At GOP campaign rally in Radford, Vance takes aim at Harris

At his first solo campaign rally outside his home state of Ohio since becoming former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance on Monday fired up a crowd of about 1,000 supporters at Radford University.

In his 30-minute speech, interrupted several times by chants of “JD, JD,” Vance touted his humble working-class upbringing in a dysfunctional family while attempting to tie Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to the record of President Joe Biden, who announced Sunday that he would withdraw from his campaign for a second term.

“Hello, Virginia, it is great to be in Radford. Wow!” Vance said from behind the lectern, with dozens of Trump supporters in campaign swag crowding behind him. “I grew up in a place a lot like this one — Middletown, Ohio. That’s where I learned the values of loyalty, family, duty and honor.”

Vance arrived in Radford — only his second solo campaign stop as his party’s vice presidential nominee — after a rally in his hometown earlier on Monday. He told the audience in Radford that he was spending time with his children on Sunday when his wife told him that Biden wasn’t seeking reelection.

“You guys are excited about that, but I was looking forward to debating Kamala Harris, actually,” he said.

When the president formally endorsed Harris later that day, the Trump campaign immediately began a full-fledged assault against the vice president, prepping a wave of anti-Harris ads and mapping out lines of attack against her.

“History will remember Joe Biden not just as a quitter and one of the worst presidents of the United States of America. But my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse, and everybody knows it,” Vance said.

Harris “signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures” and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president, he continued. “Our country has been saddled for three and a half years with a president who cannot do the job, and that is all because Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democrats lied about his ability to be our president.”

Vance, who has served in the U.S. Senate since early 2023, proved himself a gifted orator before the friendly Radford audience, offering clues to why Trump chose him as his running mate at the onset of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee one week ago.

Once a bitter critic — in 2016 he called the then-Republican presidential candidate an “idiot” and “reprehensible,” privately comparing him to Adolf Hitler — Vance has since become one of Trump’s biggest advocates. And during his short time in the Senate, Vance has promoted strongly conservative policies on social issues, opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control.

During his childhood in Middletown, Vance grew up surrounded by poverty and abuse. His mother struggled with drug addiction, and he and his sister were raised by their maternal grandparents.

“I grew up in a working-class family. I grew up where other kids said, ‘That kid is never going to turn out to be anything.’ I remember when I didn’t have any hope for my future and for my community. I thought that chaos and instability was going to be the narrative of my life, that there was no future,” Vance said.

“Look at you now, baby,” a woman in the audience called loudly after Vance reflected on his childhood. The shout got a smile from the candidate and a cheer from the crowd.

“And now I am running as Donald J. Trump’s vice president. I think it turned out pretty well for me,” he said.

After graduating from high school, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq. Upon returning home, he attended Ohio State University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy. He then went to Yale Law School and graduated in 2013.

In 2016, Vance joined entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s San Francisco-based firm Mithril Capital as a principal. That same year, he published his book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” about the Appalachian values of his upbringing and the social and socioeconomic problems of his hometown in Ohio.

Vance’s stories about his Appalachian roots have drawn widespread criticism among people from Appalachia over the years, including some New River Valley Democrats, who took offense at the region’s portrayal in the book.

“There’s more to Appalachia than JD Vance’s version. When outsiders like him exploit our region, we pick up the pieces,” Lily Franklin, the former Democratic nominee in the 41st House of Delegates District who lost to Montgomery County prosecutor Chris Obenshain in November, said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Appalachia is rich in resilience, strength, and community. We pull together and rebuild repeatedly, but we deserve advocates who truly understand and uplift us,” Franklin said.

Liam Watson, a member of the Blacksburg Town Council, also weighed in on X.

“Look, I say this with all the love in my heart,” Watson wrote. “If JD Vance is going to waste his time in the New River Valley by spewing his tired, hateful rhetoric that paints Appalachians as lazy and ignorant … then he can get the hell out of my holler.”

And Susan Swecker, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia and a Highland County native, implied in a statement that Vance was faking his background as an Appalachian.

“I know two things about JD Vance. He forgot where he came from and he doesn’t care about working-class people. Those of us who grew up in rural counties can forgive a lot of things like it says in the Good Book, but we can’t forget a sellout,” Swecker said.

“We know he is nothing but a fraud and con artist who supports Donald Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion, slash social security and Medicare, and raise prices for working families while giving tax cuts to billionaires.”

In Radford, Vance lashed out repeatedly against Harris, whom he called “even more extreme than Biden, even though that is hard to believe.”

Harris, he said, wants to “totally decriminalize” illegal immigration. “If you stop making it a crime to come into this country illegally, you’re just going to invite more and more illegal aliens, and we know that communities like Radford and Middletown, we’re the ones who suffer the consequences.”

Vance likely was referring to a moment during a Democratic primary debate in June 2019 when Harris — then a U.S. senator from California seeking the Democratic presidential nomination — was one of eight Democrats on stage who raised their hand when asked if they supported decriminalizing border crossings.

During an appearance on the daytime talk show “The View,” Harris later clarified that crossing the border illegally “should be a civil enforcement issue, but not a criminal enforcement issue.”

But Vance on Monday linked Harris to policies enabling an increase of migrant encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border, which reached a record high at the end of last year.

“Kamala Harris is America’s border czar, and how is our border doing?” Vance said.

“This is crazy. We’ve got to kick Kamala Harris out of the Oval Office. Don’t give her a chance to run away from the Biden record.”

Though the night’s previous speakers — including Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, in a red MAGA hat; Attorney General Jason Miyares; and Hung Cao, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate — received modest applause and cheers, each ended with a vibrant response from the audience, prompted in part by promises to make America great again and secure the southern border.

In a brief interview before Vance took the stage, Miyares called it “a great crowd, a lot of patriotism, a lot of love of country.”

“I think what you have here is the sense that so many Virginians have that something’s off in our country. And I think they’re here in the best sense of what democracy is — they’re showing up to make sure their voices are heard.”

Miyares said he had a chance to speak with Vance before the event and said he could tell the candidate had “already done his homework about Virginia,” and was asking specific questions about how to win in the commonwealth.

“Having a young running mate that’s able to connect with the next generation, I think, is critically important,” Miyares said. “We’re excited to see what he does and what he’s bringing to the ticket already.”

Earlier in the day, long before hundreds of GOP supporters lined up outside the Dedmon Center, Jack Garwood of Christiansburg was one of the first half-dozen to gather, hoping to get a glimpse of the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Garwood said that he’d worked his remote job on Sunday so he could take off Monday and get in line early for the event. He hadn’t brought any snacks or water for the wait, for fear of needing to use a portable toilet outside the arena. But the 28-year old from England — who cannot vote in the U.S. — was in good spirits in the humid, 80-degree weather.

“I’ve made quite a few friends, the company is very good, a lot of like-minded people, everyone’s very friendly,” Garwood said.

He said he hoped Vance would address Biden’s departure from the race and Republicans’ path forward. “Biden’s deficiencies were kind of obvious by the end,” Garwood said. “I’m interested in seeing what the plan is, how to deal with a potential President Harris.”

Garwood also wanted Vance to talk about issues facing rural America, he said. “A lot of that gets missed in national campaigns. Areas like this, like Christiansburg, areas like Southwest Virginia, they kind of get ignored” in favor of swing states and big cities, he said. “I think that’s one of the benefits of having Vance on the ticket. He has a background in this type of area. I’m hoping he can speak to that background a bit more.”

When the doors opened to start letting in the crowd at 3 p.m., Garwood found himself a spot in the center of the front row, directly in front of the podium. He had picked up a sign that said “Vote early” and “Swamp the vote.”

Siblings Juliana and James Paine came from Pulaski with their friend Colin Hall.

The three said they were curious to hear how Vance would talk about the opioid crisis, and about supporting the American middle class.

Juliana Paine, 21, said that while she doesn’t agree with some of the Republican ticket’s policies or rhetoric, “I believe that it’s necessary and my duty as a citizen to hear what someone has to say.”

Hall, who’s 17 and will vote for president for the first time this fall, said, “I’m not going to vote red, but I do want to inform myself and know who our competitors are.”

James Paine, 18, said that since Vance is likely to become a new figurehead for the Republican Party, “I think it’s good, especially in my early political life, to become familiar with that.

“I want to see how he addresses things about maybe something I can relate to, maybe I could really resonate with. Or maybe not.”

James Paine wore a shirt with an image of Trump raising his fist while surrounded by Secret Service agents during the assassination attempt on July 13. He said someone in their group handed it to him to wear.

“I didn’t know if this shirt looked good with my outfit,” he said, holding up a green checkered button-up shirt. “Even if I’m not gung-ho about Trump, it’s whatever. It’s one day. It’s a cool shirt to wear.” When he found a seat later, he had put his green shirt back on.

During the Republican National Convention last week, Juliana Paine said she heard a message to younger voters saying that if they wanted to “go against the grain,” they should fight for marriage and for having children.

“I think you’re missing the mark completely,” she said. “If you want to go for younger voters, you go for issues that younger voters are voting for. I don’t think age is necessarily a factor if you want my vote.”

If anything, Vance got the Republican message across at his second rally as a presidential nominee — a message that always circled back to the leader of the Republican Party.

“President Trump and I made a simple pledge that we will pull out every last drop of sweat, we will work our tails off and we will make America great again, and we are going to do it together,” Vance said, earning “USA, USA” chants from the crowd.

The post At GOP campaign rally in Radford, Vance takes aim at Harris appeared first on Cardinal News .