MIDDLETOWN, Ohio–At a campaign stop in Middletown, the city midway between Cincinnati and Dayton where he grew up, JD Vance paused for a moment when an audience member asked him a question about a subject that is touchy for the Republican U.S. Senate candidate.
“Somebody sent this to me a couple of days ago,” Vance said as he scrolled through his phone at the Oct. 19 event. “This is a cartoon that ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer ... and here it is. It’s me and Tim Ryan on the debate stage together. He’s wearing a Cleveland Guardians jersey, and I’m wearing the San Francisco Giants jersey, which [is] kind of funny, right?
“But here’s what it says. ‘Only Indians name change I support is my wife’s to Senator J.D. Vance’s Spouse,’” Vance said about Jeff Darcy’s political cartoon that was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Oct. 18. “Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. That guy would have lost his job. He would have been tarred and feathered.
“You’re making a racist joke about my wife, and no one is calling them out for it. It’s disgusting and despicable, and it’s why nobody trusts the media,” Vance continued. “And by the way, it’s why we need a senator who’s willing to go to Washington and tell them to go to hell when they do things like that.”
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Usha Vance, the candidate’s wife, is Indian American. Vance met Usha, whose maiden name is Chilukuri, at Yale Law School. They married in 2014.
Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team was known as the Indians for more than a century before changing its name to the Guardians after the 2021 season.
Vance and Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who has represented the Youngstown region in Congress for 20 years, are vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman in one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate races.
The Plain Dealer endorsed Ryan on Oct. 16.
“While the Cleveland Baseball team’s name change didn’t come up in the first debate between Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance, it had in a primary debate and Fox News interview when Vance hit former opponent Matt Dolan, whose family owns the team, over the name change. Vance had called out the Dolan’s (sic) for weakness giving in to the ‘woke mob,'” Darcy wrote in the article that accompanied the cartoon.
“So don’t expect to see J.D. Vance sporting any Cleveland Guardians garb. He’s more likely to be in San Francisco Giants gear,” he wrote. “Vance had transplanted to the bay city where he made his $millions as a venture capitalist, wrote his bestselling memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, met and married his wife, Usha, an attorney who works for a San Francisco-Washington D.C. law firm. Usha Chilukuri Vance is an Indian American.
“She once law clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was still on the Court of Appeals. The Vance’s (sic) have three children and now live in Cincinnati, having moved back to Ohio, seemingly for J.D.’s Senate run,” Darcy added.
Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan’s family owns the Guardians. Dolan was one of several candidates who ran against Vance in the Republican U.S. Senate primary.
Vance questioned the Dolan family’s decision to rename the ballclub multiple times. In a January interview with Fox News, he said of Dolan that “When the woke mob came after the Cleveland Indians, he bent the knee and changed their name. If you’re not willing to stand up for a team that you own, a legacy institution in the state of Ohio, how can you actually stand up against all of the powerful actors that are making it hard for conservatives to actually have a fair stake in this debate.”
Jai Chabria, who is the Vance campaign’s chief strategist, called for Ryan to denounce Darcy’s cartoon.
“I’m a first-generation Indian American and my immigrant parents taught me to love this country as much as they do, which is why I’ve never been one to bring race into the conversation. However, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s woke editors published a cartoon that explicitly encourages bigotry against Indian women by perpetuating a stereotype,” Chabria said in a statement.
“Tim should step up and condemn their actions immediately, or perhaps this racism is OK because it’s against a Republican,” Chabria added.
Vance, who was raised in Middletown, rose to national prominence when he authored “Hillbilly Elegy.” The book chronicled his childhood in the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky before his family moved to Middletown, an industrial city that once teemed with steel mills and a bustling, thriving downtown but has long since fallen on hard times with drugs and poverty among other challenges.
A Netflix movie that was based on the book and produced by Ron Howard brought to life the struggles of Vance’s family, including his mother’s battle with drug addiction.
After high school, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He then earned his undergraduate degree from Ohio State University and a law degree from Yale University. He worked in Silicon Valley for a venture capital firm before returning to Ohio and launching his own venture capital company in Cincinnati.
Ryan, whose campaign is focused on appealing to moderates and independents along with traditional Democrats in a state where Donald Trump won by 8 percentage points in 2016 and 2020, often depicts Vance as an outsider who abandoned Ohio for California.
Vance bristles at the claim, pointing out that congressional voting records indicate Ryan has “always voted” with President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“Tim Ryan is running these ads. He lies about the charity that I started. He lies about who I am. He lies to me. He says that I went to California. I was in California for less than two years,” Vance said in Middletown. “I lived in Ohio and enlisted in the United States Marines when I was 18 years old. So he has to lie about us.
“All we have to do is tell the truth. Tell the truth about who I am. And most of all, let them know that Tim Ryan is not the fake moderate that he thinks he is,” Vance added. “He votes with these guys [Biden and Pelosi] 100 of the time.”
Ryan and his campaign have not responded to a request for comment about Darcy’s cartoon.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls through Oct. 18, Vance has a 2.5-point advantage over Ryan.
Through Oct. 18, the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball all rate the race as “lean Republican.”
