Making deals and stirring the pot: How Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance is navigating his first term

On a hot day at the Ohio State Fair, Sen. J.D. Vance jokingly chided his aides because they didn't sign him up to judge the ribs competition.

He'd done it one year prior as a candidate for Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat. "Bad staff work," the Ohio Republican quipped when a reporter asked him about it.

"We will try to properly match the Senate schedule to the ribs competition next year because that's one of the great perks of being a U.S. senator," Vance continued.

Moments earlier, Vance had made his pitch for Issue 1, a failed proposal to make it harder to amend the state constitution. He argued "far left special interests" would use the amendment process to change labor policy and threaten Second Amendment rights. Vance also said U.S. special counsel Jack Smith "criminalized free speech" by charging former President Donald Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election.

That’s the Vance Ohio voters came to know on the campaign trail, the one at the core of his first months as a senator: Someone unafraid to wade into the muck and speak his mind, even if it grates his critics or members of his own party.

At the same time, he’s made strange bedfellows with colleagues across the aisle to tackle manufacturing issues and crack down on bank executives. Vance doesn’t idealize bipartisanship, and that's not really his goal. The Iraq War, he likes to point out, was bipartisan and considered by many to be a massive failure.

But the junior senator and "Hillbilly Elegy" author is interested in getting things done.

"The main thing I take away from (former U.S. Sen.) Rob Portman is you can get things in this institution if you work in the right way," Vance said in an interview at his Washington, D.C., office. "It's like any other job. There are good days and bad days. There are big personalities and there are people you like and people that maybe got up on the wrong side of the bed that day. But if you really put your nose to the grindstone and work the institution, you can get things done."

East Palestine train disaster defines Vance's first moves

It wasn't long after Vance took the oath of office before he needed to get to work, and fast.

A Norfolk Southern train with an overheated wheel bearing derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3, spilling toxic chemicals into the environment and uprooting life for a small village on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Vance visited the community in the weeks after the accident, including one stop at a local creek that went viral on social media.

He also appeared with Trump when the former president visited East Palestine on Feb. 22.

"He’s definitely been an advocate for us," East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway said of Vance. "He was there from the very beginning. His office and himself are always available if we need anything to reach out."

The strongest response to the disaster came in the form of legislation Vance introduced with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that would overhaul rail safety regulations, particularly for trains carrying hazardous materials. Both Ohio senators are confident the bill will eventually pass the Senate, but its fate in the U.S. House is less certain.

And despite Vance's support, the proposal isn't popular among Senate Republicans.

"If there's a silver lining here, it's that it forced the staff to actually do something, and to do it not in a hypothetical way or not in an abstract way, but in an actual real and substantive way," Vance said. "It sort of drove home that there's this great human tragedy here and if we want to do things the right way by our constituents, we actually have to do our job and do it well."

For Vance's allies, the incident is proof that he's a senator who will put Ohio first − something his opponents questioned throughout the 2022 campaign.

"His critics thought he was running to be a national figure building a personal brand, rather than to represent Ohio‘s specific needs," said Luke Thompson, a strategist who ran a Peter Thiel-funded super PAC that backed Vance. "The disaster in East Palestine was clarifying: he could have avoided diving in and focused on national issues instead, but he did the opposite. He’s been completely committed to the town and the region."

Bipartisan broker or firestarter?

Not everyone is sold.

Democrats continue to criticize Vance for cozying up to Trump, who endorsed Vance in the 2022 Senate primary despite his past criticisms of the former president. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois slammed Vance for pledging to stall Justice Department nominees over Trump's indictments.

Vance has also been willing to stir the pot on hot-button issues and introduced legislation to make English the national language and ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Most recently, he's pushed back against efforts to rename Wayne National Forest in southeast Ohio to Buckeye National Forest. The forest is named for Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne, who led a battle against Ohio's Native American tribes in 1794.

On social media, Vance can border on internet troll when he claps back at his critics. In response to a writer and activist who blasted his stance on Issue 1, he tweeted: "Who’s taking care of your pet cats and/or tarantula while you hate tweet me?"

“His rhetoric continues to be very biased and from a human rights perspective, doesn’t take care and include all the people," said Gwen McFarlin, chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party.

Vance acknowledged that he's no longer a Senate candidate and said he tries to strike a balance as senator. On the one hand, he said, he doesn't want constituents to avoid coming to his office for help because he's been "antagonistic." But he'll also speak his mind about something if he feels strongly enough.

"To be frank, I think I can do better on this," he said. "I'm not a social commentator, right? I'm not a journalist. I don't work in media commentary. Our job is to pass legislation about problems, not just whine about problems, complain about problems. And so the criteria is, do I really care about it? And is there a meaningful thing that I can do from Washington to make it better?"

Vance's more controversial takes haven't stopped Senate Democrats − particularly progressive, populist senators − from teaming up with him on common interests.

He and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are sponsoring bipartisan legislation that would claw back compensation for executives of failed banks. He's worked with Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin on numerous bills, including one that would ensure taxpayer-funded technologies are made in the United States. His first major proposal, with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., aims to crack down on catalytic converter thefts.

Brown, for his part, isn't surprised to be working with Vance after maintaining a similar relationship with Portman. He's also quick to point out where the two disagree.

"My job is to figure it out, listen to people, gather information, bring it back here, talk to my colleagues − especially since my partner in Ohio has always been a Republican senator − and get it done," Brown said.

Vance on Trump and the GOP's future

Observers are mixed on Vance. Some believe the 39-year-old Middletown native could be the face of a new Republican Party, a more populist GOP that Trump laid the foundation for in 2016. Others say his work across the aisle isn't any different from what most senators do.

Ultimately, he's only eight months into a six-year term − and that's a long time in politics.

“There are senators who almost inherently can’t ever get anything done, and he’s chosen to not go down that path, which I think is important for the institution and does give him a means to offer broader appeal the next time he’s on the ballot," said David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati.

Vance has his own thoughts on the future of the Republican Party. For starters, he thinks Trump should be the Republican nominee in 2024. He recently dined with Trump and other Ohio Republicans in Bedminster, N.J., and he expects to campaign for the former president throughout the race. He recognizes that his primary job is senator, not surrogate, but he said he can do two things at once.

"You have to be willing to sort of advocate for the people and the policies that you care about," Vance said. "I really don't want Joe Biden to continue being the president of United States, and I'm going to make that argument as forcefully as I can."

He also believes some Republicans − including Trump's opponents in the presidential primary − have gone all in on culture wars without listening to voters' day-to-day concerns. To win solid GOP majorities, he argued, the party needs to show voters it has a plan to make their lives better.

"If people really think about what Trump ran on and what he represented, this was a guy who was taking a lot of our orthodoxies in the Republican Party and saying, 'Our voters don't give a s--- about this. Let's actually put a package together the voters care about.' That's a very big, important thing − even if people don't like the personality of Donald Trump − I think that we have to learn."

Haley BeMiller is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How Ohio Sen. JD Vance is navigating his first months as senator