In 1984, I was fresh out of college and had just started a job that took me to Breathitt County and its county seat of Jackson three days a week.
That same year, a son was born to an Ohio family with deep Breathitt County roots. You may have heard of him. His name is J.D. Vance, and he's a best selling author, and as of last week, the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from the Buckeye State.
Vance upset liberals with Hillbilly Elegy, his tale of growing up in the Rust Belt community of Middletown, Ohio, a city located between Dayton and Cincinnati and full of Appalachian expatriates, many from eastern Kentucky, who left the hills in search of a better economic future but took their culture -- the good parts and the bad -- with them. They call the book, and its author, "garbage" but have never really been able to articulate a cogent reason why. Vance's biggest sin seems to be his belief that the government can't solve the problems of the poor and the middle class in the industrial midwest or the Appalachian Mountains.
I'm extremely familiar with the Breathitt County of which Vance wrote when he mentions his relatives there and his trips to his grandparents' ancestral home. Nothing he wrote is inaccurate. Many of those cultures and customs persist today in the region.
His grandparents may have left Breathitt County, but they didn't leave rural mountain culture on the south side of the Ohio River. The environment in which he grew up in the late 1980s and 1990s is not dissimilar to the way things were in eastern Kentucky. His mother, who is probably around my age, brought a parade of men into her life through a series of failed relationships, then fell into the black hole of drug abuse. His grandparents basically raised him and his sister, and they hadn't truly left the mountains behind when they migrated north.
It would be inaccurate to say that Vance "escaped" the Rust Belt, as there are many people who love their working class towns and cities, the same way many of us love the rural areas and mountains and would rather stay and try to make life better here instead of leaving, but he did eventually move away. First to the Marines, then to Ohio State University, then to Yale's law school, and then to California, before returning to Ohio a few years ago.
Vance openly considered a political campaign before deciding to run for the Senate to replace the retiring Rob Portman. It was a crowded Republican field with a number of prominent Buckeye Republicans in the race. Vance seemed to be languishing in second or third place before he garnered the endorsement of President Trump. Trump was reported to be undecided between endorsing Vance, who had been critical of him in the past, and Josh Mandel, who had been a Trump fan of long standing. He eventually threw his support to Vance, and it seems the endorsement pushed Vance over the top.
Of course, various Trump-haters have tried to spin the results as something negative for the 45th president, notwithstanding the fact than no candidate he's endorsed has lost yet in this primary election cycle. Some made the case that with Vance only winning the primary with a plurality of around 33 percent, that means Trump doesn't have the endorsement power he once did. The counter argument is that Vance was behind in the polls until Trump endorsed him, and Mandel had the endorsements of conservative heavyweights such as Sen. Ted Cruz and constitutional scholar/attorney/author/talk show host Mark Levin. The truth is, without Trump, Vance probably would have lost.
Democrats are scared of Vance. His working class upbringing makes him a "nightmare" for Tim Ryan's chances, according to no less than a New York Times reporter. His roots and his successes appeal to two widely different segments of the electorate that Rep. Ryan, who seeks to move up to the Senate, needs to win.
And it's that background that might make Vance not only an effective senator for Ohio, but for Kentucky as well.
It's a safe bet that Vance has more relatives in Breathitt County alone than both Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul combined have in the entire state of Kentucky. I can't say that I personally know someone who knows or is related to Vance, but I probably do. Vance owns his family's homestead in Breathitt County -- which, if I interpreted the book correctly, is somewhere up around Frozen -- and his beloved Mamaw and Papaw are buried in Breathitt. He certainly knows the area and its issues.
Political fortunes can change in six months, but right now it looks as if a red wave is coming to Congress. As long as the economy remains in the toilet and inflation runs wild, anyone associated with President Biden or his party is in trouble in a competitive race. Vance stands an excellent chance of being elected to the Senate from Ohio in November. That might be a good thing for Kentucky, especially the eastern mountains and the folks there who think no one in power understands their issues and strugges.
J.D. Vance understands. He lived with those issues growing up, and was able to overcome them. He can bring a unique perspective to governing that needs to be heard.
