The attacks by Sen. JD Vance on Haitian-born people who now live in the United States – notably, in Clark County’s Springfield – are among the slimiest political maneuvers undertaken in living memory by an Ohio officeholder.
They’re rivaled only by the demonization in 1986 of HIV-positive Ohioans by four-term Republican former Gov. James A. Rhodes in a failed comeback bid. (Voters instead overwhelmingly re-elected Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste.)
Maybe trashing refuges is a long-game bet by Vance, the Cincinnati Republican who is trotting on the campaign trail alongside GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate.
It’s a decent gamble: If Trump, now 78, wins in November but dies mid-term (or is officially ruled mentally incompetent to serve as president by the 25th Amendment’s provisions), then James David Vance, now 40, a self-defined hillbilly from McKinley Street, in Butler County’s Middletown, could become taxpayers’ White House guest at Washington’s 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
With America’s highest office at stake, defaming Haitian migrants, and disrupting (thanks to haters’ threats) the lives of the 58,000 people who live in Springfield, are easy wagers to place, with the presidency in play as the grand prize.
Meanwhile, though, perhaps Catholic convert Vance will ponder these words in the book of Leviticus, in Catholics’ traditional Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible: “If a stranger dwell in your land, and abide among you, do not upbraid him: But let him be among you as one of the same country: and you shall love him as yourselves: for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
JD Vance’s life story is remarkable, as are his notable achievements since he left Middletown – Marine Corps service, an Ohio State undergraduate degree and Yale law degree, best-selling authorship, and election to the U.S. Senate as a first-time candidate for any office.
But Vance’s vice-presidential campaign antics won’t have aged well when biographers and historians look back at 2024′s Trump-Vance ticket and Vance’s increasingly demagogic claims.
With a slight tweak, Vance’s campaigning calls to mind words, used by playwright Robert Bolt, in “A Man for All Seasons,” that Sir Thomas More (portrayed by Paul Scofield on stage), the Catholic officeholder martyred by Henry VIII, says to an ally of the king: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for [Trump]?”
Hypocrisy isn’t confined to the presidential campaign. All those lie-believing ignoramuses, inside and outside Ohio, shrieking about the purported slaughter of companion animals by Haitians who reside legally in Ohio, ought to take a good look at Ohio’s weak laws on the humane treatment of animals, especially companion animals.
The Humane Society of the United States recently released its “Horrible Hundred 2024″ – a report on 100 problem puppy mills and puppy-sellers in the United States.
The society reported that “for the 12th year in a row, Missouri has the highest number of dealers in the report (23), followed this year by Ohio (20), Iowa (15) and Wisconsin (10).”
That’s right, the Buckeye State is proving once again to be a national example of how a state refuses or neglects to police dog-breeding and dog sales. The specific details that the Humane Society musters for its report make for nauseating reading.
And the Ohio General Assembly has made matters worse. Late in 2016, amid the hurly-burly of a lame-duck, post-election session, Ohio’s House and state Senate, by passing Senate Bill 331, yet again violated the Ohio Constitution’s 112-year-old guarantee of home rule to the state’s cities and villages.
That measure, according to the National Humane Education Society, subsequently signed by Republican then-Gov. John R. Kasich, “voided [anti-puppy-mill] ordinances passed in Grove City and Toledo, [and] also made it illegal for any [Ohio] city to ban puppy sales from their communities, even if there is reason to believe the puppies were bred in a puppy mill.”
Result: Ohio, “the heart of it all,” is in fact heartless in forbidding communities to regulate puppy sales. That is one of Ohio’s many real animal-welfare challenges – not the brazen lies promoted by Donald Trump and JD Vance about Ohio newcomers eating companion animals in Springfield.
Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.
To reach Thomas Suddes: [email protected], 216-408-9474
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