Paul Vernon/AP Photo
Democratic candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), left, and Republican candidate J.D. Vance met Monday night for a second debate in the race for Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat.
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO – Monday night’s debate for a Senate seat in Ohio demonstrated what everyone watching local television has known for weeks: Congressman Tim Ryan and author J.D. Vance really, really do not like each other. While neither candidate emerged as the clear victor, the race’s devolution into starkly personal terms may prove an obstacle for Ryan, who is trying to re-create Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s successful formula by emphasizing his populist, protectionist approach to economics over cultural warfare.
But cultural issues and personality conflicts dominated Monday night’s debate. Ryan repeatedly engaged in tense, personal clashes with Vance that trended on social media but seem unlikely to move the needle in his uphill battle to flip retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat.
That tension left the moderators struggling to reel in the candidates during the brief 56-minute debate. Five minutes after questions began, moderator Lindsay McCoy had to cut short an exchange over the Inflation Reduction Act that had spiraled into bickering after Vance answered Ryan’s populist defense of the IRA’s federal investments with accusations that Ryan’s actions were controlled by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Gentleman, let’s focus,” she chided them. The two did not return to their differences on manufacturing or labor policy for the remainder of the debate.
A lack of policy substance also characterized the exchanges that followed. On immigration, both candidates made claims about who is responsible for the “opening” or “closing” of the southern border, but there was virtually no discussion of refugee admissions, visa caps, or any of the other issues that shape the legislative debate over immigration reforms.
Ryan attempted to pivot the conversation back to economist populist terms with vague claims that Vance has invested in companies using “foreign workers,” but the attack fell flat. Instead, the debate over the issue was defined by a later exchange on whether Vance’s immigration rhetoric mirrors the tenets of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that there is a nefarious plot at work among liberal elites—often implied to be orchestrated by Jewish Americans—to seize power from current citizens by admitting and enfranchising immigrants.
There is no doubt that Vance’s rhetoric falls in line with the racist conspiracy, but it is unclear whether Vance’s extreme rhetoric on immigration can be considered a liability in a state where Trump easily won twice. On Monday, he did not appear to think his rhetoric was a risk, casually telling viewers that Democrats “want more and more immigration, because if that happens, they’ll ensure that Republicans are never able to win another national election.”
That argument, which has been the subject of the most media coverage of the debate, quickly devolved into personal bickering over whether Vance’s interracial family proved his rhetoric cannot be racist. After five minutes of jabs, McCoy again pleaded with the candidates to focus and finish the debate.
What could eventually be the most damaging moment of the night came courtesy of moderator Bertram de Souza, who pressed Vance to finally take a position on national legislation to strip away abortion rights. Vance initially tried to dance around the topic, telling the audience that “you cannot say with total confidence what every single exception in every single case is going to be.”
It is unclear whether Vance’s extreme rhetoric on immigration can be considered a liability in a state where Trump easily won twice.
But after pressure from de Souza to specify which legislation he would or would not support if elected, Vance admitted he would support Lindsey Graham’s bill to sharply limit abortion access after 15 weeks of pregnancy—a position he went to great lengths to obscure in recent weeks.
That interaction may explain why Vance appeared eager to jump into culture and personality conflicts with Ryan rather than explain his policy stances.
Ryan struggled to return discussions over other contentious items to the everyday experiences of Ohioans. And he seemed reluctant to discuss the economic boons that President Biden’s agenda has delivered to Ohio—including the CHIPS and Science Act, a domestic manufacturing package whose benefits so disproportionately favor the state that even Vance himself quietly supported passage, despite Ryan’s high-profile sponsorship of the legislation. Neither candidate mentioned the legislation’s passage, though both expressed support for it in a previous debate.
Focus on personalities over substance may benefit Vance, who is relying on Ohio’s growing Republican lean—which is arguably driven by cultural divides as much as economic decline—to pull him over the finish line. Public polling indicates that strategy could succeed. After trailing Ryan for most of the summer, Vance has taken a narrow lead in recent weeks, amid a modest but broad shift in the electoral landscape toward Republicans.
At one point during Monday’s debate, Ryan himself appeared to acknowledge that cultural conflicts were distracting from the economic stakes of the race—the terrain that benefits Democrats. “I want to talk about jobs. I want to talk about wages. I want to talk about people having, you know, dignity,” Ryan said during another tense exchange over the necessity of the January 6th Committee’s work. “But my god, you gotta look into it, J.D.”
Ryan did finally revisit the kitchen-table economic issues that favor Ohio Democrats in his closing remarks, where he talked about learning the importance of good-paying blue-collar jobs from his grandfather. But by then, the damage had already been done. By Tuesday morning, the headlines had made it clear that “bad blood,” not policy differences, is animating the race.
