Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, the Republican nominee for Vice President, brought thousands of supporters to Middletown High School on July 22, but only a few hundred got in. The line to see Vance's speech stretched from the auditorium door of Vance’s alma mater clear down Breiel Boulevard, nearly bringing Cherice Perry to tears.
“I get so excited and so emotional. I don't know why,” Perry, a born-and-raised Middletown native, told CityBeat. “It's just a humbling, exciting experience to know that someone here could actually be with President Trump. It's just amazing to me. Historical.”
Vance was picked by former President Donald Trump to be his running mate in the 2024 race on July 15. The bestowment has earned Vance much praise around his hometown, but not all locals who turned out at Middletown High School on Monday had pride in mind.
Rally attendees on the issues
Vance, who did not mention abortion-related policies during his Middletown rally, stands firmly against laws that give patients the right to access abortion care, including in cases of incest or rape. In 2022, Vance said he would support a national 15-week ban on abortion care proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Vance has since made some concessions on abortion to align more with Trump's view that such laws should be a states' issue, but this still worries Rachel Zipperian, who lives in Liberty Township.
Zipperian, along with roughly six other Vance critics, protested Vance's rally on the sidewalk outside Middletown's campus. She held a sign that read “female rights are human rights,” getting the occasional jeer from a passing Vance supporter. Zipperian told CityBeat she brought the sign out of retirement from June 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Vance has since made some concessions on abortion to align more with Trump's view that such laws should be a states' issue, but this still worries Rachel Zipperian, who lives in Liberty Township.
Zipperian, along with roughly six other Vance critics, protested Vance's rally on the sidewalk outside Middletown's campus. She held a sign that read “female rights are human rights,” getting the occasional jeer from a passing Vance supporter. Zipperian told CityBeat she brought the sign out of retirement from June 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“I wanted to make sure that females are thinking twice about what they're voting for,” she said. “It's really about female rights. It's the right of a child that becomes pregnant through rape. It's the right of just people in general. If we're willing to let these rights go, what's next?”
Scroll through photos from Vance's rally at the bottom of this story
“This is an election for the next 40 years,” added Cleveland Canova, a Democrat running to represent District 56 in the Ohio House of Representatives, which includes Lebanon and Mason. “The next president will probably appoint and replace Thomas and Alito, so we cannot have Donald J. Trump and MAGA and Christian nationalists having five Supreme Court justices. That would be insane.”
Winding down the line of supporters wearing red or Middie purple, CityBeat met a Vance supporter in a trendy shade of pink.
“I'm very pro-life, so I take that very seriously,” said Annie Dean, a Mason local wearing a pink hat with an ‘80s-era picture of Trump holding a chunky cell phone that she bought from TikTok. “I'm actually a teacher in the public schools, and I think one of the biggest disservices we do with children is making them feel like their lives don't matter, that they can just get rid of a life. I think every life is special.”
Standing near Dean was Amy Lyn Wolf, a Dayton local who works for the Job and Family Services office of Montgomery County. She thinks a Trump-Vance win would benefit her clients.
“People are coming forward requesting services much more than they were, you know, five years ago,” she said. “You see them struggling, trying to put food on the table. And, you know, we see a lot of an increase in food stamps.”
CityBeat asked what Wolf thought about President Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race, which he announced just one day before Vance’s Middletown rally. She’s not sure if Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive nominee among Democrats, will make a difference in Trump’s chances.
“It's going to be a lot different than it was supposed to be, you know, how we thought it might go,” Wolf said. “But I still think Trump and Vance are going to win. I'm still 100% behind them.”
Ohio Republicans hint at a “civil war” to rally-goers
Inside the rally ahead of Vance’s speech, Ohio GOP Senate nominee Bernie Moreno was casting doubt on the current administration, saying we don't know "who's in charge of this country,” but another opening act eclipsed Moreno with a shocking statement amid rising threats of political violence.
After the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13 at a Pennsylvania rally, attendees at Vance’s Middletown rally had to weave around armored trucks, K-9 units and detailed bag checks. And even though Vance himself blamed Democratic rhetoric for the attempt on Trump’s life, it didn’t stop State Senator George Lang (R-West Chester) from hinting at a “civil war” while warming up the crowd for Vance.
“I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s gonna take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved. It’s the greatest experiment in the history of mankind. If we come down to a civil war I’m glad we got people like us,” Lang said to cheers from the crowd.
One angle of the Lang's speech published to X shows incumbent State Rep. Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon) smiling and cheering at Lang's civil war remarks.
One angle of the Lang's speech published to X shows incumbent State Rep. Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon) smiling and cheering at Lang's civil war remarks.
Lang, who is running for reelection, walked back his statements later on X, blaming “excitement of the moment.”
"Remarks I made earlier today at a rally in Middletown do not accurately reflect my views," Lang wrote in the statement. "I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included."
Harris' campaign for President issued a statement calling out Trump and Vance for Lang’s statement.
"Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are running a campaign openly sowing hatred and promising revenge against their political opponents," the statement reads. "It’s a feature, not a bug, of their campaign and message to the American people. That’s why a Republican official was empowered to predict a civil war while introducing these candidates."
A spokesperson for Vance later issued a statement saying, “Senator Vance agrees with President Trump that we need to unite the country and he was glad to hear that State Senator Lang walked back those comments.”
Vance takes the stage
Vance, who was famously born and raised in Middletown before writing about his upbringing in his controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, invoked his Middletown roots throughout the appearance to cheers from his supporters.
“We really have been forgotten in Middletown, Ohio,” Vance said. “They think that we’re backwards, they think that we’re bad people, they think that we don’t know how to do anything and we do. This is where things are made, this is the source for America’s greatness.”
While the book that built Vance’s career was praised by some critics for its portrayal of poor, white, working class Americans, Vance claimed to rally goers that Black Americans have found pieces of themselves in his story, going on to blame Biden and Harris for an “epidemic of crime.”
“My book came out in 2016, and one of the coolest things about my book is, I heard from a lot of Americans from all walks of life, but especially from Black Americans who come up to me and say, our story is your story,” Vance said to the predominantly white crowd. “Whether it’s the drug epidemic or whether it’s this epidemic of crime and violence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have unleashed on our country.”
Without a known VP challenger since Biden withdrew from the race, Vance resorted to staying focused on Harris as his target, saying the presumptive nominee was ungrateful for the United States.
“I wonder, when I see [Harris] give a speech and she talks about the history of this country, not with appreciation, but with condemnation,” Vance said. “And look, of course every country, just like every family, certainly mine, has its pockmarks. Not everything’s perfect, not everything’s gonna be, but if you want to lead this country you should feel grateful for it.”
Vance also took square aim at Harris and Democrats for allowing their party to inch so close to the election before switching up their nominee, claiming the decision was made by George Soros and “a couple of elite Democrats.”
“You cannot for three and a half years take a guy who clearly didn’t have the mental capacity to do the job – Kamala Harris lied about it, my Senate democrat colleagues lied about it, the media lied about it, every single person who saw Joe Biden knew that he wasn’t capable of doing the job, and for three years they said nothing until he became political deadweight,” Vance said. “The idea of selecting the Democratic party’s nominee because George Soros and Barack Obama and a couple of elite Democrats out in a smoke-filled room decided to throw Joe Biden overboard, that is not how it works!”
Vance’s statements come just two days after Trump denied knowing about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s reported plan to donate $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC in support of his campaign.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and others are already making predictive Harris running mate shortlists, but it’s still unclear who Vance will face in the VP debate. Vance admitted to supporters on Monday that he was disappointed he won’t have the chance to debate Harris.
“I was told I was gonna get to debate Kamala Harris and now President Trump’s gonna get to debate her? I’m kinda pissed off!”
Jobs, voter ID and “indoctrination”
When Vance wasn’t opining lovingly about Middletown or calling out shadowy Democrats for allegedly pushing Biden out of the race, he was pushing for American manufacturing, calling for widespread voter ID laws and taking aim at the American education system from the stage of his alma mater.
“We believe that we want to make more of our own stuff. And we believe that we want to have secure elections. And we believe we will have schools that won’t indoctrinate our children. That’s not racist, ladies and gentlemen. It is common American-Middletown sense," Vance said
“I got a great education at Middletown High School,” Vance continued. “And there are great school teachers in public and private schools all across our country, but for some reason, the federal Department of Education is trying to lean into indoctrination at our schools instead of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.”
As Ohio continues to tighten voter access with strict ID laws and purging inactive voters, Vance mocked Democrats who criticize voter ID laws as disproportionately impacting minority voters.
“We need voter ID in this country,” Vance said to uproarious applause from the auditorium. “It is the weirdest thing to me, Democrats say it is racist to believe – they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mt. Dew yesterday. In our world today, I’m sure they’re going to call that racist, too.”
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Keep scrolling for photos from Vance's July 22 rally at Middletown High School.
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