Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance returns to the campaign trail Tuesday in battleground Michigan.
On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate will hold events in two more crucial swing states – Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
If it feels like déjà vu, it is.
“We’re going to make sure that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan go red,” the first-term senator from Ohio who preaches populism said in a recent Fox News Digital interview in Michigan.
Democrats reliably won all three working-class states in presidential elections for nearly a quarter-century before Trump narrowly carried them in capturing the White House eight years ago.
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Vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) addresses the audience at a campaign rally on Aug. 20, 2024 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Andy Manis/Getty Images)
However, in 2020, President Biden won back all three states with razor-thin margins as he defeated Trump.
The states remain extremely competitive as Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump face off in the 2024 presidential election.
Last month’s Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city. Trump and Vance held their first joint-campaign rally after the convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan, just a few miles north of where Vance was interviewed by Fox News on Wednesday.
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Vance said he is optimistic the three states are “going to be the red wall in November.”
The senator, a leading Trump ally in the Senate, has repeatedly made stops in all three blue wall states since joining Trump’s ticket nearly six weeks ago. He told Fox News that he would be spending plenty of time in the states the rest of the summer and autumn spreading Trump’s working-class message.
“We’re going to make sure that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan go red. People are sick of green energy scams that ship our manufacturing jobs to China instead of keeping them right here at home in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I think we have a great pro-manufacturing, pro-American worker message,” he emphasized.
Vance said that his pitch to working-class voters is a “core message that Donald Trump and I have in this campaign and this is a good place for people to hear it.”
Vance hails from Ohio, which neighbors both Pennsylvania and Michigan, and his Midwestern and working-class roots in a region long known as the “Rust Belt” were key factors in Trump’s decision to name the senator as his running mate.
Before running for Senate, Vance grabbed national attention after his book “Hillbilly Elegy” – which tells his story of growing up in a struggling steel mill city and his roots in Appalachian Kentucky – became a New York Times bestseller and was then made into a Netflix film. The story spotlighted the values of many working-class Americans who became supporters of Trump’s policies.
Fox News observed as Vance spread his Midwestern folksiness with the owners and family of the trucking company that hosted a recent rally in Michigan.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance and his wife Usha meet with supporters ahead of a campaign event in Byron Center, Michigan, on Aug. 14, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Later, in his speech at the rally, he spotlighted the instrumental role his grandmother “Mamaw” in his life. The comments have become a key ingredient in his stump speech.
“I was one of the lucky ones – I managed to achieve the American Dream. I managed to build a life because I had a Mamaw that was tough as nails,” Vance told the crowd.
A longtime Vance ally said that the senator would be campaigning in all seven of the key battlegrounds that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential election, but that there would be a “particular focus on the three blue wall states.”
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The ally, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, added “I would expect he spends the most time in Pennsylvania.”
“This is a very deliberate strategy coming from team Trump,” the ally emphasized. “One of the many reasons JD was picked for the VP slot is because of his personal attachment to the Rust Belt and his ability to appeal to working class voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin…His economic populism really does well with the electorate there.”
Sen. JD Vance speaks to reporters on Friday, Aug. 16 in Milwaukee. (Pool/Fox News)
Democrats have repeatedly taken aim at Vance, and have argued that he’s anything but a working-class hero, as they point to his years in San Francisco as a top hedge fund executive, when he worked as a principal in a venture capital firm owned by billionaire Peter Thiel.
Harris — who replaced Biden last month atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket and who named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, another Midwesterner, as her running mate — charges that Vance is a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s “extreme agenda”
“Make no mistake, JD Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country,” Harris has said.