Vice President JD Vance smiles during a roundtable event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
MIDDLETOWN, OHIO (AP) — Vice President JD Vance will return to his hometown Friday to campaign for Republican candidates at the same steel plant where his grandfather used to work.
Vance is set to speak at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works facility, which was known as Armco Steel when his grandfather James Vance worked there for nearly 40 years.
Vance has highlighted his Rust Belt rootswhile trying to boost GOP candidates ahead of the November midterm elections and to promote the Trump administration’s economic policies and efforts to try to expand U.S. manufacturing. The Middleton event comes as he’s expected to ramp up his travel schedule with more public events and fundraisers, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly and discussed it on condition of anonymity.
In a radio interview Thursday on the “Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show,” Vance said Friday’s stop will be “personally very meaningful” because of his family connection. He said it was “an amazing opportunity for me to go talk about, frankly, plants like this wouldn’t exist were it not for some of the Trump administration’s economic policies.”
