MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — Vice President JD Vance built a political profile around the story of his troubled but ultimately motivational upbringing. Here in his hometown, the mixed feelings are mutual.
“I’m kind of embarrassed sometimes to tell people that I’m from Middletown,” Bethany Tompkins, a mother and seamstress, told me in a local art studio. “I don’t want the world to judge us by him and how he behaves.”
A few rooms over, painter David Bailey, a retired steelworker, stood next to his portrait of the vice president. “I thought it was pretty neat, we got a local guy from Middletown, Ohio,” he told me. “That’s something I think is worthy of notoriety.” His friend Richard Mix, a retired railroad worker, said he thinks Vance will succeed if he’s “given a chance.”
Middletown is a microcosm of the some of the grievances that put Donald Trump back in the White House: An old steel town hollowed out by the onset of globalization and downward wage pressure of free trade. A union stronghold that might like the left’s economics, but seems less enthusiastic about its social progressivism.
But the town’s regard for its most famous son was more subdued than I had expected.
There were no banners, no plaques, not even a weather-beaten Trump-Vance ’24 sign as I drove around town. Bailey’s portrait of Vance was the most visible display of admiration I found. Though Middletown, like surrounding Butler County, went 62 percent for the Republican ticket, turnout in Middletown was nine points lower than the county as a whole. And in the 2022 Senate race, without Trump on the ticket, Vance carried Butler by a smaller margin than the rest of the statewide Republican winners.
After Trump won reelection, Middletown was conflicted about how to commemorate its most famous son. The city council, hoping to stay politically neutral, settled on a handful of signs at various entrance points: “Middletown, Hometown of JD Vance, 50th Vice President of the United States of America.” I found one on the road off the interstate connecting Cincinnati and Dayton, though only after driving by it a few times.
“We don’t name a lot of things after people around here,” Michael McNamara, Butler County treasurer, told me at the county GOP’s headquarters on Roosevelt Boulevard. But, he added, that doesn’t mean people aren’t proud. “I mean, to be able to produce a vice president or potential future president is a pretty incredible feather in your cap.”
In his 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance wrote that it wasn’t just economic challenges that held Middletown back when he was growing up — it was also the excuses people made about “some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese.”
Eight years later, Vance became the Trump administration’s Rust Belt representative as Republicans made inroads with working-class voters. He started rattling off the same economic frustrations that he used to criticize. At the Republican National Convention, Vance said Middletown was a community “cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class,” that NAFTA sent “countless good jobs to Mexico,” and that a trade deal with China destroyed “even more good American middle-class manufacturing jobs.”
Trump has promised that a combination of trade protectionism and immigration restrictions will bring back native jobs and boost factory activity in places like Middletown. But almost 11 months into his administration, manufacturing jobs across the country are still down while prices are stubbornly high. Vance has pleaded for patience, promising Americans that the country is on the “front end” of an economic “boom.” But Middletown residents are just as conflicted about the prospect of a boom as they are about the local man delivering the message.
McNamara, talking to me at the county GOP headquarters, said that though tariffs might raise prices, the short-term pain is worth “a global reset.” “Why is it fair,” he said, “for all the other countries to over-tariff American goods in manufacturing, which drives our production from our companies overseas?”
But Fred Couch, who tends bar at a pizza place called the Slice, had a different view: “I think tariffs are a tax, myself, and it’s done nothing but hurt people so far.” Couch told me that he used to root for Vance as senator, but has since lost hope in his leadership.
Walking through downtown, I saw more empty storefronts than occupied ones. Small-business owners told me they are still struggling as input costs go up and inflation-weary shoppers cut down on spending. Lisa, owner of the Iron Rose Mercantile boutique (who only gave her first name), said she had hoped tariffs would bring prosperity, but instead they’ve increased her shipping costs. As prices go up, she said, shoppers are choosing online shopping and big-box stores over small businesses. Next door at the Merry Market, where vendors were selling seasonal goods in a usually vacant storefront, Miranda Mullins said input costs for her craft boutique have skyrocketed.
The economic challenges in places like Middletown predate this White House, and will probably outlive it. At a cafe down the road, Wilma Smith, 60, told me about the golden days when her family moved here in the ’70s. “This place had three movie theaters,” she said. “Everybody loved to come to Middletown.”
Smith lost her job at a nearby Kohl’s warehouse when it shut down this fall. Online shopping has cut into big-box business, but she wonders if tariffs played a role. “We got a lot of our product from [China],” she said. Still, Smith doesn’t hold it against the White House: “They have their plans and things to do.”
I met a lot of residents like Smith who could remember better days, but didn’t see it as Vance’s job alone to save Middletown from decades of decline. Besides, Smith said, it “made my day” when she found out that Vance was a local kid. “It gives us a boost, too,” she said. “We need that boost, you know.”
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