LIMA, Ohio—JD Vance recalls that when he was running for Senate four years ago as a candidate mostly known for his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy,” he spoke in front of groups as small as a dozen trying to earn Ohioans’ votes.
Many of his travels took him to northwest Ohio, a region defined by flat landscapes and small towns dotted with farms and tall-steepled churches.
On June 24, he returned to the area and delivered the keynote address at an Ohio Republican Party dinner in Lima. A crowd of 1,000 gathered at the Veterans Memorial Civic and Convention Center to hear the vice president.
Early in his speech, Vance explained that an adviser suggested that he cancel his planned visit to Lima because of the events of the past weeks.
“I said, ‘I’m not canceling this trip to Lima for anything. I’ve been looking forward to this for months,’” said Vance, who has a home in Cincinnati, less than three hours south of Lima.
“I don’t know if you guys saw, but there’s nothing going on in the news at all that could justify me canceling this trip,” he said, jokingly.
Vance’s story of growing up in Middletown, Ohio, and spending summers in the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky was documented in “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was made into a Netflix movie directed by Ron Howard.
Propelled by then-former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Vance emerged from a crowded Republican primary field when he ran for Senate, eventually defeating Democrat Tim Ryan in the general election in 2022.
He was just a year into his freshman term when Trump asked him to join him on the presidential ticket.
“I’ve got to tell you, I’ve lived a very blessed life in politics. The president, he always gives me a little crap about this. He said: ‘JD, you came out of nowhere. You were a senator, and then all of a sudden, you were the vice president of the United States. I don’t think anybody’s had that much success in politics, except for me,'” Vance said, with a laugh.
“He always calls me the second most upwardly mobile politician because he was the first to come from no political experience to becoming president of the United States.”
Alex Triantafilou, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party and a former judge who lives in Cincinnati, praised Vance for holding the event in Lima, a city of about 35,000 between Dayton and Toledo.
He added that Vance has inspired support for Ohio residents who are not politicians but are entering the public service arena.
“It’s a true American story, which is the citizen legislator who chooses to serve in public office out of another career, and not to be a career politician,“ Triantafilou said. ”That continues the pattern that President Trump started. We recently saw it with Sen. Bernie Moreno winning last November as a businessman who had never held elected office, and now we’re seeing with Vivek [Ramaswamy].
“It’s a good trend. It’s all about people who have real-world experience building a business, raising a family, and not being part of the regular political establishment. Ohioans see that in Vice President Vance, and that’s why he draws crowds like these in every part of the state.”
Vance started his address by detailing the story of Trump’s asking him to be his running mate in 2024.
“I didn’t know that the president would make me his vice presidential running mate until, literally, the morning of the GOP convention,” Vance said, recalling that he traveled earlier to Trump’s Palm Beach home for a meeting.
“He said, ‘You know, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but it’s probably going to be you, so go have fun the next couple of days.'”
That evening, Vance recalled, Trump went to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of a failed attempt to assassinate him.
“I think that would have been one of the great tragedies in American history, not just a tragedy for him personally,” Vance said. “I’m a person of faith. I imagine most of you are, too. I believe the hand of God prevented America from experiencing great tragedy.”
The morning of the GOP convention in Milwaukee, Vance received a phone call from Trump but did not answer.
“We had just landed in Milwaukee,“ Vance said. ”We’ve got three little kids. You know, it was a hot day. We were trying to get through all the security to get to our hotel room. I called him back 15 minutes later, and he said: ‘JD, you just missed a very important phone call. I’m going to have to select somebody else now.'”
Cory Bowman, Vance’s younger brother, is running for mayor of Cincinnati. A pastor and coffee shop owner in a city that has not elected a Republican mayor since the late 1970s, Bowman said he was inspired to seek the post after returning from January’s inauguration when Trump returned to the Oval Office and Vance became vice president.
Before his older brother took the stage in Lima, Bowman told The Epoch Times that the two sometimes talk about politics and issues, but they usually discuss their interest in “Star Wars” and their family.
“We love the prequels. We do like the old-school ‘Star Wars’ movies, too, but we especially love the prequels,” Bowman said, before his attention shifted to Vance’s new high-profile role.
“He’s an amazing example as an older brother, and he’s leading by example with what he is doing as vice president, just as he did when he was a senator. This turnout and all of this enthusiasm show that he is loved.”
During his June 24 address, Vance shared a story of a phone call with a foreign leader, in the Oval Office. He said Trump asked him to join the call and stand near him behind the Resolute Desk.
“There’s this wooden box with a red button sitting on the desk, and I think to myself, ‘That’s probably not a button that you want to press.’ We’re talking to this foreign leader, and the president looks over at me, puts the foreign leader on mute, and says, ‘This is not going very well.' And he presses the red button,” Vance said.
“My eyes get really big, and I’m like, ‘Mr. President, what just happened?’ And he looks at me, and he says, ‘Nuclear.’ Two minutes later, a guy walks up with a Diet Coke, and he looks back at me, he says, ‘It wasn’t nuclear, it’s just the Diet Coke button.’ That’s the kind of guy, my fellow Republicans, that we have as the president of the United States.
“What makes the president so successful is he has the best instincts about people of anybody that I’ve ever seen. He knows when he’s making progress, when he needs to cut something off. He knows when he’s dealing with somebody that he can trust, and he knows when he’s dealing with somebody that he can’t trust.”
Vance highlighted what the Trump administration has done in its first five months. He praised Trump’s tariff plan and the crackdown on illegal immigration.
The vice president called last week’s U.S. military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities “wildly successful.”
“Not only did we destroy the Iranian nuclear program, we did it with zero American casualties, and that’s what happened,” Vance said.
“What I call the Trump Doctrine is quite simple: No. 1, you articulate a clear American interest, and that’s, in this case, that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. No. 2, you try to aggressively, diplomatically solve that problem. And No. 3, when you can’t solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it, and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.”
Several attendees at the June 24 event told The Epoch Times that they hope that Vance runs for president in 2028.
