choose both a governor and a senator. How they divide their votes between those two could determine control of the Senate and show whether ticket splitting, which has been on the decline for decades in polarized America, has new life.“There is considerable overlap between the governor’s races and the Senate battlegrounds,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.But how the races intersect varies.In some states, including Pennsylvania, the candidate for governor of one party is comfortably ahead of their opponent, while the Senate race is much closer. In others, the polling shows the contests for both offices is very close.Georgia is a third category altogether. The Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, is running ahead of Democrat Stacey Abrams. But Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, has consistently but narrowly led his Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Ms. Abrams’s difficulties could weigh down Mr. Warnock’s chances in that race, unless voters split their ballots, choosing the Republican for governor and the Democrat for Senate.Then there are spots like New Hampshire, where voters appear to be regarding the two races as entirely separate. Gov. Chris Sununu, a popular Republican, is far ahead in the polls and expected to romp to victory over state Senator Tom Sherman, the Democrat. Yet Senator Maggie Hassan, the Democratic incumbent, is also favored over Republican Donald Bolduc, a far-right candidate who prevailed in the primary after Mr. Sununu declined to jump into the contest, where he would likely have been favored.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is far ahead in his re-election bid. He declined to run for the Senate. Jon Cherry/Getty Images For ConcordiaCampaign officials say the potential New Hampshire outcome is not all that confounding given the state’s voting traditions and the effort candidates in both parties have put into showing that they are not tied down by party.“It is extremely common here,” said Kevin Donohoe, a spokesman for Ms. Hassan, of voters splitting their ticket between the two parties. “If you want to win here, you have to have an independent record and you have to have an independent profile, and that is what voters expect.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent, holds a double-digit lead in his race against former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley. But Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate contender, is running neck-and-neck with J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate and author endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.A recent poll by the Siena College Research Institute found that 20 percent of Ohio voters who said they were pulling the lever for Mr. DeWine said they also intended to vote for Mr. Ryan, a showing that could give him a shot in a state that was expected to choose another Republican to replace retiring Senator Rob Portman.The poll provided an opening for Mr. Ryan and his allies. NBC News reported that WelcomePAC, a Democratic group backing Mr. Ryan, took out newspaper ads asking voters, “Why are 1 in 5 Republican voters saying no to J.D. Vance?” and hitting Mr. Vance for his ties to Mr. Trump.But it is one thing to express an intent to split a ticket and another to do it. Voters can change their minds on Election Day based on myriad factors, including a desire to show party loyalty, the importance placed on each individual race and even the format of the ballot.“Are these tickets really going to split?” asked Don Levy, the director of the Siena College poll. “It is one thing in a poll to say, ‘Yeah, Tim Ryan, I like him and I’m not so sure about this J.D. Vance guy.’ But when you cast your ballot, then some people are going to pause and vote the team.”Given Mr. DeWine’s strength, a failure of potential ticket splitters to follow through could be very damaging to Mr. Ryan’s chances of winning.That has been the case in recent presidential election cycles, as American politics has become more tribal and voters have grown more likely to stay in their partisan lanes. In 2016, for the first time, every state with a Senate election backed both a senator and a president of the same party. It was not much different in 2020, with only Maine deviating.But research by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that midterm elections still produce more ticket-splitting when the White House is not up for grabs. In 2018, six states split their results between governor and senator, with five of them of backing a Republican governor and a Democratic senator. The report by J. Miles Coleman, an editor at the center, found that six states also delivered mixed results in 2014 and five in 2010.“If 2022 falls in line with the three most recent midterms, we can still expect five or six split-ticket cases,” Mr. Coleman wrote.Democrats hope Pennsylvania, which is crucial to determining control of the Senate, is not one of them, though Republicans say they are finding evidence of Shapiro-Oz voters who could decide the outcome.“Republican polling shows a substantial number of Shapiro voters actually favor Dr. Oz for the Senate based on the hot button issues of crime and the economy,” said John Ashbrook, a Republican strategist working on Senate campaigns and a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.Other analysts say a blowout win by Mr. Shapiro would seem to accrue to the benefit of Mr. Fetterman. The Fetterman campaign sees a healthy synergy between the two candidates and the two are expected to appear together as the campaign season draws to a close.“Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman are very different types of candidates,” said Rebecca Katz, senior adviser to Mr. Fetterman. “But together they appeal to a broad swath of Pennsylvania voters and offer a very strong contrast to extreme, Trump-backed candidates like Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano.” More

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      Don’t Buy the Republican Appeal to Workers

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      J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican Senate candidate, states on his campaign website that he “fiercely defended working-class Americans.” In Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate hopeful, sports a plaid shirt and jeans in a campaign ad, as he shoots guns of varying sizes. Guitar twangs in the background complete the scene.Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist and best-selling author, and Dr. Oz, the heart surgeon and TV personality, aren’t alone in their self-presentation as ordinary Joes. As November’s midterm elections near, many Republican candidates are all about pickup trucks, bluejeans and guns, as they perform the role of champions for the working stiff. Scratch the surface, though, and it’s a different story.This Republican working-class veneer is playacting. Their positions on workers’ rights make that crystal clear. Nationwide, most Republicans rail against liberal elites and then block a $15 an hour minimum wage, paid leave laws and workplace safety protections. They stymie bills to help workers unionize, and top it off by starving the National Labor Relations Board of funding, even as it faces a surge of union election requests. Several Republican attorneys general have sued to stop wage hikes for nearly 400,000 people working for federal contractors. Republicans also opposed extending the popular monthly child tax credit that helped so many working families afford basic necessities. The “issues” section on the campaign websites of Mr. Vance and Dr. Oz contain virtually no labor policy. Howling about China, as they do, isn’t a comprehensive labor plan.In other instances, what superficially seemed to be examples of Republican support for worker rights were really Trojan horse incursions to advance their culture war.For example, legislators or policymakers in at least six conservative states last year swiftly expanded eligibility for unemployment insurance to workers who quit or were fired for refusing to comply with employer Covid-19 vaccination mandates. The sudden largess was at odds with these states’ generally miserly approach to such benefits: They’d previously done most everything possible to limit the lifeline of unemployment insurance, including prematurely cutting off federally funded benefits in the summer of 2021.Only a sliver of the national work force dug in and refused to be vaccinated, including a small number of New York City employees recently granted reinstatement to their jobs by a Staten Island trial court judge. But anti-vax‌ workers were stark outliers in relation to the vast majority of their peers, from United Airlines employees to Massachusetts state employees, who overwhelmingly complied with mandates.Why did ‌these conservative Republicans suddenly want a safety net for unvaccinated workers? Because it served a culture war narrative, one that frames everything in divisive us-versus-them terms and in the case of vaccines, sees them as a nefarious liberal plot and vaccine-or-test mandates as one more example of government overreach.To that point, consider two legal cases, one brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when its enforcement arm was led by a Trump appointee, and another heard by the Supreme Court, where six of the nine justices are Republican appointees. Both cases involved workers — but neither touched on pocketbook or dignity issues central to most workers’ concerns.The E.E.O.C. case involved two Kroger workers who claimed religious discrimination after being fired for refusing to wear company-issued aprons bearing a heart-shaped logo they saw as promoting gay rights. (In pretrial depositions, both workers were shown a range of corporate logos, and the workers said several of them also represented gay rights and were incompatible with their religion; they included the logos of NBC, Google, Southwest and Apple, as well as the Olympic rings.) A Trump-appointed federal judge in Arkansas rejected Krogers’ motion to end the case, ordering the case to trial, and earlier this month, the company and commission said they had reached a deal to resolve the dispute.In a Supreme Court case that became a national right-wing cause célèbre, the six conservative justices ruled that a Washington State school district violated the free speech and religious rights of a public school football coach who insisted on praying very publicly after games with students at midfield, rejecting more private locations that were offered.In light of genuine worker struggles in our country, these are the workers conservatives go to bat for? It seems the trickle-down crowd finds their inner Norma Rae only if it helps them “own the libs.” These aren’t workers’ rights issues. They’re divisive culture war battles that happen to occur in the employment arena. For ordinary workers, living paycheck to paycheck, who just want a safe place to work, decent pay, and some dignity, conservatives are AWOL.The praying coach and Kroger worker cases involved First Amendment and religious rights. But the most common example of silenced expression occurs when workers get fired for reporting labor law violations or supporting a union. How many Republicans have spoken up to support the expressive rights of unionizing Starbucks or Amazon workers?Similarly, Republicans may prioritize benefits for their favored workers (such as people who are unvaccinated), but all workers need a functioning safety net, including an adequately funded and functional unemployment insurance system. What’s also essential are robust and broadly available programs for paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave and universal health care, measures most Republicans have repeatedly opposed. In this context, the rush to ensure unemployment benefits to people refusing a lifesaving vaccine is cynical, indeed.Workers need safe conditions, good wages, fair treatment and a collective voice on the job. The culture war labor incursions are divorced from what matters most to our country’s working people.As the midterms approach, Republican candidates may play dress-up in plaids and work boots, as they vie for the votes of our nation’s workers. But even a pickup truck laden with bluejeans and hard hats can’t camouflage the callous facts. The absurdity of the worker causes Republicans champion should drive home the truth to wavering voters: these candidates don’t care about the real needs of working people.Terri Gerstein is a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and the Economic Policy Institute. She spent more than 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, working in the state attorney general’s office and as a deputy labor commissioner.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Ohio, G.O.P. Sees a Clean Victory as Democrats Predict an Upset

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      Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, in the high-profile Ohio Senate race.CLEVELAND — When Tim Ryan speaks to Democratic crowds in the closing days of the Ohio Senate race, his biggest applause line is about the other team.A Republican official in a “deep-red county,” he recounts, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, told him, “You have no idea how many Republicans are going to quietly vote for you.”The hoots and hollers that break out represent the high hopes of a party that has lost much of its appeal to working-class voters and that sees in Mr. Ryan — a congressman from the Mahoning Valley who has an anti-China, pro-manufacturing message and whose own father is a Republican — a chance to claw back blue-collar credibility.Polls show Mr. Ryan competing within the margin of error against his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan is polling higher than President Biden’s job approval rating in Ohio surveys, and he is outperforming the Democratic candidate for governor, Nan Whaley. That suggests a potentially sizable pool of voters who intend to split their tickets between a Republican for governor and a Democrat for Senate.“This is going to be the upset of the night,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview on his campaign bus on Thursday, as he plied the pro-Democrat shoreline of Lake Erie from Toledo to Cleveland.“There’s a lot of Republicans who would never tell a pollster that they’re voting for me,” he said. “They don’t want to put a yard sign up. They don’t want to get in a fight with the neighbor who’s got the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ flag.”He said his internal polling showed 12 percent or more of Republicans “coming our way.”But there is also the cold reality of a midterm environment tilting against Democrats almost everywhere, with inflation the top voter concern. Polling in Ohio in recent elections has undercounted the backing for Republican candidates. And there has been a political realignment of Ohio voters in the past decade, which has largely pushed the state off the battleground map.J.D. Vance listening to local elected officials at the annual Darke County Republican Party Hog Roast.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesWhite Ohioans without college degrees have shifted toward Republicans up and down the ballot, while suburban, college-educated voters have moved to favor Democrats, though less consistently.“Ohio is a much more Republican state than Texas is,” said Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist with 25 years of experience in Ohio. “Democrats talk about things that for a lot of Ohioans offends their core principles and sensibilities, and they run away from the pocketbook issues.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Former President Donald J. Trump twice won Ohio with ease by appealing to the economic and cultural anxieties of working-class white voters. In 2020, he grew his support in the state’s industrial northeast — Mr. Ryan’s base — and became the first Republican presidential candidate in 50 years to win Mahoning County, which is home to Youngstown.Bob Paduchik, chairman of the Republican Party of Ohio, brushed off the notion of quiet Republican support for Mr. Ryan. He said county-level absentee voting data and an analysis using Republican National Committee modeling predicted a clean Vance victory.“I don’t know what he thinks he’s looking at,” he said of Mr. Ryan’s assertion of hidden support. “But I’ll take our data, which is based on the R.N.C. modeling, which has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in it.”Despite Mr. Trump’s success in Ohio, Democrats point to the example of Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and gruff-voiced champion of organized labor who won re-election in 2018 by appealing to working-class voters who might not have liked his progressive social priorities, but believed he would fight for their jobs.Mr. Ryan touring a job training facility at McKinley United Methodist Church in Dayton, Ohio. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Ryan, casting himself partly in the Brown mold, is the grandson of a steelworker and a longtime opponent of trade deals that hurt American factories. He has said that President Biden should not seek re-election and he opposed Nancy Pelosi for House speaker. A former college quarterback, he appears in his ads throwing darts in a bar or footballs at TV sets. “You want culture wars? I’m not your guy,” he says.Mr. Ryan pitches himself to voters weary of the divisiveness and anger broiling in America. “I have this conversation with my dad all the time,” he said in the interview, adding that his father “probably” voted for Mr. Trump, twice.“People are tired of the insanity,” Mr. Ryan told a gathering of Democratic activists on the shore of Lake Erie in Sandusky on Thursday. “We’re Ohio. Ohio doesn’t do crazy.”It was a sideswipe at Mr. Vance, who has campaigned with the far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has flirted with the conspiracy theory that Democrats want to “replace” existing voters with immigrants and has defended Alex Jones as “more reputable” than an MSNBC host.On Friday, speaking to supporters at the county Republican headquarters in Canton, Mr. Vance portrayed his opponent as disingenuous in claiming to be a new-model Democrat. Mr. Vance joked that “maybe we should have invited Tim Ryan” because of the Democrat’s efforts to distance himself from his own party.“This guy is not the moderate that he pretends to be,” Mr. Vance continued. “He’s a guy who bends the knee to Nancy Pelosi and does what he’s told.”One sign that Mr. Ryan remains a long shot is the lack of TV advertising from big-spending groups tied to the Democratic Senate leadership, which have poured tens of millions of dollars into races elsewhere.Mr. Ryan has compensated by raising a staggering $48 million on his own. The money flowed from small donors around the country, many annoyed by Mr. Vance’s political evolution, from the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who denounced Mr. Trump in 2016 as “cultural heroin” to a stalwart Trump supporter. At a rally in Ohio last month, the former president joked that Mr. Vance “is kissing my ass” to win his support.Mr. Vance’s supporters in Cincinnati reacting to the news that he won the Republican primary in May.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Trump is scheduled to return to the state the day before the election for a rally with Mr. Vance in Dayton. Asked at a brief news conference on Friday whether he needed a boost from the former president, Mr. Vance said: “I like the president. I thought his policies deliver prosperity for the state of Ohio, and he wants to come to Ohio, and we’d love to have him in Ohio. It’s really that simple.”Unlike Mr. Ryan, who has shunned campaigning with national Democratic figures, Mr. Vance has embraced national G.O.P. leaders, appearing in Canton with the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republican Senate campaign arm.Mr. Vance has largely relied on the Republican cavalry from out of state, most significantly for $28 million in TV ads from a super PAC aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.Mr. Vance on his own has raised $12.7 million, after his campaign was supported almost exclusively by a super PAC funded by $15 million from the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who once employed Mr. Vance. After Mr. Vance won his primary, Mr. Thiel moved on to other races.On Friday, Ms. McDaniel reminded reporters that polls in Ohio historically have widely missed support for Republicans.“J.D. is actually polling higher than President Trump was heading into the election in 2020,” she said. Mr. Trump went on to win the state by eight percentage points.“What people were seeing in the polling is not new in this state,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “It always overstates things to the benefit of the Democrats.”With a little more than one week before the election on Nov. 8, Mr. Ryan has been making an appeal to unity in these fractured times.“I know you feel the same way as I do,” he told activists in an autoworkers union hall in Cleveland on Thursday night. “I don’t want any more hate. I don’t want any more anger.” He added: “I want people who care about each other. I want some forgiveness. I want some grace.” More

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

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      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.”Supporters of J.D. Vance packed a campaign event in Beavercreek on Tuesday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBeyond 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.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.“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.”A cardboard cutout of former President Donald J. Trump in a Vance campaign office in Cincinnati.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesA volunteer holds campaign materials before a canvassing event in Cincinnati.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesMr. 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.”J.D. Vance at an event in Cincinnati this month as he campaigned for the Senate.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesDuring 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.J.D. Vance with supporters in Lebanon, Ohio, this month.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOn 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.J.D. Vance in Columbus, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesVance supporters at a campaign event in Delaware, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. 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.”Commercials for J.D. Vance being shown in the Delaware County Republican Headquarters.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe 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. More