Where J.D. Vance, Tim Ryan Stand on 5 Key Issues Approaching Midterms
Tim Ryan #TimRyan
With less than a month before Election Day, there’s little daylight between U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan in Ohio.
Polls show the candidates nearly deadlocked—the Democrat Ryan ahead in some, the Republican Vance in others—with Ryan holding a narrow advantage in averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight.
While federal campaign finance reports show Vance’s individual fundraising efforts pale in comparison to Ryan’s, outside money from megadonors like Peter Thiel and from accounts aligned with Senate leadership has helped balance the monetary firepower, with a mix of sources injecting some $31 million in outside funds into the race to date in support of Vance.
And history points to a dynamic electoral environment. While a Democrat hasn’t won the state’s presidential vote in a decade, Ohio has a legacy of split control of its two seats in the U.S. Senate stretching back to the early 19th century.
In a state as complex as Ohio, the candidate who will serve alongside Democrat Sherrod Brown in the Senate will most likely come down to their positions on a handful of key issues that have come to define the 2022 election season. Here’s where the two men stand.
Crime
Vance—like most national Republicans this cycle—has made a “tough on crime” posture a centerpiece of his campaign, regularly running political ads dripping with rhetoric about the ineffectiveness of national Democrats and touting his own support of law enforcement.
Crime (and the broader specter of American decline) is at the top of the “issues” section of his campaign website and, in recent weeks, Vance has focused his campaign’s attacks on Ryan with occasionally misleading rhetoric about Ryan’s previously stated position that the modern criminal justice system is inherently “racist.”
“Ryan is gaslighting Ohioans into believing he supports the police, after he spent years calling the criminal justice system ‘racist’ and the ‘new Jim Crow,'” the Republican National Committee wrote in an opposition file against Ryan in September.
Ryan, however, has sought to separate himself from Vance’s attacks by citing his own efforts as a congressman to bring federal funds into the state to support law enforcement and by noting Republican support for federal sentencing reforms around crack cocaine possession. Others have noted that Vance made similar statements about law enforcement unduly targeting Black Americans dating to 2017.
Ryan has also sought to reverse Vance’s attacks by noting the Republican candidate’s statements describing law enforcement as “corrupt” for its role in a since-stalled investigation into Republican Representative Matt Gaetz’s alleged role in a child sex trafficking ring.
And, in campaign ads, Ryan has highlighted Vance’s previous calls to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—despite what the campaign called the agency’s “critical role in helping local police departments take on major drug trafficking and illegal firearm cases” in Ohio.
Abortion
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark protections for abortion established under the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, the issue of abortion access has become central to candidate platforms in battleground states around the country as a divided Congress weighs possible legislation codifying the right to abortion (or banning it after a certain threshold) nationwide.
The issue has particular salience in Ohio, which made national news after its recently implemented abortion ban forced a 10-year-old girl to travel to Indiana for an abortion after being impregnated by her rapist.
Vance’s position is clear: He has said abortion “has turned our society into a place where we see children as an inconvenience to be thrown away rather than a blessing to be nurtured.” And while he previously declined to commit to voting for Senator Lindsey Graham’s oft-criticized proposal to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, he has defended abortion bans in states like Texas, where the legislature recently banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.
Ryan’s position is also clear: This year, he voted for legislation protecting a woman’s right to travel for an abortion alongside a bill supporting abortion access on the federal level, the second time he has supported such a bill in two years.
Though he formally changed his position on abortion in 2015, he has been dogged by the pro-life positions he had taken earlier in his congressional career, including a history of low scores from the annual NARAL Pro-Choice scorecard and his leadership role in “pro-life” organizations.
Inflation
Inflation has proved a defining issue that some strategists see as the real key to voter engagement this election cycle. While Democrats still lead in the national generic ballot, Republicans have largely been shown in polling to be on the winning side of trade and the issue of the soaring costs of goods nationally.
Ryan has sought to depict himself as a pro-business moderate in lockstep with national Democrats throughout the campaign, going as far as to praise former President Donald Trump’s trade policies and backing away from campaigning with national figures like President Joe Biden as he has put the economy at the center of his campaign.
“I am focusing on the economy,” Ryan told Fox News last week. “I think these bread-and-butter economic issues are what are on people’s minds.”
But Ryan also voted for significant spending increases under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act that has drawn the ire of Republicans and economists, a fact that Vance has seized on in campaign rhetoric.
Though provisions of the bill, including incentives for domestic electric vehicle manufacturing, are believed to benefit Ohio, Vance has criticized the legislation as exacerbating inflation, and has called the Inflation Reduction Act a “a joke of an economic program.”
Trump and the 2020 election
Competing in a hard-fought primary to secure the nomination in Ohio, Vance enthusiastically bought into Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him throughout the early stages of his campaign.
And while Vance once compared Trump to America’s version of Adolf Hitler in an unearthed text message to a former roommate, the former president has since endorsed Vance and has campaigned for him in Ohio.
Ryan has sought to court Trump voters on more middle-of-the-road issues, and said he voted with Trump on trade. But asked by Cincinnati-area radio station WVXU whether he identified as a “Trump Democrat” after taunts by Vance, Ryan—who twice voted to impeach the president—sought to lower the temperature.
“This is about whether or not you want somebody who wants to get things done to make people’s lives better,” he said. “Or do you just want somebody who wants to burn the house down?”
China
Vance, a self-styled populist, has been highly critical of U.S. international trade policies throughout his career, and once said “we have to stop sending American jobs to people who hate us” in regard to U.S. trade relations with China.
Ryan, however, has said a lot of the same things.
In June, Ryan wrote a letter to the Biden administration urging to maintain Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to bolster American manufacturing. He also attracted negative responses from a number of Asian-American organizations for a $3.3 million ad buy at the start of the campaign criticizing China, saying it is “us versus China,” over the course of the one-minute ad.
It also might be the area Vance and Ryan agree on. After the Senate passed the CHIPS Act—legislation designed to bolster American manufacturing of high-tech technology and reduce the country’s reliance on China—Vance’s campaign praised the legislation in a statement, describing it as “an important step to ensure these products are made in America by American workers.”
Ryan, notably, was a chief sponsor of the bill in the House.
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