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Good News from the Buckeye State

J.D. Vance has won the Republican nomination for Ohio’s senate race. Only a month ago, he was in third place. Then, on April 15, former President Donald Trump endorsed Mr. Vance and he surged into first. Since Ohio has steadily moved from being a swing state to a GOP stronghold (Mr. Trump won it by eight points in 2016 and 2020), it is very likely Mr. Vance will win the November election.

Many analysts have called this race a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, and they are right. The competitors he defeated, Josh Mandel and Mike Gibbons, represented the conspiratorial “new MAGA” that focuses on COVID-related issues, voter fraud in the 2020 election, and defending or minimizing the January 6 Capitol riot. Mr. Vance represented the “original MAGA” of immigration restriction, trade protection, isolationist foreign policy, and law and order. Those are values white advocates can support; “new MAGA” is at best a distraction.

Mr. Vance has also done much to force the media and politicians to acknowledge white poverty and dispossession. He first did this through his bestselling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and he continues to do so. With the outbreak of war in Eastern Europe, many Republicans have tripped over themselves striking as bellicose a posture as possible. Mr. Vance, in the tradition of America First, has not. At CPAC, he said, “I’m sick of being told that we have to care more about people 6,000 miles away than we do people like my mom and my grandparents and all the kids who are affected by this [opioid] crisis.” Later he said, “The very first thing is that we should declare the Mexican cartels a terrorist organization. Don’t send the military to Ukraine, send it into Mexico and let’s fight back against this poison.”

September 2, 2017 – Washington, DC – J.D. Vance (left) appears in conversation with philanthropist David Rubenstein at the 17th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival. The author of the New York Times No. 1 best-selling Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance was raised in the southwestern Ohio city of Middletown and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. Vance writes sympathetically about the poverty and low wages in the places where he grew up while simultaneously raising questions about personal responsibility. (Credit Image: © Jeff Malet / Newscom via ZUMA Press)

The more people talking like this, the better. Mr. Vance isn’t perfect. He had deep reservations about Donald Trump before he became President, and he married a woman named Usha Chilukuri. Still, he’s better than yet another neocon or evangelical, especially since Ohio is an important state that has sent eight of its citizens to the White House.

Meanwhile, the Democrats nominated the least objectionable of their candidates, Tim Ryan. Congressman Ryan won nearly 70 percent of the vote, handily defeating his two black challengers, Morgan Harper and Traci Johnson. Mr. Ryan does say foolish things about race, such as, “Anytime you’re a white guy [which he always is] in America you’re always learning and trying to better understand what people of color are going through and I don’t know if that journey ever ends.” However, he generally talks about economics. Much of his campaign was about defending American/Ohioan workers from Chinese mischief, and Mr. Ryan has even admitted Mr. Trump was right to bring this issue to national attention.

Of course, Mr. Ryan is no Jack London or Samuel Gompers, but he’s better than the average Democrat.

In the coming weeks, there will be several more important primary elections with contours similar to the ones in Ohio. We have reason to be optimistic.