Vance campaigns at the Ohio steel plant where his grandfather worked

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance returned to his hometown on Friday to campaign for Republican candidates at the steel plant where his grandfather used to work and portray the Democratic Party his Papaw once supported as unrecognizable today.Vance has highlighted his Rust Belt roots while trying to boost GOP candidates ahead of the November midterm elections and to promote the Trump administration’s economic policies and efforts to try to expand U.S. manufacturing.As he took the stage at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works facility, which was known as Armco Steel when his grandfather James Vance worked there for nearly 40 years, he remarked on sharing the space where the man whose name he shared once stood.“Papaw was a welder in this place for 40 years, and today his grandson stands here as the vice president of these United States. It’s an amazing thing," Vance said.The Middletown event comes as Vance is expected to ramp up his travel schedule with more public events and fundraisers, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly and discussed it on the condition of anonymity.Vance says Trump is trying to reverse decades of ‘American decline’As they've campaigned this year, Vance, more than President Donald Trump, has acknowledged Americans' cost-of-living concerns, seeking to assure voters that the administration is working to reverse high prices, though he didn't offer specifics on those efforts.The vice president said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do” and “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or it’s all going to happen overnight," but he said Trump was trying to reverse “40 years of American decline." He pointed to Trump's immigration and trade policies, including his tariffs, as trying to protect jobs like those at the steel plant.Vance described his grandfather as a Democrat because he thought they were the party of union men, “but he thought way too many politicians were just plain old corrupt."“He hated the people who forgot about this town when they should have been fighting for this town,” Vance said.Vance blamed politicians of both major political parties, saying that for 40 years they espoused policies of free trade and open immigration that led to factory jobs being shipped overseas and an eventual scourge of opioids left behind, which he blamed on “a lot of cartels” and “the fentanyl tra…

Vance took the stage at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works facility, which was known as Armco Steel when his grandfather James Vance worked there for nearly 40 years. Vance has highlighted his Rust Belt roots while trying to boost GOP candidates ahead of the November midterm elections and to promote the Trump administration’s economic policies and efforts to try to expand U.S. The Middletown event comes as he’s expected to ramp up his travel schedule with more public events and fundraisers, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly and discussed it on the condition of anonymity.

In a radio interview Thursday on the “Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show,” Vance said Friday’s stop would be “personally very meaningful” because of his family connection. He said it was “an amazing opportunity for me to go talk about, frankly, plants like this wouldn’t exist were it not for some of the Trump administration’s economic policies.” Vance, who was joined by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, said he would also use the visit to stop by some Cincinnati chili restaurants.

Before he arrived at the steel plant, he first stopped by a local pastry shop to buy doughnuts and remind workers there of the “no tax on tips” provision in the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed last year, according to a video posted online by an aide. In his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance described the steel plant as an economic savior for his family that brought his grandparents from Kentucky’s hills into the American middle class. He described how his grandfather, known to his grandchildren as Papaw, would boast when he saw an old Ford or Chevy that its steel was made by his company.

His grandson’s election as vice president of the United States spurred pride in the Midwestern city, though Vance has faced some pushback to his portrayal of it in the book. He said kids “derisively called it ‘Middletucky’” when he was a child because it had so many transplants like his family. He said they brought problems with them from Kentucky such as drug addiction, ”Mountain Dew mouth” and problematic fathers.

In the 2024 election, Trump and Vance won abou…