Middletown High School is ready for JD Vance rally

Jul. 22—Media crews from across the region and the nation were getting settled at Middletown High School early Monday to cover a rally for Middletown native and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance.

Shortly after 7 a.m. under rainy skies, only a few rally-goers were waiting outside the North Breiel Boulevard school. Security forces, including a Dayton police bomb squad van, were clearly in evidence across the school grounds.

—How to follow our coverage of the JD Vance rally

Vance knows Middletown and Southwest Ohio. He graduated from Middletown High School in 2003, joined the U.S. Marine Corps, served in Iraq, going on to study at the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 2013.

Vance's 2016 best-selling memoir recounting his childhood in Middletown and Eastern Kentucky, "Hillbilly Elegy," became a focus of attention in that year's presidential campaign and a Ron Howard-directed movie in 2020.

He entered politics in 2021, beating former U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan in the 2022 Ohio Senate race, and while still a 39-year-old junior senator, being introduced to the nation on July 15 as former President Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 campaign.

Vance once was strongly critical of Trump, at one point calling him "cultural heroin" and a "fraud." But he changed his mind about Trump, telling Fox News in 2021: "I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy."

Since then, Vance has emerged as one of the strongest defenders of what might be seen as Trump's governing philosophy.

In an unsettled and chaotic presidential campaign, Vance's ability to communicate the Trump message will be put to the test repeatedly. Shortly after the Biden campaign announced that President Biden is withdrawing from the race Sunday afternoon, Vance took aim at Biden's vice president on X, the former Twitter social media platform: "Joe Biden has been the worst president of my lifetime, and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way."

When Vance formally accepted the vice presidential nomination in Milwaukee last week, he spotlighted members of his Middletown family.

He also promised to be a "vice president who never forgets where he came from."

Lori Meibers, whose sister is Vance's mother, was backstage Wednesday night when Vance was the keynote speaker at the GOP Convention last week.

"It feels like we're literally in a dream," Meibers told this newspaper Thursday afternoon in a phone interview. "This is actually happening. We always knew he was smart and destined for greatness."