Opinion: Ohio's never seen a U.S. Senate nominee like J.D. Vance

People who don’t like Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate nominee in 2022 really, really don’t like him. Just as people in 2016 – including J.D. Vance –really, really disliked Donald Trump.

The rise of Vance from best-selling "Hillbilly Elegy" author and political novice a year ago to win a 5-way Republican primary May 3 with crucial help from the former president he used to skewer is Ohio’s version of a reality TV star reaching the White House.

The Middletown native now faces a formidable Democratic opponent in 10th-term U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of the Youngstown area, but the November mid-terms look bleak for Democrats and Vance has the backing of Trump, who twice carried Ohio by 8 percentage points, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and Fox News star Tucker Carlson.

Pounded by well over $10 million in negative primary ads, most highlighting his past criticism of Trump, Vance’s main challenge now is healing scars and uniting the party after winning with only 31% of the vote. He thinks that will happen.

"I guess I’ll find out the easy way or the hard way in November," Vance said recently over pancakes and bacon in the Sugar n’ Spice diner near Norwood. "I think most people in Ohio have a pretty open mind, and that’s all I really need."

He doesn’t like that some people "just hate my guts," but understands that’s today’s politics.

Some in the news media have been particularly harsh. Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic, a magazine Vance once wrote an anti-Trump piece for, that he is a "smarmy and pretentious asshole." Cleveland.com columnist Brent Larkin called him "the most unlikeable and untrustworthy candidate imaginable."

Probably a good thing his hardbitten and fiercely protective Mamaw (played by Glenn Close in the movie version of "Hillbilly Elegy") isn’t still around.

Having covered Vance, now 37, over the past six years in venues from a college campus to a factory floor to a country music bar, I’ve seen someone who likes mingling with people and is as comfortable talking with professors as with someone from his family’s native Breathitt County in southeastern Kentucky. He likes to laugh a lot, including at himself. Part of his stock campaign talk was about seeing "my fat head" so often on TV in the negative ads.

And he is unfiltered, probably to the extent that he keeps his campaign staffers up at night.

"Unfortunately, part of being in American politics is whatever complexity you have gets ground down to simplistic talking points by the media," Vance said.

Ryan has pounced on quotes in which Vance called America "a joke" and said he felt out of place in Ohio after coming back from working for Thiel in California.

"This is going to come down to who’s the most Ohio," Ryan said in an interview while recently in Cincinnati.

Vance counters that the first time he left Ohio for any major amount of time was to serve as a Marine in Iraq, and he went to California for a job opportunity that allowed him to return to Ohio as a wealthy venture capitalist.

"As my wife would tell you, I’ve been trying to convince her for pretty much the entire time that I’ve known her that we have to move to Ohio," he said. He and Usha, who live in East Walnut Hills, have two sons and one daughter, all born in this state.

He and Ryan sound alike at times, both critical of U.S. trade deals, losses of manufacturing jobs to China, and of some of their parties’ leadership. Vance has said Ryan is copying his rhetoric and is running as "a Trump Democrat."

Vance is way different than the GOP senators he would succeed, traditional Republicans George Voinovich and then-incumbent Rob Portman of Terrace Park.

The Yale-educated former Trump critic grew to admire Trump’s instincts for shaking up establishment politics and connecting with everyday people such as the working-class Appalachians he grew up among. Vance wouldn’t be in Washington to just be a back-benching junior senator, but wants to help add an intellectual approach to Trumpism to build "a long-term governing philosophy."

He’s considered part of a "New Right " and a member of what Vanity Fair magazine recently dubbed "Peter Thiel’s red-pill army." That refers to a scene in the 1999 movie "The Matrix" in which choosing the red pill means learning a potentially unsettling and life-changing truth.

Vance is wary of "the regime," insiders "who have a ton of power and have failed miserably." He thinks entrenched federal bureaucrats have too much power, and that both parties have contributed to a series of catastrophes during his adulthood: financial crisis, overseas debacles, loss of manufacturing jobs.

The decline in U.S. life expectancy, soaring energy costs, and the baby formula shortage are the latest signs of a nation in trouble, Vance says.

"I think the country is very weak right now," he said. "The problems are more fundamental than most people realize.”

He thinks he can help improve that.

"My life is great; my wife is happy, three kids, business is successful," Vance said. "When you’re successful and you look at your country and people are suffering, you should feel some sense of 'Well, this isn’t right.'"

Dan Sewell is a member of The Enquirer Board of Contributors who made a mistake by eating breakfast before going to Sugar n’ Spice.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Ohio's never seen a U.S. Senate nominee like J.D. Vance