For many in Middletown, Ohio, JD Vance is better-known as a bestselling author and hit Hollywood movie subject than a politician who on Monday was propelled into the political big time as Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick.
Amanda Bailey moved into Vance’s grandmother’s house, the home in which Vance was mostly raised, 18 months ago. Since then, she’s been dealing with a steady stream of curious passersby inspired by Vance’s 2016 autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, and the 2020 film of the same name, driving by and taking photos of the house.
Bailey, who works at a local hardware store, admits she’s not entirely up to speed with Vance’s policy positions.
“I hope he’ll do something good for us, and I think he will,” she says.
Her thoughts are echoed by Jerry Dobbins, who has lived three doors down the street for the past 31 years. Dobbins says his memories of Vance’s family are mainly of the vice-presidential candidate’s grandmother, Bonnie, who mostly raised JD and his sister, Lindsay.
“Bonnie was a tough bird. She was just a strong woman from Kentucky,” he says.
But there’s a reason Bailey, Dobbins and a number of other Middletown residents say they are not especially concerned by Vance being rocketed into the political mainstream without much in the way of experience – it’s because they have complete faith in the person who picked him: Donald Trump.
“I like Trump,” says Bailey. “And I think they’ll do a lot of good work together.”
“Trump’s not a politician. He’s a businessman,” says Dobbins, who worked as a fabricator at a nearby aerospace company before retiring. “When Trump got in [in 2016], things started looking better economy-wise, business-wise. I don’t think he can be beat [in November].”
The Middletown Vance was raised in is not unlike the dozens of other left-behind communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and beyond, where Trump’s particular brand of politics and rhetoric has found favor. In Butler county, which encompasses most of Middletown and several satellite towns of Cincinnati, Trump beat Biden by 24 points in the 2020 election.
Like thousands of others, Vance’s family were lured from Appalachia to Ohio by the promise of work at Middletown’s many paper and steel mills that for much of the 20th century dominated the region’s economy.
And as with dozens of other rust belt towns, Middletown’s economy shrank due to industrial offshoring that began in the 1970s, giving rise to job losses and the ravages of the opioid epidemic that endure today.
It’s these ills, which the 39-year-old Vance has blamed on Joe Biden, immigrants and China, that he has used to craft a so-far successful political career. Despite these claims, the Biden administration has invested billions of dollars in the midwest, while immigrants have helped stem population decline in many towns and cities.
For longtime Middletown residents Bev and Tom Pressler, Vance’s lack of political experience may even be an advantage.
“I think the young blood is good. We need some younger politicians running the country,” says Tom. “Obama got in and he wasn’t all that old, and he didn’t have all that experience. Trump didn’t have all that experience and I think he did excellent.”
For Bev Pressler, a 62-year-old resident, Vance has worked hard to get where he is today.
“If you saw the movie and read the book, he was trying to get into these schools, he was trying to pull his mom out of drug addiction, his family depended on him,” she says.
But not everyone in Middletown thinks Vance’s meteoric rise to the forefront of US politics is a good thing.
“He has a legislative legacy of zero achievements, especially lacking any meaningful support for Ohioans,” says Kathy Wyenandt, the chair of the Butler county Democratic party.
“Vance is willing to change his beliefs at any time for the sake of amassing power … he is an out-of-touch millionaire and political shapeshifter who is wrong for Ohio, and wrong for our country.”
Although Vance launched his political career in the US Senate with a campaign rally at a steel manufacturer in Middletown in July 2021, locals say they haven’t seen much of him since then.
“What concerns me more than anything is that, at Senator Vance’s age, he is able to take the Maga agenda and to see it out far beyond even Trump’s time, if he were to get re-elected,” says Scotty Robertson, a pastor who has lived in Middletown for seven years.
“Those policies are so destructive to our country and to Middletown. We’re talking about potentially ending social security and Medicare as we know it, continuing to roll back voting rights and ensuring that large segments of our population find it extremely hard to even vote. We’re talking about supporting policy that allows the president to essentially do whatever he or she chooses without any kind of accountability.”
Still, for Debbie Dranschak, who with her husband runs the White Dog Distilling Company on Middletown’s Central Avenue, that’s not enough of a reason not to vote for his running mate in November.
“I don’t know him, I don’t know his politics, but I’m glad Trump picked him,” she says. “Biden is just too old. He needs to get out. I grew up Democrat, but it’s about who is going to do the best for the country.”
For Chad Sebald, an audio engineer, Vance has been unfairly labeled by some locally as a “class traitor” – someone who leaves behind the people they grew up with in search of better opportunities elsewhere.
“Knowing his history, he came from nothing. He did what just about anybody in Middletown would do – he got out. I can’t blame the guy for getting out of here,” says Sebald, who also plans to vote for Trump in November.
However, for a few minutes on the same street Vance was raised, the kind of dangerous, racist rhetoric that many say Trump has fueled over the years was in full view on Monday afternoon.
As a local TV news car pulled up to interview residents, a man wearing a T-shirt with the word “freedom” written on it emerged from a nearby home angrily asking the car and its occupants to leave.
“JD Vance is a race traitor,” he yells. Vance’s wife, Usha, is the daughter of immigrants from India. “Fuck that motherfucker.”
