VP debate offers JD Vance an opportunity to overcome campaign trail struggles : NPR

Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio Sen. JD Vance has been an aggressive messenger for Donald Trump’s campaign vision for the future and is a constant fixture on the trail, doing interviews and taking questions from the press.

But in the 11 weeks since Vance joined the GOP presidential ticket, that message has been overshadowed by controversy — often of Vance’s own making.

His acceptance speech in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention was heavy on biography and nodded towards a more polished take on Trump’s often dire rhetoric.

“My friends, tonight is a night of hope,” he said. “A celebration of what America once was, and with God’s grace, what it will soon be again. And it is a reminder of the sacred duty we have to preserve the American experiment, to choose a new path for our children and grandchildren.”

Vance’s selection came at a moment when Trump was leading in key battleground polls after President Biden’s poor debate performance and the GOP was rallying around Trump after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The freshman Ohio senator was viewed as the MAGA heir apparent to the party’s future.

But in the run-up to Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, there have been two conflicting forces at work on the trail: the message that Vance wants to get out, and what actually sticks.

Take his first solo campaign rally in his hometown, just days after the RNC, where he delivered a populist speech vowing to help lift up “forgotten communities all across our country.”

“We’re going to fight for every single worker in this country,” he said. “If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to put a good dinner on the table and send your kids to whatever vacation and whatever school you want to.”

But another line that broke through to the public — and not for good reason — was a comment about Diet Mountain Dew.

“Democrats say that it is racist to believe — well, they say it’s racist to do anything,” he said. “I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I’m sure they’re going to call that racist, too.”

Older comments have drawn blowback

In the days that followed, Trump struggled to quickly pivot his campaign message to address Vice President Harris after President Biden dropped out of the race, but Vance was quick to fill in the gaps to question her record and make her the focus of attacks on immigration, inflation and other top Republican issues.

When Harris named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and the pair embarked on a swing state blitz, Vance was there, too, countering the Democratic message with the case for a Republican presidency.

“It is normal people who suffer when Kamala Harris refuses to do her job, and it is normal people who stand to benefit the most when we re-elect Donald J. Trump president of the United States,” he said in Philadelphia.

But Vance’s rapid ascension in politics means he has relatively less experience as a campaigner, delivering stump speeches or handling the intense scrutiny on past and present statements.

So the prebuttal tour came as Vance was also dealing with uproar over old comments he made deriding Democrats in charge as quote “childless cat ladies.”

“It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children,” Vance said in an interview with Megyn Kelly. “I explicitly said in my remarks despite the fact the media has lied about this that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

But the damage was done, as Vance’s old comments provided Democrats an opening to attack the GOP ticket as sexist and out of touch.

His false claims about migrants have caused controversy, too

Then, there’s more recent remarks, like a weeks-long inflammatory crusade against Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio that Vance has sought to use as a cudgel to attack Democrats over immigration.

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said in a Sept. 15 CNN interview. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

State and local Republican leaders in Ohio have rejected claims made by Trump and Vance about Haitian migrants in Springfield. The city’s mayor told news outlets that Vance’s staff knew the conspiracies about eating pets were false before Trump uttered the lies on the debate stage last month.

Several times, Vance has also staked out policy positions for the ticket that Trump has later disagreed with or shot down, like when Vance said that Trump would veto a national abortion ban.

“I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump said on the debate stage. “And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I don’t think he was speaking for me.”

Where Trump offered a “concept of a plan” for health care, Vance answered a question after a Raleigh, North Carolina campaign speech with more details of how Republicans would overhaul health insurance risk pools under the Affordable Care Act, a broadly unpopular proposal.

Vance’s exchanges with reporters can turn testy

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Vance has also been prolific when it comes to messaging campaign goals, frequently doing media interviews, delivering speeches and taking questions after most every stop — prioritizing local journalists.

But those Q and A sessions can turn contentious, with the crowd often booing questions from journalists as Vance takes the opportunity to paint himself as a pugilist for Trump, whether it be queries about interest rate cuts or questions about the campaign’s support of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who allegedly called himself a “Black Nazi” among other things on a porn forum more than a decade ago. (Robinson has denied the allegation.)

Vance, who was a combat correspondent in the Marine Corps, regularly lectures reporters about what he perceives to be unfair coverage of him and frequently directs them to ask Harris questions instead.

Even in more casual campaign settings, Vance has struggled at times to connect. At one stop at a doughnut shop in Valdosta, Georgia, an employee was awkwardly put on the spot by the candidate — she then asked not to be filmed on camera. On another visit to a Pennsylvania sandwich shop last weekend, Vance was left standing outside in a parking lot after some initial confusion because staff at the shop were never given advance notice of his visit.

All of these things have contributed to Vance having the lowest favorability rating on this year’s presidential ballot — and one of the lowest of any VP pick in recent history.