Ryan, Vance Clash in Crucial Ohio Race That May Decide Control of US Senate
(Bloomberg) -- Democratic Representative Tim Ryan and Republican JD Vance questioned each other’s fitness for the US Senate during a contentious first debate Monday in an unexpectedly competitive Ohio race that could help determine which party controls the upper chamber.
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Ryan cast Vance as an “extremist” while saying President Joe Biden shouldn’t run again and that Vice President Kamala Harris was wrong when she said the southern US border was secure. Vance dismissed Ryan as a “career politician” who hasn’t gotten results during his 10 terms in the House while saying the investigations of former President Donald Trump should play out before he’s judged.
The GOP was favored to hold the Ohio seat of retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman in a former battleground state that’s become more Republican and that Trump easily won twice. But the FiveThirtyEight average of polls shows the race essentially even after Ryan raised more money and outspent Vance, a first-time candidate who narrowly won a crowded GOP primary with Trump’s endorsement.
Ryan accused Vance, a venture capitalist and author of Hillbilly Elegy of being too extreme, pointing to his support for a federal abortion ban with limited exceptions, his questioning of the 2020 presidential election results and campaigning with politicians such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“He’s going right down the line with the absolute most extremists, the guys who want to ban books and everything else,” Ryan said. “These are extreme positions that Ohioans are rejecting.”
Ryan is trying to appeal to independents and disaffected Democrats by saying he supported Trump on trade and other issues and by criticizing his own party. He said Biden shouldn’t run again because of the need for “a generational change,” and called Harris “absolutely wrong” about the border.
Vance said Ryan’s Youngstown-area district, a former steel-making center, lost 50,000 manufacturing jobs during his time in Congress and that he’s not the moderate he appears to be in his campaign ads, but rather, a reliable vote for Democrats who are leading the US in the wrong direction.
“If you actually tried to do the things you talk about wanting to do, you wouldn’t be half bad,” Vance said. “The problem is you got 20 years and you failed to do any of it.”
In response to a question about whether Trump, who is facing multiple investigations, has done anything that concerns him, Vance said, “Why don’t we let the criminal investigations actually play out?” and “I have seen nothing that suggests that the president of the United States should be thrown in prison.”
Vance, who won the GOP nomination with the help of $15 million from billionaire Peter Thiel, is being bolstered in the November race with millions of dollars in ad spending by allies including the Senate Leadership Fund aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a new super political action committee run by Trump’s allies.
Ryan accused Vance of investing in companies in China where US jobs were outsourced but couldn’t provide the name of a company when Vance challenged him to do it.
Vance said the Biden administration “seems to be sleepwalking into a nuclear war” with its support of Ukraine to repel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. But Ryan criticized Vance’s previous comments that he cares more about what happens at the southern US border than in Ukraine and that Vance “would let Putin roll right through Ukraine.”
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